One Buryat shaman shares his views of the future Valentin Khagdaev lives in the village Elantsi of Irkutsk district and works as.shaman. It is practically impossible to find Mr. Khagdaev at his own place. "M-A" correspondent for instance managed to catch the man after twelve miserable attempts. Thing is, the shaman conducts numerous ceremonies in various districts. With the help of Buryat songs and native musical instruments (drums, rattle, and several cult objects used in shamanism) the man calls out tengeri gods. These gods are known to help those who have health problems restore their health; they aid people to make right decisionsand so on and so forth.
At times, shaman Khagdaev practices fortune telling using a lamb"s scapula, vodka, or simply cards. In fact, shamanism welcomes one"s will to look into the future. The man greets each new visitor with the sound of a bell. His wife Victoria treats new guests to a nice traditional meal. "M-A" correspondent has had an interesting conversation with Valentin Khagdaev: -Shamanism-is a religion of some sort, correct?-Well, officially, there is no such religion as shamanism in our country. However, on the other hand, it is the belief system of many small populations (such as Nenets, Evenks, Chukci) on the Russian territory as well as on the territory of the former USSR. Muscovites in turn havereally primitive notions of what shamanism is all about. They think we are just some aborigines with painted faces, who play drums in an attempt to ask gods for help when our house is on fire, instead of getting a bucket of water.-Every god has a name, has helpers (saints in Christianity), has certain responsibilities: to punish sinners, encourage righteous men.-The concept of "sin" is also present in shamanism. It is called "setre" in the Buryat language, or simply Taboo. One must respect the elderly, respect other religions, basically respect everyone; disrespect is considered similar to murder and theft. Our Almighty, however, does not punish anyone. He leaves us to think over our own misbehaviors.Polygamy: . ...
MALAYSIAN authorities have enlisted the help of witch doctors in a bid to find seven people who went missing after their helicopter was feared to have crashed in the Borneo jungles nearly two weeks ago, a report said today. The Sunday Star newspaper said several mediums and local witch doctors have been granted access to Bario, a remote village in eastern Sarawak state, to give their "interpretations and readings" to locate the aircraft and the men. Local people believe spirits of the deadinhabit the interior jungles and can be tapped through rituals to help locate the seven men, the newspaper said.
"Some of them who said they have supernatural powers have pointed out certain locations where the missing people could be found," Sarawak deputy chief minister George Chan was quoted as saying. "We do not dismiss their claims. We will use all available resources and explore all possibilities." Two Australian infra-red experts were enlisted a week earlier in the search and rescue mission and Chan said some 1,000 ground troops as well as aerial teams wouldcontinue to comb the areas surrounding Bario and other possible sites. The helicopter lost contact with air traffic control shortly after noon on July 12 in the Sarawak highlands. It was carrying five government officials, including an assistant minister of eastern Sarawak state, and Sarawak Electricity Supply Corp chief executive Roger Wong Hwa Puang and a pilot.
When I was 17, I had a dream in which I forgot my own name. A question bobbed to the surface--who are you?--and just like that, all sense of what is commonly referred to as identity or the self vanished. I heard my name called, but did not recognize it. I saw my own face, but it was unfamiliar. The sounds and images faded into an infinite void from which no frame of reference could be drawn, self or otherwise. I had ceased to exist. Yet the sense of existence persisted. I instinctively understood that what was once me was now an indivisible part of this existence. This was how life would go on. The instant I pondered how I could possibly know this, since Ihad ceased to exist, I woke up.
I've never forgotten that dream, and the memory of it has served me well. When I read French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre's assertion that "nothingness lies coiled within being like a worm" in his classic philosophical text Being and Nothingness, I knew exactly what he meant. Jung's collective unconsciousness? Been there. Nietzsche's eternal return? Done that. All of these examples seem like valid interpretations of my experience. But was my experience valid? Until relatively recently in the Western world, the answer was no. Back in Galileo's day, 400 or so years ago, dreams, hallucinations, souls, spirits and other metaphysical phenomena were cast out as objects of legitimatescientific inquiry by the Church, which didn't want anyone else cutting in on the God business. What originally evolved out of religious intolerance--scientific method--ironically morphed into its own dogmatic secular religion, nowhere moreso than in the medical sciences. If it can't be measured with instruments-- and so far, no one has built a device capable of detecting, say, a soul--it doesn't exist, as far as Western medicine is concerned. We're living in a material world. Enter the shaman. For thousands of years, individuals with specialized knowledge of both the natural and the supernatural--sometimes referred to derogatorily as witch doctors, wizards, warlocks and witches by us moderns--have practiced the healing arts.From. ...
The ceremony begins with a Roman Catholic prayer. Then three drummers begin to play syncopated rhythms. The attendees begin to dance around a tree in the center of the yard, moving faster and harder with the rising pulse of the beat. The priest draws sacred symbols in the dust with cornmeal, and rum is poured on the ground to honor the spirits. One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet. She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great mother spirit. It is an honor tobe entered and "ridden" by a Loa, or spirit.
In Haiti these rituals are commonplace: Voodoo is the dominant religion. "One common saying is that Haitians are 70 percent Catholic, 30 percent Protestant, and 100 percent voodoo," said Lynne Warberg, a photographer who has documented Haitian voodoo for over a decade. In April 2003 an executive decree by then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide sanctioned voodoo as an officially recognized religion. "It is a religion in the same way Judaism or Christianity is," said Bob Corbett, professor emeritus of philosophy at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Voodoo doesn't have a sacred text, a church, or a hierarchical structure of leaders, but it is verysimilar culturally." Ancient Traditions Voodoo, meaning "spirit," may be one of the world's oldest ancestral, nature-honoring traditions, according to Mamaissii Vivian Dansi Hounon, a member of OATH, the Organization of African Traditional Healers in Martinez, Georgia. Some anthropologists estimate that voodoo's roots in Benin—formerly Dahomey—West Africa may go back 6,000 years. Today an estimated 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide. At a voodoo ceremony, believers gather outdoors to make contact with the Loa, any of a pantheon of spirits who have various functions running the universe, much like Greek gods. There is also a responsibility to care for beloved and deified family spirits and to honora. ...
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One Buryat shaman shares his views of the future Valentin Khagdaev lives in the village Elantsi of Irkutsk district and works as.shaman. It is practically impossible to find Mr. Khagdaev at his own place. "M-A" correspondent for instance managed to catch the man after twelve miserable attempts. Thing is, the shaman conducts numerous ceremonies in various districts. With the help of Buryat songs and native musical instruments (drums, rattle, and several cult objects used in shamanism) the man calls out tengeri gods. These gods are known to help those who have health problems restore their health; they aid people to make right decisionsand so on and so forth. 
MALAYSIAN authorities have enlisted the help of witch doctors in a bid to find seven people who went missing after their helicopter was feared to have crashed in the Borneo jungles nearly two weeks ago, a report said today. The Sunday Star newspaper said several mediums and local witch doctors have been granted access to Bario, a remote village in eastern Sarawak state, to give their "interpretations and readings" to locate the aircraft and the men. Local people believe spirits of the deadinhabit the interior jungles and can be tapped through rituals to help locate the seven men, the newspaper said. 
When I was 17, I had a dream in which I forgot my own name. A question bobbed to the surface--who are you?--and just like that, all sense of what is commonly referred to as identity or the self vanished. I heard my name called, but did not recognize it. I saw my own face, but it was unfamiliar. The sounds and images faded into an infinite void from which no frame of reference could be drawn, self or otherwise. I had ceased to exist. Yet the sense of existence persisted. I instinctively understood that what was once me was now an indivisible part of this existence. This was how life would go on. The instant I pondered how I could possibly know this, since Ihad ceased to exist, I woke up. 
The ceremony begins with a Roman Catholic prayer. Then three drummers begin to play syncopated rhythms. The attendees begin to dance around a tree in the center of the yard, moving faster and harder with the rising pulse of the beat. The priest draws sacred symbols in the dust with cornmeal, and rum is poured on the ground to honor the spirits. One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet. She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great mother spirit. It is an honor tobe entered and "ridden" by a Loa, or spirit. 
