Investigation indicates that it was in Assyria, at a
very remote age, that Shamanism had, if not its origin, at least its
fullest development. The reader who will consult Lenormant's work on
Chaldean magic will learn from it that the fear of devils and the art
of neutralizing their power were never carried to such an extent
elsewhere as in the Land of Bel. Now as Shamanism has at the present
day its stronghold among the Turanian races of Central Asia, it may
greatly strengthen the theory, somewhat doubted of late, of the early
Accadian predecessors of the Chaldeans and their Turanian origin, if we
can only prove that their magical religion was the same as that of the
Tartars. So far as my reading has aided me, I am inclined to believe
that they are identical. "Magic" went so far among the former that,
while they discovered natural remedies for natural ills, they never
doubted that one was as much the result of sorcery as the other. This
theory spread everywhere.
Shamanism, or a vague fear of invisible evils and the sorcerer, may
indeed have sprung up independently in Tartary, Central Africa,
Finland, and North America. But it is almost incredible that the use of
a drum inscribed with magical figures, the spirit flight of the angakok
or Shaman, and twenty other characteristics of the art should have
become, without transmission, common to all these countries.
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