MAnveer Singh is not your typical academic anthropologist. He writes regularly New Yorker in subjects starting with fictitious languages Dune The diet story goes into why he wears a turban (to celebrate his Sikh heritage). He seems to enjoy being knocked down, got wisdom.
Singh cut his ethnographic teeth while doing fieldwork on a remote island in Indonesia, living in Mentawai villages and meeting local shamans known as success. He watched these traditional healers transform into themselves, painting their faces and covering their bodies with all sorts of decorations, and then singing and dancing as they entered a trance-like state.

Singh says what we believe in shamanism is mistaken – as a romantic notion of what he calls “primitive wisdom” and a cynical perspective of “superstitious savagery.” His book Shamanism: the eternal religiondraws on his own fieldwork and cross-cultural research on shamanism. He argues that shamanism in one form or another was the original human religion.
Was Jesus a shaman?
Jesus clearly exhibits the characteristics of a shaman. He interacts with invisible agents, casts out demons and calls upon the power of the Holy Spirit. He also heals. Very often he hurts, he prophesies. So the question is, does Jesus enter altered states? This is what theologians argue. In the New Testament, Mark describes the scene in which Jesus is healed. And people flock to him to be healed. Depending on the translation, he is described as being out of his mind or surprised. People even say that he is possessed by demons. Stevan Davis, a theologian, argued that this plausibly describes an altered, possessed state.
As long as we had a recognizable religion, we probably had shamanism.
In general, we know that the eastern Mediterranean was very shamanic at this time. We know that the Jewish tradition was shamanic. And the Greeks were shamanic. The Neo-Assyrians had shamanic practices. So here we have a person who heals, hurts and communicates with other beings. And then it was followed by the early Christian church, which is very excited. The Day of Pentecost is people speaking in tongues. Paul the Apostle talks about the gifts of speaking in tongues and healing. It's very ecstatic, a context that feels very shamanic. I think we should easily entertain the hypothesis that Jesus was a shaman. We also know that after this ecstatic period, as the Christian church became centralized, there was a great turn against ecstatic behavior. Thus, in the early Gospels there may have been a desire to increase such behavior.
Would you call shamanism the first religion?
I think that shamanism probably characterized Earliest religious practices behavioral or cognitive modern people. As long as we had a recognizable religion, we probably shamanismField I am an anthropologist, but also someone who thinks a lot about psychology. The approach I've taken is that religion and shamanism are incredibly psychologically compelling, that we live in an uncertain world. And we converge on ways to explain it and intervene in it to manage this uncertainty. Our explanations and understanding of uncertainty manifest as religious faith. Then the ways in which we try to manage uncertainty, control uncertainty, manual uncertainty is Religious ritualwith shamanism, is a convincing version of this.
Imagine we are in an environment where people are sick. People die randomly, rain is hard to predict. We know that very reliably, across cultures, in order to understand these uncertain events, people agree on explanations that are caused by invisible agents, gods, spirits, ghosts. The question then becomes, how can you interact with these invisible agents who are believed to be observing uncertainty? If I come to you and say, “Hey Steve, I know your family member is sick. I can talk to the Rain Goddess, or I can talk to the Demon of Disease. I can fight them off.” This may not be convincing to you. But if I appear to be a fundamentally different person to you, if I have lost my skeleton and have crystals in my body, and engage in some kind of practice that makes me feel like I am fundamentally transforming another being in your eyes, then I think that makes me much more convincing to you. I interact with these agents who observe uncertainty. I think this is very central to what happens with shamanism: altered states and fundamental transformation make compelling cases for everyone involved. You are fighting forces believed to be in control of the uncontrollable.
I think we should easily entertain the hypothesis that Jesus was a shaman.
Is religion fundamentally about experience or belief?
It's a fascinating question because sometimes among cognitive anthropologists there's this approach of thinking, “Oh, the mind creates religious beliefs.” Something that – asked LuhrmannResearch really reinforces to me that the mind, through experience, creates belief – that if I'm just sitting here in my room, am I going to start believing in invisible spirits, or is it actually the experience of spirits? This will fuel the conviction. Religious experience or faith? Instead, I would answer that I think experience is increasingly valued as a very powerful engine of faith.
My first summer in Mentawai in Indonesia, watching a shaman's healing ceremony, there was a child who woke up paralyzed, and there was a ceremony and he walked away, not paralyzed. I was very amazed by this. There are different explanatory frameworks you can have for this. Maybe it was an appeal, maybe he indirectly fulfills the disease. But after that I was very amazed and talked to friends about what it could be. A placebo could potentially be a mechanism to make them feel better.
But what I found so amazing about these healing ceremonies is how festive and celebratory they feel. I was an administrator at a high school in a hospital and my great uncle contracted cancer and died. Everything around it was so dark. But then I go to Mentawai, and someone's foot looks like it's going to fall, and everyone dances, and they feast, and you stay up all night, and after the shaman's dance, other people dance. Social affirmation is a source of healing.
More from Nautilus about shamans, religion and rituals:
“Ancient rituals that gave birth to religionSacred beliefs likely arose from prehistoric communication and rituals
“Management“The plants are talking to this ecologist. They tell her how to make better science.
“The real magic of rituals“We might call them superstitions or spells, but they are sincerely the alarm of the drum.
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Lead image: Shutterstock / Ruskackesser