Seidr as
'Shamanic'
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At 13:22 -0500 14.2.2001, eleiren@aol.com wrote:
>This brings up a question for me. Why does there seem to be a divide
implied between shamanism and seidh? Seidh is a shamanic practice, right? So
why the big rift between the terms? Or am I just implying something into posts
& things I've read that isn't there?
There's about as many answers as there are people on this
list, or people doing seidr... But as the resident anthropologist ;) I'll have
a go at this.
It depends what you mean by 'shamanic'. (You knew I'd say
that, right?) There are several definitions within anthropology and also
within western neo-shamanic groups. Two major definitions used within anthro.
or religious studies are of the 'shaman' as 'master of spirits' (Shirokogorov
1935) or as 'technician of the sacred' engaging in certain things like
ecstatic soul-flight (from Eliade, 1964). However - each of these is based in
the assumption that we can isolate something sufficiently similar across many
cultures to call it 'shamanism', and talk about it in terms of (a) individual
psychology and (b) rather outdated sociology of it fulfilling a 'function'
identifiable as central for a society (or all societies).
I have problems with these, and therefore am
working within a different approach to what is 'shamanic'.
There's a whole history of how the term 'shamanism' came
about. Won't go into that here (1). Anyway, one feature of these definitions
of 'shaman' and 'shamanism' is that each one of them *excludes* some people
who are by other definitions considered to be doing 'shamanic' things. But
'shamanism' is a western concept - it's a word we coined (from the
Tungus-Evenki 'saman') to describe stuff that looked exotic, titillating and
'different' to european explorers and to the audiences intrigued by their
travellers' tales...
Next point - distinction between 'shaman', 'shamanic' and 'shamanistic'.
Conventionally, a shaman does 'shamanic' things, and has a 'role' within their
('shamanic') culture, and things that seem similar to what a shaman does are 'shamanistic'.
Anyway, after this long preamble - I'm attempting to avoid a
definition that's based in what an individual person 'does' and instead look
at shamanisms (note: plural) as involving not only 'trance states' but
mediation between human and spirit communities, by means of direct
communication with both, but _differently_ (specifically) in different
communities - with this mediation/negotiation being socio-politically
supported within the (human and spirit) communities. What this means is that
the idea of (a) spirits who are involved with everyday life, (b) direct
negotiation with them, and (c) the shaman's being able to walk between the
worlds in very literal ways (2) is part of the 'worldview' of shamanic
communities; and there's a strong element of cultural specificity about how
this is done and what kinds of relationships and mediations result.
Unfortunately most ethnographic descriptions only have access to the human
side of the mediation, but this approach is in line with recent ethnographic
work that tries to 'take spirits seriously' (Young and Goulet, 1994).
In the old Norse literature it's clear that there were people
engaging in direct communication with spirit worlds, involving various degrees
of ecstatic 'trance', but it's not clear to what extent this was
socio-politically supported. By and large it seems that Old Norse society of
'Viking times' wasn't 'shamanic' as such, but that it was the inheritor of
various 'shamanic' practices (and was influenced by Sámi shamanism), and that
some communities in Viking times *were* 'shamanic': and the worldview of
landwights and ancestors broadly supported this. So seidr would be shamanic or
shamanistic, depending on where and how and when you looked - and also what
you consider the word to cover. It's entirely possibly that in the past 'seidr'
was one of a number of different, specific ways to relate to the spirit
worlds, and that there were different practitioners who had their own areas of
specialisation. 'Seidr' is a convenient term for us today, but we don't
necessarily use it with the same meaning that our spiritual-ancestors gave it.
Today - well, oracular seidr and other forms of seidr involve
contacting spirits, often negotiating with them, and doing so on behalf of the
community. But we do this within today's rationalistic society. There are some
problems in saying it's 'shamanic' therefore. I've gone into this at some
length elsewhere (3) but basically I see seidr as 'shamanistic practice' which
_where seid-folk are working within a community_ can become/is becoming
shamanic.
To try to recap and summarise some of this: 'shamanism' is a
western word that tries to cover a lot of ground; 'seidr' is specific to
culture, time, and place. Whether seidr is 'shamanic' depends on the
definition you take; but I see it as (in today's world) shamanistic and at
least potentially shamanic. But that (this is for Robin) doesn't relate as
much to explicitly _what_ the seidworker does as to how the communities -
spirit and human - support it. However, the term 'seidr' is used today to
refer, broadly, to shamanistic practice within a Heathen cosmology and
worldview, dealing with the kinds of spirits our spiritual ancestors would
have recognised.
And this being probably much more than you wanted (or not
what you wanted ;), I'll shut up now.
Jenny
ye gods, email with footnotes!
(1) There's a growing literature on this. For an online article see Wallis,
R.J., 1998,article in _The Pomegranate_. Quote "... shamanism is an academic
construct, a word for the West, its meaning inevitably universalised,
repeatedly re-fabricated, its definition contested.
Fascinated by its titillating bizarreness, people romanticised shamanism,
associated themselves with the 'noble savage' and became neoshamans." Article
url is http://www.interchg.ubc.ca/fmuntean/POM6a2.html (Same issue has an
article by me on seidr, but that, alas, isn't online.)
(2) meaning that otherworld 'journeys' or experiences are not straightforward
or safe. You can get hit by a car crossing the road. The equivalent in
otherworlds. (Look at some of the saga accounts.)
(3) see e.g. Blain, 2000, in the online journal _Diskus_. volume 6 (2000),
first article in this volume:
http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus.
(Can supply the other references on request, but don't want to add a
bibliography :)
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