Indigenous and shamanic magic and ritual

Indigenous and shamanic traditions are the ceremony, healing and spirit knowledge of peoples from the Arctic to the Amazon, Australia, the Pacific and Africa. They are not one religion, and each community has its own names, laws and stories. Some knowledge is closed to outsiders by the community's own rule, and this guide describes it only as far as the people concerned share it. Terms such as Indigenous and shamanic can hide great variety, so the guide gives each people its own entry wherever it can.

Many peoples, many practices

Examples include the Sami noaidi, Mongolian and Siberian shamans, the Navajo and Lakota ceremonial systems, Amazonian plant healers, Andean offerings to Pachamama, Maori tohunga, Hawaiian kahuna and Aboriginal Dreaming law. Each is rooted in land, kinship and responsibility. Many peoples hold that knowledge belongs to the people and place it came from, and cannot be taken or sold. Elders say that these practices were given to a community and cannot be separated from its language, land and obligations, so that they function differently in the hands of outsiders.

Closed and open knowledge

A great deal is restricted by gender, age, initiation or clan. Some Aboriginal ceremonies, parts of Pueblo and Hopi religion, and many African initiation societies are not for outsiders, and describing them in detail would break the community's law. Visitors should ask before attending, photographing or recording, and accept a refusal. Where this guide is silent on a detail, that is deliberate. In many communities, healers and ceremonial leaders are chosen by calling, family and long training, and they do not advertise.

Suppression and recovery

Colonisers banned ceremonies, as in the United States, where the Plains Sun Dance and the Pacific Northwest potlatch were outlawed. Canada banned the potlatch from 1885 to 1951. Missionaries called practice devil worship and removed children to boarding schools. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 recognised rights in US law, and revival and language movements continue. Colonial law in Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil and elsewhere sought to end such practice, and some communities lost part of their ceremonial knowledge as a result.

Appropriation and respect

Sweat lodges run by outsiders have caused deaths, notably in Arizona in 2009. Sacred plants are sold as products, and costume and names are taken for branding. Indigenous leaders ask for consent, credit and benefit-sharing. Some Indigenous writers prefer to speak of religion, law or medicine, not magic, and this guide follows their lead where it can. Ask first and give back: those are the rules most communities state, and the guide asks readers to follow them.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Eglė the Queen of Serpents: Huw, CC BY 2.0, source

La Llorona: Melvin Callejas, Public domain, source

Jiang Ziya: Wang Qi, Public domain, source

Imhotep: Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 fr, source

Khaemweset: No machine-readable author provided. Neithsabes assumed (based on copy, Public domain, source

En no Gyōja: Wmpearl, CC0, source

Machi: Unknown author, Public domain, source

John Frum: Tim Ross, CC BY 3.0, source

Nagual: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Personifications of death: No machine-readable author provided. Kirtap assumed (based on copyrigh, CC BY 2.5, source

Wolves in folklore, religion and mythology: Unknown author, CC0, source

Sorginak: Errazking, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Legend of the White Snake: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Epic cycles of incarnations in Moirang: Bhudro Singh (AKA. Ningthoujam Bhadra), Public domain, source

Indigenous and shamanic: magic in this belief world