Shamans Priests and Witches
Shamans, Priests and Witches presents the findings of a cross-cultural study on types of magico-religious practitioners and shamanistic healers within the context of anthropological and sociological studies. The study provides a general framework for explaining magico-religious and shamanistic phenomena through statistical analysis of data from a formal cross-cultural sample.
This quantitative approach provides an empirical typology of magico-religious practitioners, a derived etic with universal applicability. A principal finding is a cross-cultural shaman fond in foraging societies and the distinguishing features of shaman in comparison to other types of healers.
The analysis reveals biogenetic structures underlying the institutional bases of magico-religious practices–altered states of consciousness (ASC), political control, and social conflict. These are manifested in shamanistic healers, priests and sorcerer/witches, respectively. The correlations of types of magico-religious practitioners with socioeconomic conditions provides the basis for a general theory of evolution of religion, identifying the origins of shamanism and its transformation under socioeconomic change.
These findings are integrated with other studies on magic and religion to provide a general organizational framework for understanding the common origins of diverse magico-religious phenomena and pre-modern healing practices. The biological basis in ASC are shown to provide the origins of shamanism and the therapeutic mechanisms of shamanistic healing.