Start Here
How to read this atlas
Traditions
Twelve regional entries
World Map
Locators, not borders
Knowledge Map
Twelve branches
Core editorial principle
Each tradition is presented on its own terms, in its own words, before any comparison is drawn.
Indigenous traditions are not versions of one universal religion. Local names, languages, cosmologies and histories come first here; the comparative frame is applied afterwards and is always labelled as such.
Every claim on this site carries an evidence grade distinguishing:
- Ethnography
- History
- Archaeology
- Comparative category
- Contested claim
- Modern movement
Restricted ceremonial knowledge is withheld. Where a community publishes its own material, that source outranks this one.
Locator map
Traditions appear independently across continents
Hover or focus a marker. Points are approximate regional locators, not territorial claims — and no lines connect them, because no single origin is asserted.
Regional entries
Traditions
North Asia
Siberian Traditions
saman (Evenki)
The Tungusic word šaman entered European languages through 17th-century Russian and Dutch accounts of the Evenki, and later became the umbrella term applied worldwide. The traditions it was drawn from are not one system: dozens of languages, cosmologies and ritual grammars sit under the label.
Inner Asia
Mongolian Traditions
böö (male)
Mongolian ritual practice interweaves sky-veneration, ancestral ongon spirits, ovoo cairn offerings and centuries of exchange with Tibetan Buddhism — a relationship of borrowing, competition and suppression rather than simple layering.
East Asia
Korean Musok
musok
Korean musok is a largely female-led ritual complex of gut ceremonies in which deities and ancestors are hosted, fed, entertained and petitioned. It has an unusually well-documented modern history of stigma, criminalisation, heritage designation and urban revival.
Himalaya
Himalayan Traditions
jhākri
Across Himalayan valleys, oracles, mediums and healing specialists operate alongside Buddhist and Hindu institutions — sometimes in tension, often in a working division of labour over which problems belong to whom.
South America
Amazonian Traditions
vegetalista
Amazonian ritual practice centres on song, plant relationships, dietary restriction and the management of predation between beings. Ayahuasca is one element within some of these traditions — not their definition, and not present everywhere.
South America
Andean Traditions
paqo
Andean ritual specialists work through reciprocity with mountain powers and the earth, using coca divination, offering bundles and a ritual calendar bound to agriculture and herding.
Knowledge map
Concepts, methods and disputes
Before you go further
This is a reference, not a practice manual.
No ritual instruction, no dosing or sourcing information, no practitioner directory, no medical advice. Ritual and psychoactive practice are not appropriate responses to an acute mental health crisis. The ethics page sets out exactly what this atlas will and will not publish, and why.
Read the standards →