Few books have shaped the idea of shamanism as much as the one published in 1951 by Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions of Romanian origin, under the French title Le chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase. Translated into many languages, including English as Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, it was for decades the obligatory starting point for anyone approaching the subject. Knowing its theses and limits helps us understand why scholars today speak of shamanism differently.
The central thesis
Eliade proposed a definition that was to enjoy great success: shamanism is a technique of ecstasy. The shaman, from this perspective, is the specialist of a trance during which his soul leaves the body to ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld.
From this definition follow some distinctions that Eliade considered fundamental:
- the shaman travels to the spirits, whereas the possessed person is «visited» by them;
- the shaman masters the spirits and is not mastered by them;
- the heart of the experience is the celestial ascent, which Eliade regarded as older and purer than the descent.
Siberia as the model
Eliade built his synthesis on an enormous body of ethnographic literature, mostly Russian and Scandinavian, concerning the peoples of Siberia and Central Asia. For him Siberian and Central Asian shamanism was the «classic» form, from which shamanic elements could be recognised in many other cultures: in the Americas, in Oceania, in Tibet, even in the ancient Indo-European world.
Some themes the book made famous:
| Theme | Siberian example used by Eliade |
|---|---|
| Initiatory illness | crises and dreams of the vocation |
| Dismemberment | tales of bodies cut to pieces and reassembled by spirits |
| Tree and cosmic axis | birches and ritual poles to be climbed |
| Magical flight | feathered costumes, bird spirits |
| Ascent | the Altaic kam's session ascending to Ülgen |
The book in its time
It is important to remember that Eliade was not an ethnographer: he did no fieldwork in Siberia, but worked on the texts of others. His interest was that of the historian of religions seeking universal structures, archetypes of human religious experience.
This approach produced a brilliant and readable synthesis, but also some questionable choices. Sources were often extracted from their context and juxtaposed; differences between one people and another tended to vanish behind the general model.
The criticisms
From the 1970s and 1980s many anthropologists subjected the Eliadean model to criticism. The main objections are:
- the centrality of ecstasy: the French anthropologist Roberte Hamayon, a specialist in Siberian peoples, showed that in many Siberian societies the shaman fills a social role defined by symbolic relationships, such as the alliance with the spirits of game, and that the notion of «ecstasy» poorly describes what happens;
- the journey/possession opposition: in several traditions the shaman both travels and embodies spirits in the same session, and the rigid distinction does not hold;
- the primacy of ascent: the hierarchy between ascent to the sky and descent to the underworld reflected Eliade's preferences more than ethnographic data;
- universalism: extending the category to all cultures risks erasing local specificities.
The unforeseen legacy
The book also had a consequence Eliade had not foreseen: it helped inspire Western neo-shamanism. In the 1980s the American anthropologist Michael Harner, with The Way of the Shaman (1980), proposed a «core shamanism», a basic shamanism distilled from many cultures and made accessible to anyone. The idea of a universal technique of ecstasy, developed by Eliade, was a clear premise.
Why read it still
Despite the criticisms, Eliade's book remains a valuable read: it is an immense collection of material, written with passion and clarity. It should, however, be read as a document in the history of scholarship, alongside more recent research. Studio Esoterico Cornelio invites this double view: admiring the synthesis without forgetting the concrete peoples it comes from.
In short
- In 1951 Mircea Eliade defined shamanism as an «archaic technique of ecstasy».
- The model was based mainly on Siberian and Central Asian ethnographic sources.
- Eliade was not a field ethnographer and tended to seek universal structures.
- Anthropologists such as Roberte Hamayon criticised ecstasy, ascent and universalism.
- The book also influenced the Western neo-shamanism of Michael Harner.
