shamanism

Prayer Flags Tibet Landscape Clouds Tibetan

Prayer Flag

Prayer Flag A Tibetan prayer flag is a colorful rectangular cloth, often found strung along trails and peaks high in the Himalayas. They are used to bless the surrounding countryside and for other purposes. Prayer flags are believed to have originated with Bon. In Bon, shamanistic Bonpo used primary-colored plain flags in Tibet. Traditional prayer flags include woodblock-printed text and images....

Hypnosis Clairvoyance Couple Wedding Yoga People

Mediumship

Mediumship Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as “mediums” or “spirit mediums”. There are different types of mediumship or spirit channeling, including seánce tables, trance, and ouija. Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century when ouija boards were used by the upper...

Galba. She was the last of the Tuvan Shaman in Mongolia.

Shamanic Music

Shamanic Music Shamanic music is music played either by actual shamans as part of their rituals, or by people who, whilst not themselves shamans, wish to evoke the cultural background of shamanism in some way. So Shamanic music includes both music used as part of shamans’ rituals and music that refers to, or draws...

Jeongsusa Sansingak, Mountain Spirit Shrine (Ganghwa-gun) - Jeongsusa meaning clean water - clear the body and mind, because fresh water sprang up at the east side of the temple was built by Priest Hoejeong AD 639,and was rebuilt by saint priest Hamheo Daesa in 1426.

Korean Shamanism

Korean Shamanism Korean shamanism or Korean folk religion, also known as Shinism or Sinism (신교, 神敎; Shingyo or Shinkyo, “religion of the spirits/gods”) or Shindo (신도; 神道, “way of the spirits/gods”), is the polytheistic and animistic ethnic religion of Korea which dates back to prehistory and consists in the worship of gods (신 shin) and ancestors (조상 josang) as well as nature spirits. When referring specifically...

Shamanism Buddha Meditation Forest Faith Prayer

Chinese Shamanism

Chinese Shamanism Chinese shamanism, alternatively called Wuism (巫教; wū jiào; ‘wu religion, shamanism, witchcraft‘; alternatively 巫觋宗教 wū xí zōngjiào), refers to the shamanic religious tradition of China. Its features are especially connected to the ancient Neolithic cultures such as the Hongshan culture. Chinese shamanic traditions are intrinsic to Chinese folk religion. Various ritual traditions are rooted in original...

Statues of jhākri at Banjhakri Falls and Energy Park in Gangtok, Sikkim, India

Witch Doctor

Witch Doctor A witch doctor was originally a type of healer who treated ailments believed to be caused by witchcraft and is now more commonly a term used to refer to healers, particularly in regions which use traditional healing rather than contemporary medicine. Original meaning of the term In its original meaning witch doctors were not witches themselves, but...

White Sülde Tngri temple in the town of Uxin Banner in Inner Mongolia, China.

Mongolian Shamanism

Mongolian Shamanism Mongolian shamanism, more broadly called the Mongolian folk religion, or occasionally Tengerism, refers to the animistic and shamanic ethnic religion that has been practiced in Mongolia and its surrounding areas (including Buryatia and Inner Mongolia) at least since the age of recorded history. In the earliest known stages it...

A Buryat boy in a shaman ritual

Shamanism In Siberia

Shamanism In Siberia This article covers Shamanism in Siberia. A large minority of people in North Asia, particularly in Siberia, follow the religio-cultural practices of shamanism. Some researchers regard Siberia as the heartland of shamanism. The people of Siberia comprise a variety of ethnic groups, many of whom continue to observe shamanistic...

Indian Art Petroglyph Native American Ancient

Ethnic Religion

Ethnic Religion In religious studies, an ethnic religion is a religion or belief associated with a particular ethnic group. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from universal religions, such as Christianity or Islam, which are not limited in ethnic, national or racial scope. All ethnic religions are several thousand years old, which most being of an unknown age because they stem from indigenous...

Petroforms in Whiteshell Provincial Park

Manitou

Manitou Manitou, akin to the Iroquois orenda, is the spiritual and fundamental life force among Algonquian groups in Native American theology. It is omnipresent and manifests everywhere: organisms, the environment, events, etc. Aashaa monetoo means “good spirit“, while otshee monetoo means “bad spirit“. When the world was created, the Great Spirit, Aasha Monetoo, gave the land to...

New Mexico Land Healing Nature Shamanic Altar

Nature Worship

Nature Worship Nature worship is any of a variety of religious, spiritual and devotional practices that focus on the worship of the nature spirits considered to be behind the natural phenomena visible throughout nature. A nature deity can be in charge of nature, a place, a biotope, the biosphere, the cosmos, or the universe. Nature worship is often considered the primitive...

Fire Autumn Shaman Girl Twilight Forest Gothic

Neoshamanism

Neoshamanism Neoshamanism refers to “new” forms of shamanism, or methods of seeking visions or healing. Neoshamanism comprises an eclectic range of beliefs and practices that involve attempts to attain altered states and communicate with a spirit world. Neoshamanic systems may not resemble traditional forms of shamanism. Some have been invented by individual...

Totem Pole Indian Native Culture Symbol Wood

Totemism

Totemism Totemism is an aspect of religious belief centered upon the veneration of sacred objects called totems. Totemism is derived from the term “ototeman” in the Ojibwe language, meaning “brother-sister kin”.  A totem is any animal, plant, or other object, natural or supernatural, which provides deeply symbolic meaning for a person...

Autel animiste. Village Bozo, Mopti, Mali. Date du cliché 25-12-1972

Animism

Animism Animism (from the Latin: animus or anima, meaning mind or soul) refers to a belief in numerous personalized, supernatural beings endowed with reason, intelligence and/or volition, that inhabit both objects and living beings and govern their existences. More simply, it is the belief that “everything is conscious” or that “everything has a soul.” The term has been further extended...

African divination the "bone thrower" reading the bones Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org African divination the "bone thrower" reading the bones, South Africa Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

African Divination

African Divination African divination is divination practiced by cultures of Africa. Divination is an attempt to form, and possess, an understanding of reality in the present and additionally, to predict events and reality of a future time. Cultures of Africa to the year circa C.E. 1991 were still performing and using divination, both within the urban...

Stonehenge Monument Prehistoric Salisbury Britain

Paganism

Paganism Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning “a country dweller or rustic”) is a term that has been used from antiquity to derogatorily denote polytheistic faiths. Since the term was typically used as a blanket statement to circumscribe all non-Christian (or, more broadly, non-monotheistic) faiths, it served the same pejorative purpose as the Jewish term gentile, the...

The imposing stupa enshrining the relic of Shakyamuni Buddha's finger bone, at Famen Temple, a Buddhist complex in Baoji, Shaanxi.

Religion In China

Religion In China This article covers religion in China. The government of China officially espouses state atheism, though Chinese civilization has historically long been a cradle and host to a variety of the most enduring religio-philosophical traditions of the world. Confucianism and Taoism (Daoism), later joined by Buddhism, constitute the...

Tengri in Old Turkic script

Tengrism

What Is Tengrism? Tengrism, also known as Tengriism, Tenggerism, or Tengrianism, is a Central Asian religion characterized by shamanism, animism, totemism, polytheism, and monotheism, and ancestor worship. It was the prevailing religion of the Turks, Mongols, Hungarians, Bulgars, Xiongnu, and, possibly, the Huns, and the religion of the several medieval states: Göktürk Khaganate, Western Turkic...

Shamanism Spirituality Shaman Baikal Russia Winter

Shamanism

Shamanism Shamanism is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with what they believe to be a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world. A shaman is someone who is regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world...

Reconstruction of a food offering after a Viking Age blót

Old Norse Religion

Old Norse Religion Old Norse religion is the most common name for a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period, when the North Germanic peoples separated into a distinct branch of the Germanic peoples. It was displaced by Christianity during the Christianization of Scandinavia. Scholars reconstruct aspects...