Version 1.0 · For trained practitioners. Not a self-help resource.
© 2026 Widdows Consulting Ltd
Siberian and Central Asian Shamanism
The traditions of the Tungusic, Turkic and Mongolic peoples from which the word "shaman" (Evenki šamān) derives. The shaman is called, often through illness, to mediate between the community and spirits through trance and soul journey. Suppressed under Soviet rule, these traditions have revived since 1990. The wider use of "shamanism" as a universal category dates from Eliade (1951) and is contested.
Siberia & Central Asia · Status: Living
Draft — pending editor review · added beyond the first .pdf edition; recognise-and-refer page. Correspondences are exploratory, not validated.
I · Overview & core concepts
“Shaman” entered European languages from Evenki šamān, via Russian; behind the loanword lies a vast family of living traditions — Evenki, Sakha, Buryat, Tuvan, Mongolian and more — better described in the plural (Vitebsky, 1995). Across the Turkic and Mongolic worlds, Tengrism names reverence for Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky, together with earth and ancestral powers. The shaman’s calling typically arrives through a crisis: an initiatory illness, often with a dismemberment vision in which the future shaman is taken apart and remade. Soul flight — the journey to other worlds on behalf of the community, to upper, middle and lower worlds — is the shaman’s work, and the drum is its vehicle. Relationships with ancestor and land spirits are reciprocal and demanding. Post-Soviet revival, notably in Mongolia, has made shamanic practice again a vehicle of memory and identity (Humphrey & Onon, 1996; Buyandelger, 2013). Eliade (1964) remains foundational but is dated and universalising — a single “ecstasy” thesis stretched over many distinct traditions.
II · Transpersonal Diagnostics mapping
| Territory | Exploratory source correspondence |
|---|---|
| 1 · Consensus Reality | Ordinary clan life, held in shared custom and kinship obligation. |
| 2 · Personal Narrative | Signs, dreams and animal encounters marking a person out as chosen. |
| 3 · Adjusted Cognition | The initiatory sickness and the refusal of the call — suffering understood as the spirits’ demand. |
| 4 · Imaginal / Transcendent Visualisation | Spirit flight to the three worlds; the drum as vehicle. |
| 5 · Oneness / Union with Source | Does not map cleanly: union is not the aim here — relationship is. |
| 6 · Ego Death / Dissolution | Dismemberment and reassembly: the old self taken apart and remade for the work. |
| 7 · Integration / Return | The shaman as healer and mediator for the community — obligation rather than attainment. |
III · Practitioner notes
Recognise. Initiatory-illness accounts are the historical reference case for what the transpersonal literature calls spiritual emergency; a crisis understood as a calling is not, on its face, pathology.
Caution. Clients using “shamanic” language rarely mean this tradition — they usually mean core shamanism workshops, neo-shamanic courses or plant-medicine circles. Ask which, before mapping anything.
Refer. Do not facilitate journeywork framed as this tradition. Refer crisis presentations under the referral guidance; refer clients seeking the tradition itself to their own community’s practitioners.
IV · Further reading
Vitebsky, P. (1995). The shaman. Little, Brown.
Eliade, M. (1964). Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. Princeton University Press [foundational but dated and universalising].
Humphrey, C., & Onon, U. (1996). Shamans and elders. Oxford University Press.
Buyandelger, M. (2013). Tragic spirits. University of Chicago Press.