Religious specialists
Types of specialists
Across the societies
•
•
•
•
•
•
Prophet
Priest
Shaman
Medicine Men and women
Gurus ( God men and women)
Saints (other worldly)
Max Weber’s Ideal Types of
Authority based on legitimacy
• Rational – legal ( is based on written rules or
laws and is linked to explicit forms of
justification like in govt, judiciary, private
corporations and
• Traditional based on passage of time as
tradition, heritage
• Charismatic authority, a divine gift leads to a
change, movement or revolution in the field
Saints : charismatic authority
• Sorcerers, messiahs, Healers, Diviners,
Shamans etc (examples)
• Practical help and moral examples to the
community
• Saints as ascetic and “renouncers” can cause
tension.
• As exemplars and helpers
• Example: Satya Sai Baba,His Holiness Dalai
Lama among others
Prophet
Prophet- receiver of “a persona call” revelation & a
divine gift
• Achieve ecstatic state, healing, divination &
telepathy.
Max Weber (1978): exemplary and ethical
prophet
The problem of the prophet’s continuity with
routinization of the movement
“Routinize” authority with firm rules to preserve
the change
Examples: Buddha, Gandhi, Prophet in Sudan,
Mormons
Priests
“..functioning of a regularly organized & permanent
enterprise concerned with influencing the gods.”
• Specialized training
• Permanently associated with norm, places, &
time
Shaman and Priest
• Shaman
– Personal communication with supernatural being
– Get powers by “divine stroke”
• Present in many foraging, pastoral as well as in
agricultural cultures
• Priests
– Trained specialist
– Power from codified rituals
– Agricultural/industrial societies
Anthropological understanding of
Shaman
Present across cultures as a form of spiritual
practice
Shaman & Medium
– Shaman as a medium between the spirits who
CONTROLS the spirits.
• saman – an Evenk (Tungus) word meaning one
who is excited, moved, raised”
• a Siberian or Mongolian spiritual practitioner
The Shaman: a Siberian Spiritualist
•
•
•
•
Psychological benefits
Publicly recognized men and women
Duties
Most important person of the community, center of
religion
• 3 realms of nature ( underground and the world
beyond)
• Hmong Shamans
• Shamans as medicine men, healer, diviner, elder
Shamanism: universal science
• What are the core functions of a shaman?
• What are they trying to control and why?
• What are the human needs they are
addressing?
• How are they healing disease? What
mediums?
• Why it is called a science?