Shamanism
has probably been at the root of all religions; there was a great deal
of it in all those of the Semitic races, and, admitting this, it is not
difficult to see how from Chaldea and Babylon it may have found its way
into Africa, where black savages, who would have rejected a higher
religion, would grasp greedily at what they sympathized with. The only
real difference between the Voodoo and Pow-wow practices is that the
former is, so to speak, the _blacker_ and more revolting. This is
because a low state of culture has induced the believers in it to
retain more of the coarse witchcraft on which Shamanism was based, or
out of which it grew.
For wherever Shamanism exists, there is to be found, in company with
it, an older sorcery, or witchcraft, which it professes to despise, and
against which it does battle. As the Catholic priest, by Bible
incantations or scriptural magic, exorcises devils and charms cattle or
sore throats, disowning the darker magic of older days, so the Shaman
acts against the real _wizard_. Rink tells us that among the
heathen Eskimo the Shaman is sacred, and witchcraft a deadly crime, but
that the latter is the secret survival of a more ancient religion.
_Voodoo_, whether practiced, as it is to-day, in Philadelphia, New
York, Havana, or Senegambia, deals with alleged devils, poisons,
chicken bones, the ivory root, unnatural orgies,--all, in short, that
can startle and astonish ignorant natures; it is the combination of the
oldest faith with its successor.
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