Un tamburo nelle tenebre: sciamanismo siberiano e nord-americano

The term “shaman” has been, in recent years, the focus of an extraordinary development, its use has become popular and widespread, not only in academic publications but also among the general public. A vast esoteric and spiritualistic literature has taken hold of the term, producing a great array of editorial products, most of which are of a doubtful and equivocal value. Moreover, a widespread scientific debate has aroused above the employment of the terms “shaman” and “shamanism” and their legitimacy and fruitfulness, contributing less to the clarification of an intricate subject than to cause further commotion. “Shaman”, as it is used in this paper, is not a native category, but a Western cultural category, produced by the ethnographic and anthropological knowledge mainly between the XIXth and the XXth centuries. Its usefulness lays in its employment as an analytic tool, like Max Weber’s “ideal-type”, permitting to observe in a trans- and cross-cultural perspective a number of cultural phenomena, emphasizing their respective similarities and differences. The world of shamanism is a world populated not by “things”, material and passive objects, but by “persons”, subjects having consciousness, cognitive capacities, will and agency, though they are not part of the human sphere, nor, in many cases, of the reality which is perceived through the ordinary sense perceptions. The peculiarity of the shamanic experience is that these personal beings can shift their own concern towards humankind. They can instruct human beings, when they are approached in a correct and respectful way, and give them the power to act efficaciously in the material world and the knowledge necessary to deal with the invisible realm.