Editing Animism (section)

=== Shamanism ===
{{Main|Shamanism}}

A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of [[Evocation|benevolent and malevolent spirits]], who typically enters into a [[trance]] state during a [[ritual]], and practices [[divination]] and [[healing]].<ref>"[https://web.archive.org/web/20200311005110/https://www.lexico.com/definition/shaman Shaman]." ''[[Lexico]]''. [[Oxford University Press]] and [[Dictionary.com]]. Retrieved 25 July 2020.</ref>

According to [[Mircea Eliade]], shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments and illnesses by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul or spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters [[otherworld|supernatural realms]] or [[Plane (esotericism)|dimensions]] to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds or dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment.<ref name="Eli72">{{cite book|author-link=Mircea Eliade |last=Eliadem |first=Mircea |date=1972 |title=[[Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy]] |series=Bollingen Series LXXVI. |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |pages=3–7}}</ref>

Abram, however, articulates a less supernatural and much more ecological understanding of the shaman's role than that propounded by Eliade. Drawing upon his own field research in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas, Abram suggests that in animistic cultures, the shaman functions primarily as an intermediary between the human community and the more-than-human community of active agencies—the local animals, plants, and landforms (mountains, rivers, forests, winds, and weather patterns, all of which are felt to have their own specific [[sentience]]). Hence, the shaman's ability to heal individual instances of disease (or imbalance) within the human community is a byproduct of their more continual practice of balancing the reciprocity between the human community and the wider collective of animate beings in which that community is embedded.{{sfn|Abram|1996|pp=[https://archive.org/details/spellofsensuousp00abra_0/page/3 3–29]}}