Category: Shamanism

European Paleolithic – The Old Stone Age, a chronological period extending from around two million years ago to around ten thousand years ago, depending on…

Ethnomusicology – Music, rhythm, chant, song, drumming, and other instrumental performances are significant aspects of much shamanic work and have been studied by this branch…

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…