Doug M Wrote:
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> I don't know how to quantify it, but it was
> certainly there. This is most often seen in the
> totemism found all over Africa in the form of
> animal topped canes, animal charms and amulets
> among other things.
Totemism is not really shamanic.



If I were to guess, I would
> say that among most of the animistic religions
> that existed in Africa there was some form of
> shamanism in it.

Again, one can have animism without shamanism.

We all know of the "witch"
> doctors who practiced magic and medicine and went
> into to trances, but this is the same tradition
> that is embodied in the neter hike or heka from
> ancient Egypt.

This is very general, do you have specific examples? As I posed in my first post, I know that the Khoesan did practice shamanism-- but they did so particularly when they were hunter-gatherers, which is to be expected because all over the world shamanism is associated with hunter and gatherer societies. What I really wanted to find out was if pastoral societies (Masai for example) and agriculturalists (Mande, Dogon, etc. and btw Egyptian) had strong shamanic elements.



We also know that the Egyptians
> burned a lot of incense and possibly even used the
> Nile Lily as a mild hallucinogenic. Temples in
> Egypt were designed to invoke the spirit (ka) of
> whichever diety was worshipped and the inner
> sanctum was supposed to be the living house of the
> god, hence Hikuptah house of the spirit of ptah,
> the living word. Likewise, the pharoah did not
> just make take on names of the gods for no reason,
> these names were meant to show that the pharoah
> was the living essence on earth of that diety.
> The rituals and ceremonies of the pharoah were
> designed to promote this relationship, which would
> include dances, priests and priestesses taking on
> the roles of the gods and the high priest invoking
> the power of said diety in the person of the
> pharoah through the proper passages from various
> texts.

As I pointed out before, these seem more like ancestor worship rather than shamanism. The usual pattern in shamanism is for the "soul" (what I call "animistic force" in Mesoamerica) of the shaman to go the the other levels of the universe not to call down the gods. There is a possible similarity in that one of the animistic forces of deities could take possession of humans-- for example drunks were possessed by the "tonalli" of one of the 400 Rabbits-- the gods of drunkeness. But this kind of thing does not seem to be what happens in the Egyptian examples.

>
> You must understand that it is hard to quantify
> many elements of African traditional religions
> because of the impact of wars, disease, slavery
> and the conversion to Christianity and Islam.
Still, there have been any number of anthropological studies of African religions.

Thanks at any rate.

Bernard

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> Edited 2 times. Last edit at 08/14/07 05:34PM by
> Doug M.