Medicine bag
A medicine bag was with the Indians North and Central America a repository of sacred objects that a person on a vision quest were revealed. Usually only the wearer himself knew the contents. For many tribes the medicine bag was considered the most sacred good of a person and you lost your luck if you lost it.
While a warrior's medicine bag (in the sense of a talisman ) was never opened, a shaman's medicine bag was more of a bundle in which he kept the sacred objects that he needed for his rituals . These could change in the course of time, for example if the shaman symbolically surrendered his power to another part of his power through an object or if he was made aware of a new object through a mystical experience.
In connection with the North American Indians, the word “ medicine ” does not stand for medicine, but for the “mysterious, transcendent power behind all visible phenomena”.
In the Inca tradition of South America there is a priest's medicine bag called a mesa .
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Norbert Kohnen: Keyword: medicine man. In: Encyclopedia of Medical History. Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haarge, Gundolf Keil a. Wolfgang Wegner (Ed.), Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 . P. 956