The word "shaman" (Tungus: šamán) comes from Siberia & "in the strict sense is pre-eminently a religious phenomenon of Siberia & Central Asia" (Eliade). But the parallels elsewhere (North America, Indonesia, Oceania, China, etc.) are remarkable & lead also to a consideration of coincidences between "primitive-archaic" & modern thought. Eliade treats shamanism in-the-broader-sense as a specialized technique & ecstasy & the shaman as "technician-of-the-sacred." In this sense, too, the shaman can be seen as a proto-poet, for almost always his technique hinges on the creation of special linguistic circumstances, i.e., of song and invocation.
In 1870 Rimbaud first used the term voyant (seer) to identify the new breed of poet who was to be "absolutely modern," etc:
one must, I say, become a seer,
make oneself into a seer
or as Rasmussen writes of Iglulik Eskimos:
the young aspirant, when applying to a shaman, should
always use the following formula
takujumaqama: I come to you
because I desire to see
& the Copper Eskimos called the shaman-songman "elik, i.e., one who has eyes."
In a typical (self-)-initiation into shamanism, the new shaman experiences the breakdown of his familiar consciousness or world-view, and is led into a dream or vision at the center of which there is a often a song or a series of songs "that force themselves out without any effort to compose them." [Thus: Isaac Tens, a Gitsan Indian practitioner cited in the accompanying text in Technicians.] The dream & vision aspect, in fact, goes way past any limits, however loosely drawn, of shamanism, into areas where a priesthood (as developer & transmitter of a fixed system) predominates, &, on the other hand, into areas where "all men" are "shamans," i.e. are "open" to the "gift" of vision & song.
The Poetics of Shamanism (1968)
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