Traditions

saman (Evenki) · böö (Buryat) · oyuun (Sakha) · kam (Turkic)

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.

böö (male) · udgan (female) · tenger · ongon

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.

musok · mudang · gut · kangsinmu · sesŭmmu

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.

jhākri · dhāmi · bombo · pau · lhapa

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.

vegetalista · curandero · onanya (Shipibo) · payé

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.

paqo · altomisayoq · yatiri · apu · pachamama

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.

specific nation-language terms; 'shaman' is largely an outside word

The single most important editorial point on this continent: these are hundreds of sovereign nations with distinct languages, ceremonies and protocols. Many communities explicitly reject the word 'shaman' and object to outsiders publishing ceremonial detail.

angakkuq (Inuit) · noaidi (Sámi)

Circumpolar traditions describe specialists travelling to sea and sky powers to restore relations broken by rule violation, in ecologies where hunting success and social order are inseparable.

curandero · nahual · sabia/sabio · chjota chjine (Mazatec)

Mesoamerican healing traditions combine Catholic and pre-Columbian elements, calendar knowledge, cleansing rites, and in some communities the ritual use of specific plants and mushrooms under strict conditions.

sangoma / isangoma · n/om-kxaosi (Ju/'hoansi) · babalawo · bokono

African traditions are frequently mislabelled as shamanism. Divination systems, ancestral mediumship, herbal medicine and healing-dance traditions each have their own structure, training and vocabulary.

community-specific terms; 'clever man' is a contact-era English gloss

Aboriginal traditions are governed by law, country and restricted knowledge. Much of what colonial writers published should not have been published. This atlas presents context, history and rights rather than ceremonial content.

taula (Fiji) · kahuna (Hawai'i) · tohunga (Aotearoa)

Pacific ritual specialists — mediums, navigators, healers and priestly experts — often sit closer to institutional priesthood or specialist craft than to the ecstatic model implied by 'shamanism'.