Spirits
Spirits – A term that commonly appears in ethnographic and religious discourse but remains of uncertain and/or misleading reference. Not only does it translate a wide range of terms for entirely different and distinct types of other-than-human persons, but it also clearly privileges the metaphysical, nonempirical, or âspiritualâ nature of significant beings. While particular shamans may refer to invisible, nonphysical, otherworld beings in ways that encourage translators to use words like âspiritâ or âsoul,â in many cases this is not their intention. More often, words rendered as âbear spiritâ or âtree spiritâ might be better expressed simply as âbearâ or âtreeâ or by collocations such as âbear personâ or âtree person.â In either case, the point is that it is the particular, physical bear or tree who is addressed, asked for help, or offered a gift. Just as it is not usual to speak in similar circumstances of âhuman spirits,â it is often unhelpful to mask the personhood of a being by imputing the existence of spirits where the concept is unwarranted. When shamans do speak of beings that are invisible under normal circumstances, they usually claim the ability to see them. NapolĂ©on Chagnon, for instance, writes in considerable detail of the size, beauty, preferences, habits, characters, hungers, and other far-from-nonempirical traits of the hekura invited to dwell within Yanomamo shamans.
An understanding of the animism of shamanic cultures and practitioners along the lines proposed by Irving Hallowell, Nurit BirdDavid, and David Abram promises to enrich the understanding of shamanism by making terms like spirit redundant in many contexts. Conversely, neurophysiology, psychobiology, and other forms of psychology may ask interesting questions about brain states, chemistries, capabilities, and behaviors, but they focus attention on one aspect of shamanic performance and knowledge.
SOURCE:
Historical Dictionary of Shamanism by Graham Harvey and Robert J. Wallis 2007