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More ancient than Hinduism or Buddhism, shamanism is  followed in diverse ways throughout the world by peoples fortunate enough to have been overlooked by the institutional religions. Variously described as medicine men, witch doctors or oracles, shamans perform mystical rituals to mediate between the physical and spiritual realms on behalf of their flock.
Shamanism is the traditional religion of most of Nepal's native ethnic groups, and while many have adopted at least outward forms of Hinduism or Buddhism (depending on their location), it is still widely practiced in the eastern and western hills. In Nepali, the generic words for shaman are jhañkri and dhāmī, although each ethnic group has its own term as well. Forms and practices vary from one tribe to another, but a jhañkri and dhāmī - usually carrying a double-sided drum and often wearing a headdress of peacock feathers - is always unmistakable.
 The jhañkri and dhāmī's main job is to maintain spiritual and physical balance, and to restore it when it has been upset. As a healer, he may examine the entrails of animals for signs, gather medicinal plants from the forest, perform sacrifices, exorcize demons, and chant magical incantations to invoke helper deities, or conduct any number of other rituals. As an oracle, he may fall into a trance and act as a mouthpiece of the gods, advising, admonishing and consoling listeners. As the spiritual sentry of his community, he must ward off ghosts, evil spirits and angry ancestors - sometimes by superior strength, often by trickery. All this, plus his duties as funeral director, dispenser of amulets, and teller of myths and consecrator of holy ground and so on, put dhāmī and jhañkri at the very heart of religious and social life in the hills. Little wonder that Hinduism and Buddhism have been so shaped in Nepal by these shamanistic traditions, producing a unique melting pot of religions.
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Introduction On Saman and Samanism:
 Shamans are ontological realists, meaning that they take the realms they visit and the spirits they meet to be objective independent realities. Contemporary psychological perspectives might view them as mind-created images akin to guided imagery, feuded visualizations, or Jung's active imagination. Whatever one's philosophical interpretation, it seems that shamans can access valuable intuitive wisdom from their experiences. A shaman can achieve religious status by heredity, personal quest, or vocation, the recognition and call of the individual is always an essential part of that individual's elevation to the new status. The shaman, usually a man, is essentially a medium, a mouthpiece of the spirits who became his familiars at his initiation, during which he frequently undergoes prolonged fasts, seclusion, and other ordeals leading to dreams and visions. Training by experienced shamans follows.
The main religious tasks of a shaman are healing and divination. Both are achieved either by spirit possession or by the departure of the shaman's soul to heaven or to the underworld. Shamans also divine the whereabouts of game, the position of the enemy, and the best way of safeguarding and increasing the food supply. Shamans may occupy an elevated social and economic position, especially if they are successful healers.
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Attempts to explain the shamans and their cures have been numerous. Some scholars have drawn parallels between shamanistic healing and psychoanalytic cures and have concluded that in both instances efficacious and therapeutic symbols are created, leading to psychological release and physiological curing. Several anthropologists, rejecting a theory that shamans are basically neurotics or psychotics, have suggested that shamans possess certain cognitive abilities that are distinguishably superior to those of the rest of the community. Other scholars simply explain shamanism as the precursor of a more organized religious system or as a technique for achieving ecstasy.
Symptomatic of the growing interest in shamanism, a religious phenomenon current in Eurasia, the Americas and Australia, the International Society for Shamanistic Research (ISSR) was founded at the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences held in Zagreb in 1988. The journal shaman, launched in 1993, was approved as the official publication of the ISSR in the same year. Shamanism being the complex phenomenon that it is, shamanistic studies makes fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in the history of religions, anthropology, mythology, folklore, ethnomusicology, ethnochoreography, psychiatry or ethnomedicine. Since it occurs worldwide, Shaman's focus is comprehensive: Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu-Tunguz, Korean, Japanese, Finno-Ugrian, and American Indian subjects are all discussed.
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 “Shaman” means a generalized or undifferentiated religious practitioner, one who combines general contact with the supernatural realm and application of this contact, particularly in curing. Such a practitioner is generally associated with those characteristics that have been mentioned as setting him apart qualitatively from the priest. “Priest” means a religious practitioner specializing in ritual and priest may be distinguished from a generalized practitioner or shaman, and from other specialized practitioners, such as the diviner, the prophet, and the specialized curer. It is also important to establish that, where he makes his appearance, the shaman engages not only in individual curing, but also in a particular form of group ceremony or ritual which we recognize as a shamanistic performance or séance. This shamanistic ritual typically incorporates such elements as spirit-possession, soul-flight, ventriloquism, and movement of objects, all effected by the shaman, whose behavior combines frenzy and trance, while the assembled laymen remain passive observers. A shamanistic performance in these particulars differs from a typical priestly ritual, which might be described as formal worship since it involves a reverent formalism that excludes virtuosity. In these terms, it is difficult to see in a priest a specialized shaman, for a priest's professional activities appear to fall entirely outside the range of shamanistic behavior.
The shaman, who is always male, is considered to be the most powerful of the four healers. The shaman is believed to be divinely inspired and must obey spirit messengers. These spirits come in dreams and inform men that they are to become shamans. They also reveal to these men what sacred object they are to receive and keep safe. This sacred object can be anything, such as a shell or bone and is representative of their power.
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In summary, shamans were the world's first healers, therapists, and mystics, who over tens of thousands of years developed a family of diagnostic, ritual, imaginable, medical, pharmacological, and psychotherapeutic techniques, some of which were merely superstitious but others of which clearly foreshadow contemporary methods. Shamanism should be vigorously researched and its few remaining tribal cultures protected. If not, then as the U.S. Congress's International Cultural Survival Act stated “immense undocumented repositories of ecological, biological, and pharmacological knowledge will be lost as well as immeasurable wealth of cultural, social, religious and artistic expression.” (Encyclopedia of Psychology, 1994) As shamanism exists admixed with Christianity, Islam or Buddhism in many areas, Shaman also publishes articles dealing with the relationship of shamanism to these world religions. Shaman is a semiannual journal (90-100 pages per issue) of a strictly academic nature, publishing original articles written in English. In addition, Shaman publishes reviews of current books, films, videos, records, tapes and CDs, accounts of works in progress and announcements of coming events.
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