Month: March 2022

Erdoes, Richard – American coauthor of a number of biographies (or partial autobiographies) of significant Native Americans, including John Lame Deer and Leonard Crow Dog,…

Environmentalism – Shamans cannot strictly be identified as environmentalists because, as animists, they are members of a large community of life rather than being surrounded…

Entoptic phenomena – Entoptics (from the Greek, meaning “within vision”), also known as phosphenes, are complex and diverse luminous geometric images derived from the human…

Entheogens – Etymologically, entheogen derives from Greek entheos, “possessed by a god” (which is related to the modern English giddy and Old English gidig, “possessed…

Elkin, Adolphus P. – Australian anthropologist at Sydney University and author of Aboriginal Men of High Degree (1945). In contrast with pervasive denigrations of Aboriginal…

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) – Historian of religions and fiction writer who was born in Romania but lived most of his life as an exile in…

Election – From the perspective of other-than-human persons, or spirits, who initiate or work with shamans and/or cause illness, phenomena commonly interpreted as possession or…

Elders – Shamans are rarely the only social and ritual leaders in their communities. Caroline Humphrey, Urgunge Onon, and Marjorie Balzer clarify the role of…

Ecstasy – Shamans are sometimes distinguished from other religious or cultural leaders by the ability to achieve an altered state of consciousness which Mircea Eliade…

Ebene – A snuff prepared from the beans of an Amazonian tree of the nutmeg family (genus Virola), which is either snorted through tubes (sometimes…