Does Shamanism Have a History? With Attention to Early Chinese Shamanism

A history of shamanism remains elusive. The article examines four scholarly approaches—prehistoric rock art, cultural myth origins, memory studies, and cultural resistance movements—and finds each inadequate. Focusing on early Chinese shamanism, it critiques these options and then turns to the frameworks of Mircea Eliade and Roberte Hamayon as two alternative pathways. The author proposes a third way between them, aiming to construct a viable history of shamanism without relying on the rejected approaches.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract The article examines various options that scholars have explored in their efforts to construct a history of shamanism. Recognizing Eliade’s promise that such a history lies in the near future, the article then explores the important ways in which this has been undertaken. It specifies four such ways: with prehistoric rock art, the origins of cultural myths, memory studies, and movements of cultural resistance. Ultimately resisting each of these four options while paying particular attention to the case of early Chinese shamanism, its concluding sections recognize the work of Mircea Eliade and Roberte Hamayon as providing two alternative pathways that might lead into possible constructions of this history, and it then attempts to locate a third way between them.