Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy is a historical study of the different

Shamanism: Archaic
forms of shamanism around the world written by the Romanian historian of religion
Techniques of Ecstasy
Mircea Eliade. It was first published in France by Librarie Payot under the French
title of Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase in 1951. The book
was subsequently translated into English by Willard R. Trask and published by
Princeton University Pressin 1964.

At the time of the book's writing, Eliade had earned a PhD studying Hinduism in
India before becoming involved with far right politics in his native Romania. After
the rise of the communist government, he fled to Paris, France in 1945, where he
took up an academic position and began studying shamanism, authoring several
academic papers on the subject before publishing his book.

The first half of Shamanism deals with the various different elements of shamanic
practice, such as the nature of initiatory sickness and dreams, the method for
obtaining shamanic powers, the role of shamanic initiation and the symbolism of the
shaman's costume and drum. The book's second half looks at the development of
shamanism in each region of the world where it is found, including Central and
North Asia, the Americas, Southeastern Asia and Oceania and also Tibet, China and
the Far East. Eliade argues that all of these shamanisms must have had a common
source as the original religion of humanity in thePalaeolithic.
The first edition of Eliade's Le
On publication, Eliade's book was recognised as a seminal and authoritative study on Chamanisme et les techniques
the subject of shamanism. In later decades, as anthropological and historical archaïques de l'extase, 1951.
scholarship increased and improved, elements of the book came under increasing
Author Mircea Eliade
scrutiny, as did Eliade's argument that there was a global phenomenon that could be
termed "shamanism" or that all shamanisms had a common source. His book also
Country France, United
proved to be a significant influence over the Neoshamanic movement which
States
developed in the western world in the 1960s and 1970s. Language English
Subject Shamanism
Publisher Librarie Payot
Publication 1951
Contents date
Background Published in 1964
English
Synopsis
Arguments
Media type Print (Hardcover &
Definition of "shamanism" Paperback)
Reception
Academic reviews
Wider influence
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
Background
Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1907. Attending the Spiru Haret National College, he subsequently studied at the
University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters from 1925 through to 1928. Traveling to India to study the country's
religions, in 1933 he received his PhD for a thesis devoted to a discussion of Yoga. Writing for the nationalist newspaper Cuvântul,
he spoke out against antisemitism but became associated with theIron Guard, a Romanian fascist group. Arrested for his involvement
in the far right, following his release in 1940 he gained employment as a cultural attaché to both the United Kingdom and then
Portugal. Following the Second World War, Eliade moved to Paris, France, fearing the rise of a communist government in Romania.
[1]
Here, he married for a second time, to the Romanian exile Christinel Cotescu.

Together with Emil Cioran and other Romanian expatriates, Eliade rallied with the former diplomat Alexandru Busuioceanu, helping
him publicize anti-communist opinion to the Western European public.[2] In 1947, he was facing material constraints, and Ananda
Coomaraswamy found him a job as a French-language teacher in the United States, at a school in Arizona; the arrangement ended
upon Coomaraswamy's death in September.[3] Beginning in 1948, he wrote for the journalCritique, edited by French thinker Georges
Bataille.[4] The following year, he went on a visit to Italy, where he wrote the first 300 pages of his novel Noaptea de Sânziene (he
visited the country a third time in 1952).[4] He collaborated with Carl Jung and the Eranos circle after Henry Corbin recommended
him in 1949,[3] and wrote for the Antaios magazine (edited by Ernst Jünger).[5] In 1950, Eliade began attending Eranos conferences,
meeting Jung, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Gershom Scholem and Paul Radin.[6] He described Eranos as "one of the most creative cultural
experiences of the modern Western world."[7]

Working from France, Eliade had begun to study shamanism from a global perspective, publishing three papers on the subject: "Le
Probléme du chamanisme" in the Revue de l'histoire des religions journal (1946), "Shamanism" in Forgotten Religions, an anthology
edited by Vergilius Ferm (1949), and "Einführende Betrachtungen über den Schamanismus" in the Paideuma journal (1951). He had
also lectured on the subject in March 1950 at both the University of Rome and the Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo
Oriente.[8]

Synopsis
In his foreword, Eliade explains the approach
"To the best of our knowledge the present book is the first to cover the
that he has taken in the book, noting that his
entire phenomenon of shamanism and at the same time to situate it in
intention is to situate world shamanism within the general history of religion. T o say this is to imply its liability to
the larger history of religion. Disputing any imperfection and approximation and the risks that it takes."
claims that shamanism is a result of mental Mircea Eliade, 1951. [9]
illness, he highlights the benefits that further
sociological and ethnographic research could provide before explaining the role of a historian of religions. Describing shamanism as
"precisely one of the archaic techniques of ecstasy", he proclaims that it is "at once mysticism, magic and "religion" in the broadest
sense of the term."[10]

Chapter one, "General Considerations. Recruiting Methods. Shamanism and Mystical Vocation", details Eliade's exploration of the
[11]
etymology and terminological usage of the word "shamanism".

Arguments

Definition of "shamanism"
Within his study of the subject, Eliade proposed several different definitions of the word "shamanism". The first of these was that
[12]
shamanism simply constituted a "technique of ecstasy", and in Eliade's opinion, this was the "least hazardous" definition.

Reception
Academic reviews

Wider influence
Discussing the Norse practice of Seiðr in her book Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (1964), the academic Hilda Ellis Davidson
[13]
described Eliade's French-language book as the "fullest recent study of shamanism".

Further criticism of some of Eliade's positions came from the English historian Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol in his
book, Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination (2001). Hutton took issue with Eliade's claim that divination only
played a minor role in Siberian shamanism, claiming that Eliade had produced no data to substantiate such an assertion, and that the
ethnographic evidence actually indicated that the opposite was true. He saw this as part of a wider problem whereby Eliade had
ignored certain "varieties of native practitioner" from his "chosen image of shaman" and had been "intent on generalizations."[14]
Hutton also argued that Eliade's description of traditional Siberian cosmology oversimplified great diversity among the various
Siberian indigenous groups and that Eliade's claims that Siberian shamanism revolved around a vision of death and rebirth was
similarly erroneous.[15]

For the 2004 English-language re-publication

"Several of [Eliade's] grand cross-cultural themes – the sky god, the
of Shamanism by Princeton University Press, a
quest, the sacred center – as well as the tension between historical
new foreword was commissioned from the specificity and synchronic themes, loom lar ge in Shamanism , which
academic Indologist Wendy Doniger. At the remains one of his most interesting, important, and influential books."
time, Doniger held the position of Mircea Wendy Doniger on Shamanism , 2004. [16]
Eliade Professor of the History of Religions at
the University of Chicago, a post that had been created in Eliade's honour. Having been a personal friend and colleague of his for
many years, Doniger used her foreword to defend him from accusations that he was either a fascist or an anti-semite, and evaluated
his work in Shamanism. Drawing comparisons with anthropologist James Frazer and philologist Max Müller, she accepted that while
he advanced the knowledge of his time "within a body of assumptions that we no longer accept", his work inspired "an entire
[17]
generation" of scholars and amateurs in the study of religion.

References

Footnotes
1. Mihai Sorin Rădulescu,"Cotteştii: familia soţiei lui Mircea Eliade" ("The Cottescus: the Family of Mircea Eliade's
Wife") (http://www.zf.ro/articol_87328/cottestii__familia_sotiei_lui_mircea_eliade.html), in Ziarul Financiar, June 30,
2006; retrieved January 22, 2008(in Romanian)
2. Dan Gulea, "O perspectivă sintetică" ("A Syncretic Perspective")(http://www.observatorcultural.ro/informatiiarticol.ph
tml?xid=12070), in Observator Cultural, Nr. 242, October 2004; retrieved October 4,2007 (in Romanian)
3. McGuire, p.150
4. Biografie, in Handoca
5. Albert Ribas, "Mircea Eliade, historiador de las religiones" ("Mircea Eliade, Historian of Religions"), El
in Ciervo.
Revista de pensamiento y cultura, Año 49, Núm. 588 (Marzo 2000), p.35–38
6. McGuire, p.150–151
7. McGuire, p.151
8. Eliade 2004 [1951]. p. xxvii.
9. Eliade 2004 [1951]. p. xvii.
10. Eliade 2004 [1951]. pp. xvii–xxvii
11. Eliade 2004 [1951]. pp. 3–32.
12. Eliade 2004 [1951]. p. 4.
13. Ellis Davidson 1964. p. 118.
14. Hutton 2001. pp. 54–55, 81.
15. Hutton 2001. pp. 60–61, 74.
16. Doniger 2004. p. xiii.
17. Doniger 2004. pp. xi–xv.

Bibliography

Academic books

Ellis Davidson, H.R. (1964). Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. London: Penguin.
Hutton, Ronald (2001). Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. London and New York:
Hambledon and London.ISBN 978-1-85285-324-2.
Price, Neil (2002). The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala: Department of
Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University. ISBN 91-506-1626-9.

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