Medicine bags are essentially a shaman toolbox. It is typically constructed from leather and carries the most meaningful and useful items of a shaman. These can include totems, herbs, ritual tools etc.
Intro/creation of medicine bags
http://www.ofspirit.com/maggiewahls2.htm
I'm not against or for your topic. I know that this form of magick is becoming more and more popular and the term shaman is nearly as common as witch these days. I would just like to clarify something.
Shamans are from Northern Europe and Northern Asia. People erroneously confuse it with Native American medicine, which it is not.
Native American medicine men are not shamans. Anyone that claims they are a Native American shaman is in fact a plastic shaman (artificial/fake and likely full of it). Medicine is something that every Native American family knows a little of, but medicine people take approximately 10 years of study before the title is officially earned and its full practice is kept secret, only passed down to their predecessor. Family passed down medicine verses a bonified medicine person is like the difference of being a medic verses a doctor. The medic tends to be far more unorthodox in his/her ways even though it's using the same system. Another way to compare it is the difference between a witch and a priestess. And no, I'm not speaking of coven priestesses, but the traditional goddess temple priestesses of ancient times that dedicated their lives to the service of the deity.
Another big issue is the belief that all tribes work with medicine wheels, totems, and the like, when they don't. Every group is different with very different mythology, beliefs, and practices. So if you are interested in "shamanism" or "Native American medicine" please look into the exact culture you are interested in and learn those specific ways.
I should have been more specific when I referred to tribal communities I meant in Northern and southern asia. The south American tribe that I referred to is Shamanism and religion among the Selk'nam (Ona), Yámana (Yaghan), and Halakwalip (Alacaluf) of the Tierra del Fuego, on the southernmost edge of South America—all descended from the earliest migrants to the subcontinent which appear to represent survivals of archaic ideological systems. But many of the same archaic traits also appear sometimes attenuated or overlaid with elaborations resulting from outside influences or internal dynamics, often little modified from their ancestral forms—across the whole South American continent, not excluding the high culture areas of the Andes. These common traits include familiar motifs of Siberian shamanism: mystic vocation; initiatory sickness; skeletonization, dismemberment, and contemplation by the shaman of his or her own bones; recruitment of supernatural helpers; rock crystals as manifestations of helping spirits; marriage to spirit wives, or, in the case of female shamans, spirit husbands; "rape" of the soul; sickness through soul loss or intrusion of illness projectiles into the body by magical means, and, conversely, restoration of health, in the first case through retrieval of the patient's strayed or abducted soul by the shaman, and in the second by sucking out the disease-causing foreign object; stratified upperworld and underworld through whose levels the shaman travels in celestial flight or in descent into the chthonic regions; world trees as sky supports with both phallic and uterine associations; great ancestral First Shamans and culture heroes as shaman/transformers; and divination of future events, weather, or favorable hunting conditions.
Although with some minor differences it does have a lot in common with ASIAN tribal societies. I do not believe I referenced north American tribes but I can see how I failed to distinguish apart from them. I personally am not a shaman however I have had the opportunity to briefly be instructed by one and do try to follow some of his teachings. Thank you for making that point I can see how it was very confusing
I felt it needed mentioning because I know how people are around here. You seem like you know your stuff and it's a well made thread. I just noticed cultures were not defined and if things aren't made clear, people assume. I appreciate the added effort to include that detail.
No problem! I appreciate you pointing that out. In my attempt not to get tribe specific I was too vague. It's hard to give a general overview because like your Wiccan priest analogy you can also relate the two by how much they differ from region and group to group. There's so many traditions of shamanism that when trying to give a general over view it's often confusing.
I agree, and unfortunately, many people do take initiative to research on their own to learn those things. They read a few articles online and think they know it all.
The only useful outcome of an online search into shamanism would be to narrow down which type of shamanism one wishes to pursue. After that the only way to truly learn anything in depth on the subject requires an off site teacher or course of some kind not to mention years of study. Even after learning from a shaman over the course of two weeks I can only provide an very general over view.
Thank you for your insight and information. It never crossed my mind that maybe this is something I should explore. I haveexperienced numerous signs that you've mentioned, without seeking out, attempting or practicing them. Very interesting information to further my research.
-Extreme natural empathy (knowing how another feels without their explanation and sharing that feeling)
-Life altering event as described above (several unfortunate near-death experiences)
-Spiritual medium abilities
-natural musical talents with instruments such as drums and flutes
-other psychic abilities such as visions and astral projection
Forgive me if I am incorrect, and I certainly would love to be corrected if I am, but while the Native Americans did not use the word 'shaman' to describe their priests or medicine men, their practices are strikingly similar to those of European shaman so much that the Europeans who immigrated to American, while definitely not condoning their behaviour, donned the name to them.
My father who claims to be a shaman, uses the word interchangeably to describe both his practises of European Shamanism and Native American beliefs, despite the fact that these things are different.
Although any self respecting full-blooded Native American would never describe himself as a shaman, but rather a medicine man. But I have heard the term to be applied to legitimate workings from people I know to be legitimate.
So the term is now used as blanket term rather than a description of an exact practise.
Please correct me if I am wrong, because the term has caused me confusion in the past, for a while I even thought the word described people who were Norse paganists as well ( though I now know that this is incorrect )
