Archaic Spirituality in Systematized Religions

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Archaic spirituality in systematized religions describes the hypothetical transition phenomena and syncretisms that postulated religious-spiritual ideas of prehistoric man could have left behind in later, especially in systematized religions . The processes of adaptation to the new economic forms in the course of the Neolithic Revolution continued in the later emerging states with their religions, which were increasingly used as instruments of rule. The Romanian religious scholar Mircea Eliade in particular has carried out extensive investigations and conclusions in this regard, which, however, are now regarded as very speculative and romanticizing. Julien Ries has summarized the possible development in a model.

The development of religious consciousness

The Belgian religious anthropologist Julien Ries designed a six-stage model of religious development against the background of the (today largely rejected) shamanism theory Eliades and other concepts. It offers an attempt to explain why archaic world views could continue to have an impact on our time:

  • The first stage in early man is based on the fundamental questions that man began to ask about himself and his environment. It draws its answers and mechanisms from five basic symbols: sun, moon, stars, earth and fertility as well as from environmental symbols such as water, mountains, plants and animals. This first experience of the sacred, the hierophany , shapes this stage associated with the discovery of transcendence .
  • The second stage is closely related to the first and probably at about the same time. It is determined by thinking about death. The burials of Homo erectus and Neanderthals already point in this direction. This also re-shapes the understanding of life, because now the belief in immortality is developing, i.e. in the soul and in a world beyond, in which it resides and, accordingly, in interactions between these worlds.
  • The third level of religious awareness is characterized by the emergence of complex mythograms , which symbolize these interactions and thus make them optically tangible. The Franco-Cantabrian art finds its expression here, regardless of its respective interpretation. The religious consciousness now begins to shape the community, and a kind of sacred story develops, which is passed on from generation to generation within the clan with the help of mythograms.
  • The fourth stage begins in the Middle East with the culture of Natoufien on the threshold of the Neolithic. Here you can find the first representations of deities, mostly with animal and vegetable attributes, or transcendent beings such as the goat demon. There are already female forms of fertility and mother cults, while the bull appears as a male symbol ( Göbekli Tepe , Çatalhöyük , etc.). Instead of the simple perception of transcendence and the divine, there is now its symbolic implementation and representation. For the first time, humans perceive themselves in their relationship to the divine, especially as an adorant , an absolute innovation.
  • The fifth stage is expressed after the final personification of the divine and its symbolic representation through statues in the construction of temples and other shrines. It is the period of the early high polytheistic religions in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The gods are now hidden in these sanctuaries, cults and priestly hierarchies arise . Prayer texts have been handed down, oracles are common.
  • The sixth level of religious consciousness is represented by the great monotheistic religions, in which a single, omnipotent, revealing, submission-demanding God is at the center. The hierophany finally gives way to theophany . Oracles are no longer in use; prophets and religious founders take their place .

From the fourth level onwards, the animistic ideas and practices of the former hunters and gatherers apparently begin to wane, and their spiritual foundations and mechanisms are integrated into the newly emerging systematized religions or even abandoned entirely; but residuals remain, which are now filled with new meanings.

Religions in ancient cultures

The listing and presentation is based on cultures , ethnicities or social groups that want to be clearly differentiated from one another in their temporal classification , i.e. in the particular epochs of human history .

Shamanism

In particular, since Eliade's large-scale work Shamanism and Archaic Ecstasy Technique (first edition in French 1957), various shamanism concepts have emerged that, depending on the author, have very different perspectives, geographical allocations and focuses. In any case, it is not a kind of universal archaic religion as the final syllable -ism might suggest , but a multitude of inconsistent, Eurocentric-scientific theses that attempt to reduce the phenomena surrounding the necromancers of the various ethnic groups into a uniform, abstract one Reduce concept. In this respect, most of the universal concepts (including spiritual and prehistoric concepts ) are no longer valid in ethnology or are heavily criticized. In other sciences, sometimes and in principle in unscientific neo-shamanism , such theses are still built upon.

Numerous remains of archaic spirituality can be found particularly in the religions of early high cultures . Many of the religious phenomena listed above for the Paleolithic and Neolithic were still alive in them - albeit to different extents and with different emphases - and “reveal a cultural tradition from the past” (Müller-Karpe). In addition, there are innovations in the history of religion in Egypt and Mesopotamia, which are fundamentally typical of an early high-cultural situation: mythology, sacred royalty, explicit ideas of the afterlife and theology.

The ethnologist Klaus E. Müller states that a shamanism (according to his thesis, a "science of magical-mythical thinking with appointed, socially responsible experts") could have originally existed in the adjacent ancient world areas of origin of the archaic advanced cultures however, as in the Mesoamerican and Andean high cultures, it is likely to have been suppressed or wiped out. The same applies to other ancient religions of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East (Asia Minor, Palestine, Iran, Altarabia), if there is any reliable information about them, as well as to most of the Neolithic pre-Indo-European cultures in Europe , i.e. all before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans with the exception of those who later developed a high culture, such as the Etruscans , and later for the Indo-European peoples themselves, such as Greeks, Romans, Celts , Germanic peoples and Slavs . However, there is hardly any reliable evidence for this, especially among peoples with no or as yet undeciphered scripts, whose traditions were later reshaped into Greek, Roman, Christian or Islamic. Often, archaic basic forms - called shamanistic by some authors - were gradually and completely transformed, such as today's Halloween customs, which are related to the Celtic festival of Samhain and which appear today in the Christian garb of All Saints' Day . The Japanese state shinto is also rooted directly and ritually quite clearly in Siberian shamanism . His concepts have little in common with the latter, just as little as Hinduism, Buddhism ( Lamaism , Tantrism , Yoga ) or Daoism have comparable roots, but developed completely different spiritual worlds. The question of these origins remains of theoretical and religious interest.

Ancient oriental religions

Map of the Ancient Orient (core / peripheral areas contrasted in color)

Geographically, this is the zone colored green in the adjacent figure.
SA Tokarew found that the ancient oriental societies, especially in Egypt and Mesopotamia, whose beginnings go back to the 4th millennium BC, have proven to be very stable and not very flexible within the framework of the local socio-economic order with undeveloped slavery and stable village communities , with one to Perseverance reaching the limits of immutability. All of this had an impact on the religions there: "In these religions, archaic features were retained for a very long time, but in connection with complicated forms as they resulted from the social and political living conditions".

The first advanced oriental cultures: Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia

  • The ancient Egyptian religion, in which, according to SA Tokarev, the interweaving of primitive and complex forms is particularly noticeable, may appear “as the legacy of the time of an all-soul animism”. Due to its great age and its proximity to the Neolithic (the pre-dynastic period and the Old Empire still largely belonged to this cultural epoch) , it could even be part of the ideas of the historical cattle nomads of the Sahara, as shown in the rock art there have contained archaic-spiritual ideas. The myth was still very much alive, even malleable. Certain concepts such as the journey to the hereafter with the judgment of the dead , the cult of the dead, ideas of the soul, the harmonious Ma'at principle , soul birds, healing magic of the priests, black magic, relics of an ancient clan totemism (as it is everywhere in Africa to this day), the excessive Belief in spirits, ideas of the underworld (without actual ancestor worship), anthropozoomorphic deities or gods with animal attributes (one counted 753 deities) and so on. All these religious factors had long since assumed their own value within the framework of the ancient Egyptian religion or, like Ma'at, were only introduced later from other cultures (see below) . Magic practices were widespread and ranged from healing magic to hunting magic. The Uschebti servant figures referred to in the tombs of the wealthy and the rulers are by some authors as the remains of old helping spirits ideas count. In the papyri, especially in the Egyptian Book of the Dead , in the coffin texts and pyramid texts , numerous spells have come down to us, also for the Pharaoh's judgment of the dead, during which he encounters numerous spirits in the Hall of Complete Truth and has to face dangers.
    Above all, the gods were original gods of nature, but had long since gone through transformations and ended up as what Helck / Otto describe as a line of development: “As a legacy of prehistoric times, the veneration of infinitely powerful powers remained in the life of the individual, the state and the Cosmos worked. Things of every form, cosmic powers, animals, plants, stones, Nile, ocean, concepts (magic, food) could be God. In the Thinitenzeit the decisive step towards the humanization of shape took place, which, however, was not realized in the sense that now appear all the deities in human form. Rather, there was only one possibility that was used on a case-by-case basis: the gods could appear as humans, but retained their animal, vegetable, etc. appearance. The mixed figures (human body and animal head) represented a transitional form, so to speak. The characteristic is that generally no god was tied to a certain figure; many could appear both as animals, as humans, as well as in mixed form ”. However, the belief that deities were present in living animals was not original and only began in the course of high cultural development. In addition to these local gods, characterized by fetishism and totemism and closest to human life, there were possibly later introduced cosmic deities. In contrast to the former, they had no animal attributes and were rather remote from people's daily life. This is particularly noticeable in the case of the Ma'at principle of justice, which only gained importance with the unification of Egypt and the associated decline of the clan structure in the unifying figure of the pharaoh and took a central position in the subsequent conception of the judgment of the dead. This indicates the distance to archaic-spiritual ideas under the new socio-economic and religious-political conditions of ancient Egypt.
  • Mesopotamia: If the potential remnants of prehistoric spirituality in Egypt are already marked with a big question mark, this is even more true for Mesopotamia, which, like Egypt, emerged as a river culture (although the role that the Sumerians played in it is still unclear today) . However, individual urban centers and their respective local urban gods played a much more important role here. With very few exceptions, the animal gods were completely absent here (the idea seems to have faded in the 4th millennium BC.) Wherever they existed, the body was animal and the head human and represented the ruling power (e.g. with the sphinx ). There was no animal cult and hardly any traces of totemism. The cosmological ideas entwined around a world mountain surrounded by the sea ( ziggurats like the Tower of Babel symbolize it). The underworld was evidently a completely joyless place with a judgment of the dead from which the dead seek to flee. Priest oracles, especially the liver inspection , were common and may have spread via the Hittites and Phoenicians to the Etruscans (see Etruscan religion ). Belief in spirits and demons was widespread. This was not a shamanic specific, as was necromancy, divination, or magical rituals practiced by priests, as were integral to all ancient religions (and still are in some modern ones). Nothing is known of ecstatic rituals. However, were fertility concepts like the myth of Dumuzi , the dying god, or Inanna and its underworld journey to death goddess Ereshkigal , relatively common, its another aspect, But also reported Epic of Gilgamesh with Utnapishtim , who as a hero of the flood -narrative with Noah to compare is. In both countries the priests were also a powerful part of the state, and there was a divine kingdom in both states .

The Near East and Asia Minor as well as Old Arabic religions

Swell:

  • Asia Minor and Hittites : Like the other Near Eastern religions, that of the Hittites was largely shaped by fertility cults, later, after the tribal and village communities had merged, by city and state gods. The most original forms of cult of the pre-Hittite period, in which Semitic and Indo-European populations mixed, were found in Göbekli Tepe in southern Anatolia and in Çatalhöyük . Above all in the former there are still clear archaic echoes (see above for details) , which have obviously not held after the rural economy with its fertility cult, possibly with the cult of the Magna Mater, as evidently in large parts of the Mediterranean Time had finally prevailed. Evidence for the existence of such potentially archaic ideas can be found in the rock carvings of the Latmos Mountains with the so-called horn gods, who are mistaken for magicians or shamans. There are also handprints. These rock carvings can be clearly dated between the Epipalaeolithic and the Chalcolithic (10th – 5th millennium BC) and the depictions of women show the typical steatopyge appearance of that period, which was primarily determined by fertility. A remnant may also be the actually pan-European bull cult or the old goat demon , which occurs in different forms in different Mediterranean religions (e.g. as Pan ). Oracles were common, interestingly like later the Etruscans the liver inspection . Male and female magical priests practiced magical rituals, and black and white magic were distinguished. It was believed of the dead that they finally went to the world beyond and assumed a status there similar to that in this world; but unlike Mesopotamia, it was not believed that they were known as ghosts. There was a sacrificial cult for the ancestors, but especially for the deified rulers. Overall, the very extensive (“people of a thousand gods”) Hittite pantheon includes gods of Sumerian-Akkadian origin alongside Anatolian and Hurrian gods.
  • Palestine and Syro-Canaanite religion: The situation was similar to that of the Hittites, but especially with the Mesopotamians, who were much closer to them, in the transition zone of Palestine, where several cultures overlap or meet. Occasionally there are archaic fragments such as the depiction of the mistress of animals from the 14th century BC. Originally, the dead were honored with sacrifices; it was believed in spirits of the dead. At times there was a megalithic culture of unclear allocation. The view of the world was also similar to that of Mesopotamia: a cosmic space around which the underworld and heavenly currents flow. There was a belief in demons and black magic, priestly oracles, a serpent-conjuring cult (Eve was a serpent in the original sources) etc. Many of these elements are also found in the Hebrew Bible, and the worship of the goddess Ashera , wife of Jehovah, had to be in the kingdom of Judea are expressly prohibited.
  • Phoenicians : The religion of the Phoenicians, and thus Carthage as well, was basically Syrian-Canaanite, since the Phoenicians, who never formed a territorial state, usually adapted the religions of the regions surrounding their port cities. Although they were a seafaring people, they practically knew no trade, seafaring or sea gods, but mainly gods who had something to do with agriculture and, above all, a bull cult.

All of these Near Eastern religions therefore do not contain any functionally archaic element, even when viewed generously. Rather, the concept of annual growth and decay that can be found in rural cultures around the world became central. There was no longer any place for wild-jacking ideas here, and their remnants within the new worldview were transformed. Hunting myths have turned into agricultural myths in which the polarity between man and woman becomes the central element of the fertility magic and death and the subterranean world become part of this cycle. The ideas of life after death changed, became more concrete and material; they expressed themselves above all in the funeral rites, particularly noticeable in Natoufia in Palestine. One believed in a life after death, for which the dead were well equipped, but no longer believed in an important role for the ancestors in this world. In their place came more and more priestly cultic forms.

  • The Old Arabic Religion and Islam:

The old religions of the Arabian Peninsula in the transition zone between Egypt, Mesopotamia and Palestine, the break-up of which was partly responsible for the success of Islam, are characterized by the desert character, the resulting isolation of the population and their ancient clan structures and were able to preserve archaic religious elements for a long time . However, in their area already in the 1st millennium BC BC States like Yemen were formed with a distinctive organization, as reported in the biblical legend of the Queen of Sheba . With the domestication of the camel towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the range of action of the nomads there expanded enormously, and a network of caravan routes was created, which facilitated cultural exchange.
However, these mostly local religions consistently contained elements that had long been abandoned or modified in the areas of the high religions. All that is known about it is what the Koran and the traditions ( Hadith and Sunna ) pass on about it, which have incorporated many of these ideas (e.g. spirits, jinn, Ka'aba, Huri etc.). The society was structured tribalistically with local, clearly animistically influenced deities who were personified in stones or trees. As in the other Near Eastern religions, only weak and indirect references to archaic religions can be identified. Islam not only in Africa still contains traces of these ideas, for example a stone cult (e.g. the Kaaba in Mecca) and ghost ideas such as the jinn . Oracles were common and were interpreted, among other things, from the rustling of trees or the throwing of arrows.

Old and Indo-European religions

Meso- and Neolithic cultural layers

For the general evidence of the pre-Indo-European old European groups of the Meso- and Neolithic and their interpretation in connection with shamanistic attempts at interpretation, see above all under “ Prehistoric Shamanism ”.

Statements can only be made here on the basis of archaeological finds, usually idols and burials. These hardly allow a clear reference to archaic or even concrete shamanic practices, even if these should not have been improbable due to the culture, especially if it was still strongly developed as a hunter-gatherer / fisher-economy, but neolithic mostly through mother- and fertility cults were superimposed. In addition, the finds across Europe from this period are very inconsistent. Apparently there were distinct religious ideas about fertility and an ancestral cult within the clans. This is indicated by large burial fields close to the settlement, which signal the proximity of the ancestors and, through grave goods, a corresponding conception of the afterlife, and should also have been accompanied by corresponding rites. In connection with the Mesolithic / early Neolithic Danube culture ( Lepenski Vir , Tisza culture , Vinèa culture ), numerous, mostly bizarre zoo and anthropomorphic figures with unclear religious references were found. On the grave field of Oleni Ostrov in Karelia, four shaft graves were found in which the dead were buried standing, and which are therefore interpreted as shaman's graves. Further conclusions, however, are speculative. Similar problems exist with the interpretation of the band ceramics , bell beaker culture , cord ceramics and other Neolithic cultures in Europe.

Iranian, Caucasian and Mediterranean groups

Iran, Scythians and Caucasians

Some Islamic customs, such as those of the dervishes , who turn into birds in their trance, possibly go back to shamanic origins in Central Asia. In Zoroastrianism, there are central Siberian shamanistic concepts such as the tripartite division of the world and the crossing of the bridge between them, such as the hair-thin bridge Ciunvat , the crossing of which, however, is part of a judgment of the dead that does not allow any reference to shamanism.

Scythian animal style, front part of an ax with the handle hole: a bird-headed demon, a boar and a dragon figure; Central Asia ( Bactria -Margiana), late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BC BC (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
  • Herodotus (Book VI, 65) also reports of the Scythians that they used hemp for ecstatic states and that there were transsexual shamans (Enarer) who practiced fortune telling. Possible connections with the Urindo-European Kurgan culture postulated by Marija Gimbutas are controversial. The Scythian-Siberian animal style also indicates a close relationship with the religions of Siberia due to the archaeological findings of the Kurgan from the 1st to 8th centuries AD. The animal style with its often characteristic overdrawings is an expression of a theriomorphic way of looking at the world, which is also central in classical shamanism . It seeks to magically capture all forces and powers and evidently reflects the thoughts of the hunters rather than the shepherds and in no way that of the farmers. Such representations can be found on the rock paintings there and on the tattoos of the mummies. The myths, however, strongly influenced by Greek and ancient oriental principles, also belong to the polar cycle , at the center of which are the mythical northern mountains, behind which lies a kind of paradise. This is obviously an indication of the origin of the Scythians from the East, where such ideas were widespread, although there could be connections with the ancient Indian traditions. There also seems to have been a mythification of horses, with parallels to the horse cult of other Central Asian peoples, but also of the Teutons ( Sleipnir ) and Celts ( Epona ).
  • In the Caucasus , the Ossetians in particular preserved many of the Scythian mythological traditions, such as the myth of the cosmic tree. In Georgia fortune tellers and necromancers (companions of the soul of the dead) played a role. Most of the time it was women who were believed to be able to leave their bodies in a trance state to accompany the dead. In addition to the family and clan cult including ancestor cult, there were also older relics of shamanism. The Khevsurs knew the Kadagi showed symptoms of ecstasy and was appointed by a ghost. The appearance is very similar to that of the Siberian shamans and still exists at times, despite persecution by Christianity, Islam or Soviet communism.
  • There are similar findings for the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Urals (see below) , also with ecstasy and other shamanic characteristics such as the belief in nature spirits, healing and hunting magic or a personal spirit that can assume the shape of a bird, some of them as well have survived to this day and despite the overarching fertility cult and the later high religions.
  • The World Tree is an integral part of the cosmic ideas of the ancient Iranian religion , the structure according to the Zoroastrianism leading reform of Zoroaster was preserved. In doing so, however, they were provided with an extreme good-bad or light-dark antagonism, which in its oppositional dualism has no equivalent in classical shamanism of Siberia and whose origin is still puzzled. One thesis justifies the dualism between arable farmers and cattle nomads, as it is already expressed in the Cain-Abel story or in the Osiris myth . The same applies to eschatology or burial practice, which also do not fit into a shamanistic worldview.

Aegean, Cretan-Minoan culture, Greeks

The severed head of Orpheus as an oracle on Lesbos ; Drawing (1877) of an Attic vase motif from the 5th century BC, on the right the god Apollo , who spreads his arms over his head in a blessing
  • Cretan-Minoan culture : A relationship to archaic ideas is difficult to prove. The classification is also tricky because of the purely archaeological evidence. The main indicator is the occurrence of ecstatic states during the sacrificial cult, which, according to representations on seals, could be directed at a plant, an animal, a cult mark or a person. However, like the Greeks, the basic structure was later neolithic-maternal. This cult form was latertaken to extremesin Malta with its megalithic, chthonically oriented culture. The tree of life and birds as cultic messengers also appeared. The cult of the sun and the bull characteristically played a role. Cult acts were carried out, among other things, in natural places. There seems to be a relationship to Egyptian concepts of the afterlife and the dead with a judgment of the dead. The ideas of gods are unclear and seem to have related primarily to cosmic and natural forces, but not in a personal sense, but as an active form, similar to the numina of the early Romans (see below).
  • It is unclear to what extent archaic religious remains from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age were preserved in Cyprus , especially since oriental influences predominated here.
  • Greeks: In contrast to the modern notion of a male, militant Greek civilization, the Greeks already showed a strong inclination towards female-maternal deities in prehistoric times, as was typical for Neolithic cultures not only in the Mediterranean region. Figures with a divine mother and child were venerated throughout the classical period up to the end of the Roman Empire. Eliade allegedly sees shamanic components in the ancient Greek religion, which he treats with great reluctance, however. He himself warns against creating pseudo relationships, for example with the Dionysus cult, the Oracle of Delphi , the Apollonian mantic or even the Orphic , by reinterpreting archaic patterns or symbols. The various underworld journeys in Greek mythology do not have the slightest shamanic structure. Nevertheless, the ancient Greek religion showed a number of archaic traces: For example, there were healers, fortune tellers and ecstaticians who had no connections to Dionysus. The Thracians , like the Scythians, seem to have used hemp smoke for trance. The Orpheus myth could go back to shamanic practices, primarily Orpheus' underworld journey, his healing arts, love of music and animals, his magic powers and fortune-telling power. His skull also served as an oracle, similar to the skulls of Siberian shamans. Hermes in turn shows certain similarities with a psychopompos .
  • The Pythagoreans seem to represent a special case , who from the end of the 6th century BC developed their own cosmic and soul doctrine with transmigration of souls , which could stem from the ecstatic cult of Thrace.

Etruscan

The Etruscan religion was probably heavily transformed into Roman. At its center was divination within the framework of a cosmology in which the structure of reality is subordinate to divine powers, which guaranteed its order and reasonableness. The priest / seer is able to decipher this order on the basis of natural signs and to counteract potential disturbances. The Etruscan religion was an extremely complex revelation religion conveyed through prophetic knowledge. Statements about archaic influences cannot be made.

Romans

Eliade does not mention the Romans in connection with shamanism. In principle, the same applies to them as to the Etruscans and Greeks: their religion, which came from ancient Italian origins and remained very conservative rural until the emergence of the imperial cult , originally contained archaic components from the time of the ancestors who lived in the wild but which were culturally secondary were overmolded. Nevertheless, these remains are comparatively clearer here than, for example, among the Greeks, although they are strongly Neolithic. The following evidence showing archaic features can be identified:

  • Characteristic of the oldest form of Roman religion was the worship of natural and active forces with a special, narrowly defined function , based on a patriarchal family or clan basis . which first described the effects of these forces and not the force itself. Their number was immeasurable; they were given the collective term numina and related to farming activities. These immaterial effective forces were not personified and therefore could not enter into personal relationships with one another and were not mythological figures, i.e. de facto animistically shaped. The divine signs visible in nature had to be observed. They were part of the fate , the fateful plan of the gods and forces, as they were systematized above all by the Etruscans in their Libri .
  • The Romans took over numerous gods and goddesses from the Greeks and gave them their own names. Other gods adopted them from the Etruscans (e.g. Minerva , Apollo ) or they personified ancient Numina ( Mercurius , Vulcanus , Diana , Vesta ), who had emerged from the cult of the clan. Vesta, shown only as a purifying fire, is a sign of ancient fire worship, which also played a role in the family ancestor cult with the hearth as the center, especially since cremation was common in the early days, i.e. the deceased was hidden from view by the fire. Therefore, burnt offerings were also common. Other deities like Bacchus or Liber seem to be remnants of an old Indo-European religious substrate or old Italian deities. All of these gods were mythologized with one another in a secondary and relatively late manner analogous to Greek myths. Only from the 4th century BC Under Greek influence, people began to set up images of gods in permanent temples, which had existed since the 6th century (the first fully typical ones on the Capitol ). The myth of Aeneas as the legend of the origin of the Romans is one such example. The Romans distinguished the Dii indigentes. Gods from the country, from the Dii novensiles , immigrant gods.
  • The Romans' belief in ghosts was pronounced and contained features of an ancestral cult : the larvae or lemures , souls without relatives, were feared as spirits of deceased relatives who were appeased with sacrifices. The manes (hence the term manism ) were good spirits. Vesta watched over the hearth, Ianus and several other guardian spirits over the entrance. Penates and Laren were guardian spirits for the pantry and property. The genius, on the other hand, was the personal protective spirit that accompanied people through life and connected generations with one another. The woman's guardian spirit was Juno . There were also local guardian spirits: genii locorum .
  • Whether the ancient Roman religion contained elements of totemism is debatable. The Capitoline Wolf is often cited as an example, as well as totemic customs among the other Italian peoples.
  • The Romans performed the rites for the ancestors conscientiously. Their fate after death, however, was vague and was later based on Greek ideas with Hades and Elysion .
  • In contrast to the mantic, magical rituals did not play a major role with the Romans, at least not in the official state cult. The augurs , based on Etruscan rites and traditions, on the other hand, formed a very influential body.
  • Initially, like the early Etruscans, there were no temples of their own , only holy places, e.g. B. on mountain tops.
  • Some very old customs such as the “forest king”, the human embodiment of a spirit from the holy oak in a grove dedicated to Diana, the ancient mistress of animals, persisted well into the imperial era.

Ecstasy techniques were never central to Roman religion. The mystery cults of the Bacchae , the Orphic or the Dionysia came from the Oriental and Hellenistic realms, only came to the fore during the imperial period and are more likely to be traced back to the Neolithic cult of the Magna Mater .

All of these indications show particularly clearly the transformations within religious developments, which have been very well attested in Roman religion, from ancient forms to more recent, especially depending on the social and economic form, especially since in the case of Rome these lines of development are linked to Greek and oriental influences, for example Mithras cults up to late Roman atheism and Christianity can be pursued.

Western, Northern and Eastern European group

The peoples of this group did not form states until the end of antiquity and in the early Middle Ages , if at all . Often they were also without writing. Although there were cross-tribal cult communities within the large groups, there were no systematized religions. However, to the extent that they have been handed down (the reporters were mostly Romans and Greeks, who viewed those peoples as barbarians without culture), some of them still contain very old religious ideas on an Indo-European background.

Celts

The Celts , called Gauls by the Romans , a people of unknown origin who, apart from small domains of individual tribal princes (e.g. Hochdorf , Vix ), never formed an actual state and only appeared as a linguistic and cult community, spread between the second millennium BC and the first century BC across all of Europe. The end neolithic bell beaker culture and the Bronze Age urn field culture and barrow culture are associated with them. The first archaeological evidence can be found in the Iron Age Hallstatt period around 700 BC. Later in the La Tène period . Like the other Indo-European peoples, the Celts, Slavs and Teutons have many religious traits in common, so that they are treated here one after the other as non-Mediterranean cultural complexes . Culturally and socially, however, the Celts differ from the Teutons and Slavs through a more complex structure. The sources on the Celtic religion, like those on the Etruscan religion, are similarly diffuse and deformed via ancient reporters (e.g. VI. Book of Caesar's Commentarii de bello Gallico , Diodor , Strabo and Poseidonios ). However, archaeological finds are more common here. The main features of the Celtic religion, which was passed down orally, can be summarized as follows:

  • The religion of the Celts reflects their aristocratic and warlike clan and tribal order .
  • The Celts believed in life after death. even if not of a Pythagorean transmigration of souls. In the other world the borders between this world and the hereafter were permeable, so that one could switch from one side to the other at any time with the help of magic. This afterlife, underground, under water or on islands, was a real, mysterious place without death, winter and work. Gods, spirits and fairies lived there in eternal youth and occasionally called people to help with problems.
  • There was the idea of ​​the world tree or world trees that support the firmament.
  • One of the numerous female deities with different functions was a great mother as a symbol of a fertility cult. The country was considered female.
  • There was the idea of ​​a divine trinity. thus a divine being in three manifestations. This possibly reflects the three-class structure of early Indo-European society (priests, warriors, farmers / shepherds). There was also a female goddess triad.
  • Originally, gods and humans lived in the same world. Even later these worlds permeated each other. Gods only became anthropomorphic under Greco-Roman influence. At first they were shapeless spirit beings, understood as ancestral gods, in lakes, forests, trees, rivers and natural phenomena. This possibly very old Indo-European idea was also known to the early Greeks and Romans, Etruscans, Teutons and Slavs, with whom the Celts also shared the mythical meaning of water.
  • The god Lugh , a cultural hero who is referred to as “Mercurius” by ancient authors, is, like Wotan, the great shaman of Germanic mythology .
  • The antler god Cernunnos , one of the zoomorphic Celtic gods who is very similar to the Indian god Shiva , was considered the lord of the animals and was most revered. At the same time he was a vegetation god who died on the summer solstice and was reborn in Samhain ("Wild Hunt", Halloween).
  • Druids (the name means “those who know the oak”), as professional priests of mostly aristocratic descent, were the spiritual and religious leaders. They kept their knowledge a secret. They were sacrificial priests, fortune tellers, healers and guardians of secret knowledge. Many scholars believe that the Hindu Brahmins and the Celtic Druids are each remnants of a common Indo-European priesthood. There were two other religious officials besides them: the vates (seers) and the bards . Apparently there was human sacrifice.
  • Oak and yew were holy and were considered oracle trees. The magic of mistletoe, which is still alive today in the customs of the Anglo-Saxon countries, goes back to these origins.
  • As with other Indo-European peoples, there was a horse cult with a goddess Epona .
Cauldron by Gundestrup, horned Cernunnus figure in the yoga seat
  • Before the arrival of the Romans there were no temples, only holy places: above all forests and groves, but also lakes, trees, springs etc. All Indo-European religions share this idea in their early form.

Beyond the Greco-Roman syncretisms, there are so many direct elements in the rituals that characterize Siberian shamanism that one can assume, as for the Germanic and Slavic cults, that they - at least in their early form - were at least marginally influenced by them . This is confirmed by Herodotus , whose relevant representations have since proven to be largely correct in other cases. He wrote that the Scythians and their neighboring peoples - including the Celts - were guided by necromancers, who often changed sex out of shame that they had not died in battle. Representations on the cauldron of Gundestrup , which shows the horned figure of Cernunnus, contain scenes that are interpreted shamanically by some authors, especially since similar figures have come down to us from Moldova and the Donets Basin . Many Celtic poems also deal with such motifs, such as changing bodies or animal consciousness.

Germanic peoples

Wotan, the "Great Shaman", on his eight-legged ghost horse Sleipnir (from the Icelandic manuscript SÁM 66 of the 18th century)

One speaks of Teutons at the earliest from the Bronze Age, which occurred in northern Germany and Scandinavia around 1600 BC. Began after the transition from hunting to agriculture around 3000 BC. Had taken place. No later than 500 BC. The Germanic tribes became a linguistically and culturally independent group. Due to the ethnic and geographical differences of the Germanic tribes and the influences of the Celts, Romans and Christianity, one can only speak of an old Germanic religion to a very limited extent, especially if one takes into account the various historical developments within the Germanic peoples. The sources are similarly heterogeneous as those of the Celts (and Slavs), but much more extensive, although our knowledge of the Germanic religion comes almost exclusively from Icelandic sources . Nevertheless, traces of archaic totemism and animism can not only be found on the numerous Scandinavian rock paintings. These are primarily the following indications:

  • The names of the tribes are often derived from animals ( Cherusci from heruz , "young stag" or "boar", among the Eburones ). The lineage myths of the tribes, such as tree descent, point in the same direction. There were tribal gods.
  • Worship of sacred animals such as wolf, raven or boar
  • Believe in numerous nature spirits such as elves, trolls, water spirits, etc.
  • Magical customs were widespread, as was the belief in sorcery, healing magic, amulets, and likewise the belief in the art of divination.
  • The gods were mostly personified natural phenomena of vegetation or fertility or agriculture, such as thunder and lightning, fire, snow, etc. Overall, the tendency to personify nature was very pronounced. Remnants can be found in customs to this day (Frau Holle, Knecht Ruprecht, ghosts, changeling bellows, trolls, elves, fairies, mermaids, Rübezahl, etc.). Linguistically it is remarkable that most of the Germanic god names are of neuter gender and were only used in the plural. In addition, the warlike sir oppose the Vanes as gods of fertility. This is possibly an indicator of a cultural transition, which the Van War between the two gods could point to.
  • The world of the dead was an unfriendly place in the underworld, ruled by Hel . They feared their return. However, the clan comprised all living and dead in an indissoluble community, which only contained their memory, the memory of their good and bad deeds. The Germanic religion is quite contradicting on this point. The form of burial changed from 1200 BC. From the body burial with sometimes huge burial mounds and rich grave goods to the rather sparse urn burial. In the first century BC, body burial reappeared.
  • There was a world tree. the world ash Yggdrasil . The cosmology is basically in three parts: Asgard , the world of the gods, Midgard , the world of humans surrounded by the Midgard serpent and the underworld of the dead.
  • There are myths with underworld journeys (e.g. Baldur's return ). The journey of the fallen heroes to Valhalla , accompanied by the Valkyries , also belongs in this pattern.
  • Spakonas or Seiðkonas were fortune tellers with characteristic ceremonial clothes and ceremonial staff who fell into a trance, left their bodies and wandered around in animal form.
  • The warrior's ecstatic death ( berserker ) contains shamanic traits. One became berserk after an initiation fight. The name Wotan means anger and points in the same direction.
  • The god Loki can change shape and roam as an animal. He has strong magical abilities and, as the god of fire, resembles the Greek Prometheus , so he is a cultural hero.
  • Odin - who only played an important role in the Scandinavian area - is known as the "Great Shaman". Most of the indications of Germanic shamanism are found in this form:
    • The nine-day hanging of Odin on the world ash can be interpreted as a shamanic initiation rite, as it was also used by Siberian shamans.
    • His horse Sleipnir has eight legs, like the shaman horses in other cultures, where they always appear together with ecstatic rites. It carries Odin and other gods into the underworld, so it is a protective spirit on a journey to the hereafter .
    • Odin (like Zeus) is able to change his shape and roam the world as an animal while his body rests somewhere.
    • His helping spirits are two birds (ravens).
    • Odin acts as a necromancer and fortune teller. The motif of the prophetic head ( Mimir ) is similar to that of Orpheus.

Neolithic shamanism can be assumed among the Proto-Germans on the basis of rock art from the 5th millennium BC in Norway, for example. Of all the other religions in this cultural area, the Germanic shows the strongest perseverance, so that numerous archaic elements were continued for a long time. The Germanic religion is based on similar sources as other Indo-European religions, but from an archaic point of view it is a highly complex conglomerate of very different sources and traditions from hunting to rural societies and those of nomadic shepherds. Shamanism was not central, but, as with the Celts, marginal and only present in mythological and traditional remnants. However, where present, it shows a completely different and in some cases more archaic picture than that of the Celts, for example.

Slavs

The primeval Slavs are archaeologically verifiable as early as the second millennium BC. In Herodotus they appear for the first time in the 5th century BC. In written history under the name Neuren , a people who settled on the upper reaches of the Dniester . These Proto-Slavs had contact in the north with the Proto- Balts , in the east with the Finns , in the northwest with the Teutons. There were religious interactions with all of these peoples. However, the contact with the Iranian tribes, especially the Scythians and Sarmatians , from whom they took over the deification of sun and fire, and later also the dualism of Manichaeism, was of particular importance .

The religion and mythology of the Slavs are extraordinarily diverse. Each tribe had its own myths and gods within the framework of a patriarchal clan order. Their tradition, however, is rather vague and overlaid by initially peasant, later numerous Christian influences and even later by national and romantic distortions. There are the following indications of presumably existing archaic remains:

  • In Old Slavic mythology, life was a universal entity determined by invisible forces. These are essentially animistic ideas. for immovable things were also gifted with reason. Trees and animals could be venerated as ancestors. The large number of mostly local gods are formed according to the same basic animistic pattern and presumably variants of a single deity. Their names mean certain properties such as energy (Svantovit), anger (Iarovit), power (Porevit) or oestrus (Rujevit). They each have several faces, an idea that is also found in other Indo-European and Finno-Ugric peoples.
  • The god Svantovit , god of fertility and fate, has a magical horse that can prophesy.
  • Some animals were totem animals. and they were thought to be representations of supernatural beings. Every Slavic clan had such an ancestral totem.
  • The tree of life occupied a central position in cosmology, and some trees formed the center of a sacred area. These trees were seen as the abode of souls.
  • Funerary customs and the ancestral cult of the clans played a central role, because people believed in life after death. Ancestral cult in particular determined practically all aspects of Slavic religion. The souls went to a distant land somewhere under the earth. In a certain corner of each hut there was a place for the souls of the ancestors. They later became household gods who protected the house and hearth. A distinction was made between the clean and the unclean, prematurely dead dead. The latter were feared, and attempts were made to render them harmless at the funeral. If they weren't buried, they would become vampires . Numerous ancestral festivals were celebrated in which the dead were invited to be guests.
  • There was a belief in a distant, feared high god ( Svarog ). He was god of fire, sorcerer and seer. Sacrifice was made to him, including human sacrifices.
  • There were numerous good and bad spirits. In addition to the house spirits and nature spirits, especially of the forest, there are also water, mountain and field spirits, the Wilas , as well as demons and witches. The witch Baba-Jaga , the evil immortal Koschtschei and the water spirit Rusálka are known to this day .
  • Of particular importance here is the spirit of the forest, leshy, according to Eliade, a representative of the master of the animals , who later mutated into the patron of the herds.
  • Healing magic was common. The illness was personified as an evil spirit that had to be driven away by the healing magician. Fortune telling was also common among the people until very recently.
  • The internal rituals were probably carried out by the heads of the clans and families. The public cult was probably in the hands of specially appointed wolchw . However, it is unclear whether these actors were simple magicians, shamans or even priests of gods.
  • Cult places. such as places of sacrifice, were mostly natural places. There were probably also permanent sanctuaries and images of gods.

References to shamanic practices are more vague than those of the Celts and Germanic peoples. However, this is based more on the problematic, because it was later and Christian strongly overformed tradition and the heterogeneity of the Slavic ethnic groups as well as their relatively late appearance as historically perceptible peoples and states. In addition, in the course of their extensive migrations through the whole of Western, Northern and Southern Europe and deep into Central Europe, they absorbed numerous external influences from neighboring peoples and cultures. In terms of culture, shamanic elements in the already extremely conservative Slavic religion are to be assumed as likely, even if there are no reliable indications of ecstasy customs and the like, which is also evident from the sometimes rabid persecution of pagan customs, for example by the Varangians and later the Orthodox Church especially in the 1930s due to Soviet communism.

Pre-Columbian Religions

In contrast to the authors of a universal shamanism, this term is not used by most ethnologists for the pre-Columbian religions. Müller, for example, denies him, at least the existence of various spiritual specialists and healers is a traditional part of cultures throughout the Meso and South American areas. Eliade points out that the first Upper Paleolithic immigrants from North Asia, who settled the American continent at some point from around 18,000 BP or later, were likely to have brought with them an archetype of Siberian shamanism, as various similarities suggest. The archaic structure of the South American shamanic domains is particularly striking. In any case, as in similar cases, there is a strongly conservative folk religion interspersed with hunting and rural elements . Above which, at the time of power-political development, a class-specific and class-specific high religion arose, in which the archaic elements had strongly receded.

Among the variety of pre-Columbian high religions that no longer exist, only the three most important ones should be mentioned here: those of the Mayas, Aztecs and Incas. Little more is known about the Mesoamerican Olmecs , Toltecs , Mixtecs or the Andes such as Chavín de Huántar , Paracas , Nazca , Moche or Chimu than that they were relatively similar to those of the three high cultures mentioned and that they often represented their preliminary stages. However, essential variants are briefly mentioned if they are relevant for archaic references.

Mesoamerica

Political situation before the arrival of the Spaniards: tribute states of the three-party alliance led by Tenochtitlan

The Mesoamerican high religions are relatively similar in their basic structures despite differing gods pantheons. The sources, especially texts, are sparse due to the destruction caused by the Spanish conquerors and missionaries, and interpretation is largely dependent on secondary Spanish reports and archaeological finds.

The following groupings result historically and regionally (dates with uncertainties):

These were the most important peoples who dominated mainly regionally and at different times. Of most of them, however, we only have fragmentary and exclusively archaeological knowledge; only the Mayans and Aztecs are more precisely proven by their own written evidence. However, the interactions between all these cultures are so complex and in some cases also unexplained that the cultural areas are not separated here.

For the entire historical and geographical complex of Mesoamerica , which radiated into the north of South America, the following indications emerge for the existence of archaic-religious elements:

  • In the numerous recent cultures of Central America, such as the Mayans, medicine men still practice today. Favored by the natural occurrence of many hallucinogenic plants , trance and healing magic are also used.
  • Many gods - the Aztec pantheon is populated by an immense number of gods who also appear in various aspects - despite their function as peasant vegetation gods, have totemic traits or are personifications of natural forces : The very old, anthropomorphically depicted god Quetzalcoatl / Kukulcan (both "Feathered Serpent") was probably a cultural hero; Tezcatlipoca ("smoking mirror") was a magician and was seen as bringing ruin, Huitzilopochtli ("hummingbird on the left") was a kind of hummingbird totem; Cinteotl was the maize incarnation; in addition there was Itzamná ("iguana house"), Yum Kaax ("lord of the forest") etc. There were rain, fire, sun, earthquake and (especially important) corn gods. Above all, forces of nature were deified within a dualistic system, which, however, was not designed to be ethical, but rather in its characteristics as favorable / unfavorable for people, i.e. utilitarian .
  • Many of these gods were originally tribal gods . Around which later a hierarchical state cult and priestly caste developed in the cities . For the common people, however, the priests of local gods as well as healers, fortune tellers, necromancers, etc. were more important.
  • The myth of the jaguar man , which can already be traced back to the Olmecs, is widespread throughout Central America and in northern South America. He bears the traits of a powerful guardian spirit, whose mask was later worn by the rulers. The Olmec colossal heads with their feline features are interpreted as jaguar shamans.
  • The motifs of the snake and the bird are among the oldest in Mesoamerica and are often combined to form the feathered snake , the cult of which is believed to have originated in Teotihuacan. The twenty Aztec day signs are almost all expressed through animal symbols.
  • There was the idea of naguals , personal alter ego protective spirits for every human being, who lived in the forest as their doppelgangers in animal form. If this animal died, so did man. (see also nagualism )
  • The cosmic system of the Mayans was in three parts with earth, gods and underworld (and thus has a similarity to Christian cosmology). The Mayan system was connected by a world tree with the main symbol of the snake. Heaven and underworld were divided into 13 and 9 levels respectively. The Mayans also had the idea of ​​a high god, the omnipresent Hunabku . The most famous representation of this cosmology can be found in Palenque on the sarcophagus of King Pacal .
  • The Aztecs had the idea of ​​patron saints. to whom special priests (teomama) kept in touch by exploring their will through visions and dreams.
  • Pronounced notions of the afterlife described life after death in certain regions of the afterlife. The classification did not depend on the lifestyle, but on the type of death.

As in numerous other ancient religions, in Central America, in addition to the highly complex and abstract religion of the urban elite with its elaborate rites and powerful aristocratic priestly caste, there was a persistent folk religion , primarily oriented towards ideas of fertility such as the spirits called chac . Although little of it has been handed down, parts of it have survived syncretistically with Christianity to this day. The master religion went under with the conquest by the Spaniards. The popular religion remained, lived on under a thin Catholic varnish and partly merged the old beliefs with the new in cosmology and eschatology .

Andean religions

In the Andean religions, the external conditions and conditions of origin are very similar to those of the Mesoamerican religions: Some regional cultures sometimes coexisted or followed one another, were conquered or merged into one another. In the end there was the powerful state cult of the Incas, which was mainly determined by the sun.

The following groupings arise historically and regionally (only the essential ones are mentioned, there were others, for example around Lake Titicaca such as Tiahuanaco ). With the exception of the Incas, all of these cultural areas have only been developed archaeologically, for example through the ceramic styles. The Quipu script of the Incas was the only script in the Andean region:

  • Chavín de Huántar , a small culture in the eastern Andean chain that flourished between 850 and 200 BC. Experienced.
  • Paracas on the peninsula of the same name on the coast of southern Peru around the second half of the first millennium BC from around 700 BC. Chr.
  • Nazca on the south coast of Peru 370 BC Chr. To 700 AD. The famous scratching pictures were created in the final phase and are a good 1000 years old.
  • Moche on the north coast of Peru as the successor to the Chavin style from the turn of the times to around AD 600.
  • Chimu , a kingdom on the northern Peruvian coast between about 1250 and 1470 AD, when it was conquered by the Incas.
  • Inca , the real great empire of the Andes between the 13th and 16th centuries, roughly comprised the area of ​​today's Peru, but exerted influence as far as Ecuador, Chile and Argentina. Most is known about his religion. The Inca Empire should therefore be the focus of considerations.

The following indications for archaic substrates in the Incas emerge:

  • The stone cult on sacred stones, on which certain rituals were celebrated.
  • The cult of the jaguar man . The jaguar motif occurs more and more in the Chavin and Mochia styles. With the Mochia he even seems to have been the chief god. Presumably the Mesoamerican and Andean high cultures influenced each other culturally, especially since the jaguar does not occur in the Andean region. It is therefore suspected that its porters might have come from the Amazon region or had close contact with the Olmecs.
  • Oracles were at the center of the Inca religion and determined all public and private life.
  • Below the sun cult there were older regional cults around individual gods such as the creator god Viracocha (father of the sun) and cultural heroes, in which relics of a totemism can be seen. Every region had its god in the form of an animal, tree, stone, etc. Animal deities such as condor, puma, snake or fish were particularly pronounced. Animal deities, including anthropozoomorphic ones , such as sphinxes (e.g. Tiahuanaco ), are also particularly evident in the Paracas culture . The mythical, mostly animal scratching figures of Nazca, especially birds, also point in this direction. A bird man is also shown. An intense belief in demons seems to have existed. In general, anthropomorphic representations are very common in the Andean cultures.
  • In these regional cults there was a pronounced ancestor cult with the veneration of the clan ancestors. Holy places were worshiped, where the ancestors of the tribe of the earth rose. Every ancestor always had a living, taboo equivalent. Deceased leaders were mummified and worshiped as if they were still alive, that is, the mummies were taken everywhere.
  • Belief in the afterlife includes the idea of ​​a narrow bridge over which the deceased walked into the afterlife.
  • The ancestral spirits called huaca were also venerated . Huaca was also the general name for all supernatural forces or beings that were connected to material objects and had a local sphere of activity, i.e. mountains, trees, rivers, lakes, mythical places, etc.
  • The cosmology was three-tiered. However, the world came into being less through creation and more through ordering and designing from what was already there. The three world levels were connected by an axis. Observance of the rites was essential for the stability of the world.
  • The religious ceremonies did not take place in the temples, which mostly served as priestly dwellings and organization centers, but outside and at the holy shrines, which mostly contained fetishes.
  • Priests were in direct contact with supernatural powers to whom they made sacrifices, including human sacrifices.
  • The use of hallucinogens can already be demonstrated in the Chavin culture . The Inca priests used them to contact gods and other metaphysical powers. Dream interpretation, the observation of certain natural phenomena, and the intestinal inspection also served this purpose, as did the fire into which an oracle priest (yacarca) stared after chewing coca leaves and conjuring up the spirits. The answers of these spirits were announced through ventriloquism .
  • Ceremonies had to be strictly observed. If this did not happen, unfavorable events were the result of this disturbed harmony.

The religion of the Incas is thus very similar to the religions of Mesoamerica as a mixture of complex ceremonies, animistic-totemic beliefs, different forms of magical thinking and nature worship. It culminated in the worship of the sun and established itself as the state religion, ruled by a hierarchical priesthood. The folk religions before and after the Inca period and the Spanish conquest were preserved as substrates and blended with the new high and colonial religion, Catholicism.

Current Religions

It is more difficult to assess the situation in religions that are still alive today than in the old cultures. The world religions have taken a completely different development due to their syncretistic character, the written fixation and the centuries of interpretation - although for example spirits, angels and demons, which, along with numerous other archaic remains, also occur in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In ancient Judaism, for example, the prophets there, with the nature of their inevitable calling, ecstatic states and dream experiences, show elements that can be interpreted as shamanic rituals. Christian and Islamic hagiography is also full of such religious-magical stories with demonic tortures, ascents, journeys to the underworld, ecstatic situations, healing magic, escorting the dead, etc. Although it cannot be called shamanic, Indo-European and ancient oriental ideas may merge here. Because of all these uncertainties, the main living religions should be left out of the illustration here. The discussion of their possible archaic remains should offer starting points in terms of religious history, but it can neither be reliably proven nor adequately justified.

Web links

Commons : Shamanism  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Shamanism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

The following works were used to create this article (OA = original edition for older works):

General and special reference works

Shamanism in prehistory and early history

  • Barry Cunliffe (Ed.): The Oxford Illustrated History. Illustrated prehistory and early history of Europe . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-593-35562-0
  • Dietrich Evers: Rock paintings - messages from the past. Urania Verlag, Leipzig 1991, ISBN 3-332-00482-4
  • Hermann Müller-Karpe: Basics of early human history. 5 vols., Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1309-7
  • Anneliese Peschlow-Bindokat: Early human images . The prehistoric rock paintings of the Latmos Mountains (Western Turkey). Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2003, ISBN 3-8053-3001-4
  • Klaus Schmidt: You built the first temple. The enigmatic sanctuary of the Stone Age hunters. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-53500-3

Shamanism in historical and living religions, mythology

  • Jan Assmann : Ma'at. Justice and Immortality in Ancient Egypt . 2nd Edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-45943-9
  • Klaus Bemmann: The belief of the ancestors. The religion of the Germans before they became Christians. Phaidon Verlag, Essen 1990, ISBN 3-88851-094-5
  • Richard Cavendish, Trevor O. Ling: Mythology. An illustrated world history of mythical-religious thought. Christian Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-88472-061-9
  • Michael D. Coe (eds.), Dean Snow, Elizabeth Benson: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: America Before Columbus. History, art forms of life. Christian Verlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-88472-107-0
  • Fernand Comte: Myths of the World. WBG, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-20863-0
  • Mauro Cristofani: The Etruscans. Belser Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-7630-2330-5
  • Myles Dillon, Nora K. Chadwick: The Celts. From the prehistory to the Norman invasion. Kindler's cultural history. Parkland Verlag 2004. OA 1966, ISBN 3-89340-058-3
  • Mircea Eliade : History of Religious Ideas . 4th volume, Herder Verlag, Freiburg 1978, ISBN 3-451-05274-1
  • Gerhard Herm : The Celts. The people who came out of the dark. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1975, ISBN 3-430-14453-1
  • Roman Herzog : Early states: origins and forms of rule. 2nd Edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-42922-X .
  • Gottfried Hierzenberger: Faith in the ancient high cultures: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indo-Europeans, Old Americans. Lahn Verlag, Limburg 2003, ISBN 3-7867-8473-6
  • Karam Khella: History of the Arab Peoples. From the beginning to the present. 4th edition. Nikol Verlag, Hamburg 1994/2007, ISBN 3-937872-62-0
  • Heinrich Krefeld: Res Romanae. 3. Edition. Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1962.
  • Peter Levi: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Greece. History, art, forms of life. Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-041-4
  • Hermann Parzinger : The Scythians . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-50842-1
  • Julien Ries : Origin of Religions. Pattloch Verlag, Augsburg 1993, ISBN 3-629-00078-9
  • Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum , Hildesheim: Splendor and fall of ancient Mexico. The Aztecs and their predecessors. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1986, ISBN 3-8053-0908-2
  • Hartmut Schmökel (ed.): Cultural history of the ancient Orient. Mesopotamia, Hittite Empire, Syria, Palestine, Urartu. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1995, ISBN 3-89350-747-7
  • Miloslav Stingl : The Incas. Ancestors of the Sun Sons. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1978, ISBN 3-927117-40-4
  • SA Tokarev : Religion in the History of Nations. Dietz Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1968.
  • Monika u. Udo Tworuschka: Religions of the World. In the past and present. Bassermann Verlag, Munich 1992/2000, ISBN 3-8094-5005-7 .
  • Herbert Zachert : The mythology of Shinto. In: Hans Wilhelm Haussig , Egidius Schmalzriedt (Hrsg.): Götter und Mythen Ostasiens (= dictionary of mythology . Department 1: The ancient civilized peoples. Volume 6). Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-12-909860-7 .

Psychology, ethology, cultural anthropology, sociology of religion, neo-schmanism, others

Individual evidence

A bibliographically complete list of the works used in the preparation of this article, including publication dates, is provided above .

  1. ↑ Herzog, pp. 74 ff., 78 ff., 99.
  2. ↑ Eliade: Shamanism, 2001, pp. 358-429; History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 3, pp. 212 ff.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Saur: Mircea Eliade today. In: Secession. No. 16, February 2007. ISSN  1611-5910 .
  4. ↑ Ries, p. 153 f.
  5. ↑ Hans Peter Duerr (ed.): Longing for the origin: to Mircea Eliade. Syndicate, Frankfurt / M. 1983, ISBN 9783810802118 . P. 218.
  6. ↑ Hartmut Zinser: Shamanism in the “New Age” in: Michael Pye, Renate Stegerhoff (ed.): Religion in foreign culture. Religion as a minority in Europe and Asia. dadder, Saarbrücken 1987, ISBN 978-3-92640611-8 . P. 175.
  7. ↑ Hartmut Zinser: On the fascination of shamanism. In: Michael Kuper (ed.): Hungry spirits and restless souls. Texts on shamanism research. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1991. pp. 17-26.
  8. ↑ Müller-Karpe: Grundzüge, 1998, Vol. 1, p. 191.
  9. ↑ KE Müller, pp. 8–9, 12, 19–20, 113–114.
  10. ↑ a b Müller, p. 29.
  11. ^ Britannica, Vol. 5, p. 646.
  12. ^ Britannica, Vol. 26, p. 1016.
  13. ↑ Eliade: Shamanism, 2001, pp. 358–362.
  14. ↑ a b Tokarew, p. 385.
  15. ↑ Helck / Otto, p. 249.
  16. ↑ Tokarew, p. 400, 404 f.
  17. ^ Tokarev, p. 386.
  18. ↑ Ries, p. 94.
  19. ↑ Helck / Otto, p. 333 f.
  20. ↑ Note: The sphinx with a human head and animal body is a special case as a ruler symbol and was only later adopted from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.
  21. ↑ Helck / Otto, p. 104 f.
  22. ↑ Müller-Karpe: Grundzüge, Vol. 1, p. 206.
  23. ^ Cavendish: Mythologie, p. 96.
  24. ↑ Assmann, pp. 241 f., 285.
  25. ↑ Assmann, pp. 289-296.
  26. ↑ Tokarew, pp. 414-428; Eliade: History of Religious Ideas, 1978, pp. 62–86.
  27. ↑ Schmökel, p. 274 ff.
  28. ↑ Schmökel, p. 270.
  29. ^ Tokarev, p. 416.
  30. ↑ Schmökel, p. 292 ff.
  31. ↑ Tokarew, pp. 419-434; Schmökel, pp. 563-596.
  32. ^ Tokarev, p. 430.
  33. ↑ Peschlow-Bindokat, pp. 61, 64, 72 f.
  34. ↑ Peschlow-Bindokat, p 75 miles.
  35. ↑ Schmidt, pp. 216-220.
  36. ↑ Schmökle, pp. 436-441.
  37. ^ Tokarev, p. 432.
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  56. ^ Levi, p. 50.
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  106. ↑ Hierzenberger: Faith in the old high cultures, 2003, pp. 128 f., 131.
  107. ↑ Pacal
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  109. Jump up ↑ The Splendor and Fall of Ancient Mexico, p. 125.
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