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PÁSZTORY ESZTER: Sámánizmus és észak-amerikai indián művészet

VASTOKAS, J. M. 1

974 The ShamanicTree of Life. Arts Canada 1

84-1

87:1

25-1

49. WARDWELL, A. 1

964 yakutat South: Indian Art of the Northwest Coast. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago. WASSON, R. G. I 968 Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. New York: Harcourt. WATERMAN, TT 1930 The Paraphernalia of the Duwamish 'Spirit-Canoe' Ceremony. Indian Notes, Museum of the American Indian 7(2-4). WINGERT P. S. 1

940 American Indian Sculpture. New York: J.J. Augustin. ESTHER PASZTORy Shamanism and North American Indian art Every so often a specific word, or concept, known only to a handful of specialists emerges from relative obscurity and is applied to an increasingly broad range of phenomena. It becomes a magic word that transforms many a lacklustre subject into one that glows with meaning. One of these words is „shamanism". Shamanism once referred to a specific religious system in northern Siberia. It was eventually extended to include religious specialists in societies elsewhere in the world if those individuals entered ecstatic trances similar to those of Siberian shamans. The word, as now used, is often misleading because it refers both to very specific and very general characteristics, resulting in considerable confusion. Discussions of shamanistic art are equally fraught with problems. Art works are often used to illustrate shamanistic beliefs, whether they occur in truly shamanistic contexts or not. Moreover, certain motifs associated with shamanism in some areas are called shamanistic wherever they occur, even if their context has nothing to do with shamanism. One of the reasons that non-shamanistic arts are often used to illustrate the concepts of shamanism is that not everywhere is shamanism associated with art. Although some shamanistic trances are mixed-media dramatic events, shamanism is primarily linked with aural traditions and only secondarily with the visual. The dominant values of shamanism are individualism, variation, and movement. The arts most basic to shamanism are the ones in harmony with these values: the temporal art of music, song, and dance. Since the concern of shamanism is with states of transition, the forms of ritual objects are rarely important in themselves, and little effort is expended to make them aesthetically pleasing or precise in meaning.