Main Tenets of Shamanism

Excerpts from Change of Blood Lineage through Ritual Sex in the Unification Church.

Shamanistic beliefs and practices have greatly influ­enced Korean people and their culture for thousands of years. Korean people's ancestors belonged to the Tun­gus tribe in Siberia.

Role and duties of the shaman

The most important and characteristic condition which makes of an ordinary man or woman a shaman or shamaness is that he or she is a master of spirits, at least of a group of spirits. Among the Tungus of Manchuria the number of spirits with the beginners is five or six, while by the end of a good career all spirits are mastered directly or with the assistance of other spirits. The number of spirits is also a measure of the shaman’s or shamaness’ power - the more powerful the shaman or shamaness is, the more spirits he or she has.

According to the Tungun and Manchu shamanistic world view the shaman or shamaness must take care of the spirits, feed them and handle them, when he or she wants to introduce them into himself or herself. The Tungus shaman or shamaness introduces spirits into himself or herself at his or her own will, he or she uses his or her own body as a placing for spirits. A voluntary introduction of a spirit is also characteristic of Shaman­ism, but the spirits may also be called in and introduced into other people at their invitation. The same is true about the next step, the expulsion of the spirits, which is beyond the power of ordinary people. Thus among the shamans and shamanesses a voluntary introduction and expulsion of the spirits are only particular cases of mas­tering the spirits.

The central concept of shamanism

The central idea of Shamanism is to establish means of contact with the supernatural world, with gods and goddesses, spirits, ghosts and with ancestors. This is accomplished by the ecstatic experience of a profes­sional and inspired intermediary, the shaman or shamaness. The role of the shaman or shamaness is similar to that of the priest or priestess, the cultic official. His or her primary task lies in open­ing the road to the supernatural powers through the medium of ecstasy. The shaman’s or shamaness’ role as a mediator is founded on the idea that he or she alone is equipped to serve the interests of the society on the ecstatic level. The main services of the professional sha­man or shamaness for the clients may be defined as fol­lows:

The shaman or shamaness is the doctor. His or her first obligation is to make the right diagnosis of the dis­ease, and for that purpose he or she calls on the helping spirits. There are two main disease theories, soul loss and intrusion. In soul loss he or she travels in extra-cor­poreal form to the other world to catch the soul of the patient from the spirits who hold it. In case of intrusion the shaman or shamaness summons his or her assistant spirits to help him or her withdraw the intruding agent, whether the latter be animate or inanimate; sucking, drawing movements, sweeping with feathers and simi­lar procedures are resorted to. Exorcism of evil spirits from the patient will heal him or her. Secondly the sha­man or shamaness is the diviner. The divination reveals unknown events in past times, things and persons lost, and future things to happen. Third, the shaman or shamaness is the psychopomp who escorts the souls of the dead to their new realm in the other life. Fourth, the shaman or shamaness is the hunting magician of the group, both as a diviner and as a charmer of animals. And fifth, the shaman or shamaness is a sacrificial priest or priestess for offerings given to gods.

Spirit guides

The shaman or shamaness receives his or her inspira­tion from his or her guardian or helping spirits. The assist­ant spirits may be said to express the supernatural aid that the shaman or shamaness needs in order to establish the contacts with the other world. It is their arrival at the sha­manizing act that marks the beginning of the trance, they deliver messages from the world of the spirits, they assist the shaman or shamaness on his or her way to the super­natural realm. The spirits in animal shape constitute the majority of the shaman’s or shamaness’ assisting spirits but they do not stand alone. The most important of them all is a controlling or main spirit who often takes up his or her abode inside the shaman or shamaness. It is very common that this main helping spirit is the spirit wife or the spirit husband of the shaman or shamaness.

Sexual relationship with the spirit guide

According to the shamanistic world view it is entirely possible for gods and goddesses spirits and ancestors to have a sexual relationship with human beings. By means of a sexual intercourse they can have physical sons and daughters on earth.

It is this spirit hus­band or spirit wife who has chosen the shaman or shamaness to his or her calling and this spirit spouse sends other spirits to help them. Many shamans and shamanesses tell in the morning that they had a sexual union in the night with their spirit husband or spirit wife. This phenomenon occurs among many Siberian tribes, for instance among the Buryats, and the Nanais on the lower Amur river and among Burmese and Korean shamans and shamanesses. For instance the white Buryat shaman called Barlak mar­ried two female spirits, from one of whom, Dosxin-Soinon, he had two daughters. In addition Barlak had two sons and a daughter from his wife on earth. One male sha­man among the Nanais (or Goldi) on the Siberian-Chi- nese border district was approached during his shamanic illness by a very beautiful woman who said:

“I am the spirit who has chosen you. I taught your ancestors to be sha­mans and now I have come to teach you. The old shamans have died and now there is nobody to heal people... I love you and you must be my husband. I shall give you spirit helpers and they will help you to heal... If you don’t obey me, too bad for you I shall kill you”.

Nanai shamanesses are similarly visited by male spirits with whom they have sexual relations. More references to a sexual relationship between the shamans or shamanesses and the spirits are found in different parts of Siberia, for instance among the Yakuts, Shors, Sel’kups, Chukchee and Teleuts.

When in Burma a nat, a spirit, falls in love with a human being, it is believed that the nat's soul has entered into and has united with the soul of the human. This union may be temporary. Technically, being loved by a nat does not make one a shaman or shamananess until a formal marriage ceremony has been performed. When the human becomes a shaman or shamaness or a spouse of the nat, their souls are formally and perma­nently “tied” in the wedding ceremony. When human and nat souls are united in marriage, the latter’s soul is permanently tied to the human soul. According to the traditional Burmese world view it is possible for nats to have sexual intercourse with humans. In Muslim Malaysia in 1986 a woman who claimed to have had a child by a spirit to whom she was married was fined by an Islamic court for committing adultery.

Controlled spirit possession

The shaman or shamaness has ecstatic experiences. The ecstasy is the particular way in which the shaman or shamaness establishes his or her contact with the super­natural powers. The shamanistic trance infers two dis­tinctive experiences, one, the extra-corporeal flight of the shaman or shamaness with the assistance of helping spirits, two, on-the-spot information passed to the sha­man or shamaness by helping spirits. Even if the shaman or shamaness takes into himself or herself the spirits he or she nevertheless retains his or her own personality at that. He or she is the master, and not the slave or a pas­sive instrument of the spirits. The established shaman or shamaness owns a free, independent attitude towards his or her assistant spirits. The shaman or shamaness is not, like the hysteric, the will-less and impotent victim of an attack. The shamans and shamanesses can be characterized as mediums who practise controlled possession. The spiritual powers which seek their entrance into them are mostly helpful and are even invited. In other words, they are socially approved and therefore of a gentle nature.

extra texts

According to the shamanistic myth the Koreans descend from a sexual union between the Sky-God and a mother bear: The Tan gun myth Hwanung, the son of the Sky-God Hwanin, descended from Heaven. The Bear and the Tiger came to him asking him to transform them into humans. Hwanung promised to transform them if they avoided sunlight for one hundred days. However, only the Bear could cope with this requirement, and it was transformed into a woman. She became pregnant by Hwanung and gave birth to a son, who was given the name Tangun. Tangun later became the founder of the Joseon state, a long-living ruler, a cultural hero, and the progenitor of all Koreans.61 Female shamans are common in the Manchurian region, broadly defined, the very same region where the bear myth is also particularly prominent. Female shamans predominate in both Korean and Japanese Shamanism. The Korean female shaman (Mudang) does have a male counterpart (Paksu), but the vast majority of all Korean shamans are females. In Japan, all sha­mans (itako) are females. The same seems to be true of the Hokkaido Ainu shamans (Tusukur).62

According to the shamanistic world view it is entirely possible for gods and goddesses [spirits and angels-editor] to have a sexual relationship with human beings. By means of a sexual intercourse they can have physical sons and daughters on earth.

NOTES 65 Kim, Chong-sun, Rev. Sun Myung Moon in The Unification Church 1, Views from the Outside. Edited with an introduction by Michael L. Mickler, Garland Publishing, New York, London, 1990, p. 209. 66 Shirokogoroff, S. M., Psychomental Complex of the Gungus, Reinhold Schletzer Verlag, Berlin, 1999, pp. 271-272.

70 Hultkrantz, Akt, Ecological and Phenomenological Aspects of Shamanism in Backman, Louise and Hultzkrantz, Ake, Studies in Lapp Shamanism, acts Universitatis Stockholmiesis, Stockholm Studies in Comparative religion 16, Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1978, pp. 17-19 72 Krader, L., Shamanism:Theory and History in Buryat Society in Shamanism in Siberia, Edited by V. Dioszegi and M. Hoppal Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, 1978, p. 199 73 Vitebsky, Piers, The Shaman, Macmillan in association with Duncan Baird Publishers, London, 1995, pp. 57-58, 105; Sikala, Anna-Leena, The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, academia Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki, 1978, pp. 260-261, 316.