Siberian Shamanism: The Tungus Word and the Soviet Purge

One influential scholar generalised the specific Siberian word into a worldwide comparative category in 1951, and a later American synthesis built an entirely modern, largely Californian practice using the same borrowed name — a case where the word travelled much further than the specific tradition it was taken from.

Mircea Eliade's 1951 universalisation of 'shamanism'; Michael Harner's Core Shamanism (1980)

The Siberian Tungus practice that gave the world the word 'shaman' itself, before it became a universal category applied far beyond its origin.

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