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in: Spirits, Magic, Practices

Shamanism

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Shamanism is the art of culling favor with the minor world-driving spirits, or "little gods," to perform esoteric feats.[1] Those who primarily utilize this form of magic are known as Shamans or Totemists.[2]

Methodology[]

Shamanism is a divine and interaction oriented school. They are heavily-reliant on their relationship to and strength of the spirits in an area. Generally Shamans are going to try and trade their way up the spiritual hierarchy. For example, one could start by building favor with the "Woma Python" spirit to get a meeting with the "Snake" spirit; then building favor with that "Snake" spirit to get a meeting with the "Reptile" spirit, and so on.[3]

Spirits can be manipulated through the pre-negotiated use of symbols or gestures and a power source of some kind. Their uses can range from anything like picking locks, moving items, and driving people away to traveling to the Spirit World. But spirits can have their loyalty waver and depending on the number of practitioners they can be a finite resource within an area.[4]


Some shamans use trophies of defeated creatures to draw on their powers, a bit like a Valkyrie.[5]

One Eastern brand of Shamanism focuses on carving totem statues to attract specific types of spirit. These can be large statues placed around a building or small charms carried on one's person.[6][7][8][2]

Because spirits come in different categories Shamanism could be seen as the root of many different arts, such as Chronomancy, which utilizes spirits of time, and Pyromancy, which uses spirits of fire.

Notable Shamans[]

Dabblers:

References[]

  1. ↑ Shamanism
    “Seven gods live in a grain of rice.” Spirits infuse everything, representing the material, immaterial and abstract forces that play into a given thing being what it is. Shamans communicate with these spirits and powers to invoke effects. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 “My family’s nothing major,” he said.  “We had to really stretch to even get me in.  But my best friend is attending.”

    He looked over at the other table.  His friend was a really shaggy-haired kid with a bad complexion who had a bright smile that shone past the shag and skin.  He had joined a group with three girls around their age, Fiona, Melody, and Raquel.

    Zach frowned at his friend, who was too preoccupied with his groupmates to notice.

    Which, like… Zach was at a table with three girls, but he seemed more miffed at his buddy abandoning him than he was at having his own share of female company.

    Verona rolled her eyes, flipped through the book, and asked, absently, “You’re a totemist?”

    “Fancy way of saying shaman, which can be fancy.  Sal’s family does it fancy.  Not for my family.  But I’ve got good fundamentals.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.9
  3. ↑ Shamans are interaction-heavy, quasi-religious in execution. They don't worship gods, however, but directly tap into and communicate with the 'little gods' or the spirits that drive things. At their most basic level, they can bid the spirit of a tree to emerge in a manifest form and have conversations with it, or ask it to do something.

    Most shamans, especially those who settle in an area, are going to want to trade their way up the ladder. The hierarchy of spirits is such that, say, your pet snake Nibbles has a Nibbles spirit, (and Nibbles spirit is driven by lesser, incoherent hunger, heat, wellness spirits, but we won't go that small), and Nibbles spirit is influenced in a broader, general sense by a woma python spirit, which is influenced in turn by an even broader, general, (and greater) snake spirit, and the snake spirit is under the reptile spirit and the predator spirit, and those are under the fauna spirit and that's under the life spirit and so on.

    So you set up or earn an audience with greater spirits and buy yourself influence. Powerful shamans who have an area they have custody over might well have a Fisher King effect, where the spirits they curry favor with or earn favor with can influence an area. You could pick anything you could name, really. If you pick snakes and encourage snakes then snakes are going to appear more in the area, they'll be taken more as pets, there'll be more snake tattoos. Sometimes this is abstract, and it's not always 100% easy to follow. Fertility might increase, risky childbirths might start to turn out more fortunate, people might come back from the brink of death more often, and mouse populations might start to drop as Snake wins its local war against Mouse... with consequences as the things Mouse has domain over start to be influenced.

    A good scenario to point to is the existence of, say, the centipede spirit in Japan, which has been tied symbolically to industrialization and urbanization. It finds itself at odds with the mountain spirit, which has swept up the role of representing nature. There are shrines to each in a town, but as they're neglected and shamans fail in their duties, they each sweep up other ideas or have excess power that finds outlets, and weird shit happens. The mountain spirit starts producing ghosts and this becomes its unconscious expression of head-butting against the centipede, as more dead people become ghosts in the region, and the ghosts linger longer, and drive people out of the urban areas or make living in the city harder and scarier. Meanwhile, the centipede is doing much the same, but its outlet becomes the killer in the town, who ritually murders children (in the habit, not the practice sense, but...), who grows more powerful and monstrous. The small town with two dusty, overgrown shrines finds that a lot more people are seeing ghosts, dying mysteriously, or going missing while wandering at night. (Draoidhe/'Druids' are more the sub-/alternate subset of shamans who focus on these big, abstract, lesser-god style forces, but they'd start out more shaman-like and are essentially shamans of a different track.)

    On the upside, however, cultivating a spirit and encouraging it can have positive effects. A Canadian Shaman might make bids and offer favors to a prosperity spirit, to encourage the finding of an oil deposit deep underground. Such a spirit might be fickle and unreliable, however, prone to making demands or taking as easily as it gives.

    On the smaller level (and more favored by the itinerant and not-major shamans) is just knowing the things to say, having pre-arranged payments to spirits, or having spirits bottled or otherwise contained in vessels for use (limited or until the item breaks) for use of their influence over their domain. They can also transplant spirits or turn one into another (and have that execute IRL; say some words, break a charm, the smoke filling an area becomes fire), but this requires pretty specialized knowledge of a spirit type. I'll stress that its' an interaction-heavy school of practice, so most of the time you're going to need to have conversations or negotiate the price to get more complicated things to happen. With drawing of symbols and pre-arranged gestures it's pre-negotiated and the effects are generally smaller

    Shamans are also one of the few practices who can just go and visit the spirit world; but this is hard and requires that some stuff be pre-established or else it's pretty harsh. In areas with shrines or other token nods to the spirit in question, it's a nice visit to what might be an especially cloudy or misty translation of the real world, where spirits appear like kids with masks and traditional clothes and where the greater spirits have a place to live. In areas without, it could be as bad as wading through a knee-deep tide of rodents, through maze-like corridors with steam and polluted exhaust spraying inconsistently through pipes, to reach the place where the mother rat is consorting with the human spirit, where prosperity is locked in mortal combat with destitution and the methamphetamine spirit is loudly and excitedly arguing how he should take the highest seat in the heart-chamber, and Community's answers are tired and hoarse from having fought so long, to so little effect. - Wildbow comment on Reddit
  4. ↑ The Shaman works at the ground level, but works with the 'little people', the spirits that drive the world. A common practice, with a lot of individual exchanges and interactions, and links of varying sorts to all other practices. Most practitioners will pick up a bit of shamanism, and a shaman can do a bit of everything, if they can make the appropriate deals or payments to spirits.

    Think: Merchant. Buying and selling on an individual level to affect change, though the currency of a given type of spirit may change. Deals with a lot of individual currencies and subsystems. Unlike a priest (who keeps one major account of questionable value), the shaman has the opportunity to be predatory, can keep track, and can delve into stuff like real estate (hallows), investment and stockbrokerage (picking a spirit to work with on bets they'll get more powerful). - Wildbow on Reddit
  5. ↑ Void 7.11
  6. ↑ “So what does a totemist do?” Verona asked. “Mostly we stick to Eastern traditions,” Zach said.  “But people get the wrong ideas when we talk about statues.  You think of statues walking around, when really, we’re making big, visible signposts for the spirts to follow.  Put the right statue in front of a house, and raise the prosperity of the house.” - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.9
  7. ↑ “I’ve got-” Zachariah started, but his voice wasn’t strong.  He held what looked like a keychain, with things that weren’t keys on it.  Each of the things was a figurine, about three inches long, carved stone.  He rested his wrist on the back of the bench, figurines dangling. “I see… bookish old man-” “Tutelary Statue.” “And lion dog?” “Komainu.” “And gargoyle?” “Grotesque.  It’s a gargoyle only if it has a spout.” “And naked lady totem.” He wrapped his fist around the charms, hiding them, and brought them to rest on his chest, as he lay on the bench. “It’s not me,” he said.  “I did it for a joke, and to stay sane while carving my… I dunno, I’ve done easily a hundred carvings over the years.  Then my dad said I should ride the wave of success, whatever form it took.” “If it’s funny, why not go with it?” Verona asked. “The joke got old for me a while ago,” he said, arm draped over his eyes.  “It’s not me.  I’m not that guy.  Salvador is that guy.” Lucy turned to look over at Salvador, who was kissing the doll his group had put together. - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.9
  8. ↑ “In the student guide, you were down as ‘hot girl totems’, right, Zach?” Verona asked. “I didn’t realize that would get put out there for everyone to see.  They do that a lot.  Salvador says it’s so we know who to talk to when we’re networking.  I did it for fun.  I figured if I had to spend hours carving something, it’d be a babe, right?  Way better than an old dude or monk reading a book. [...] I made one, mostly for fun, and it sold.  Other people expressed interest.  So that was what I did for most of last year.  I’m not sure if they have as much oomph as a tutelary spirit or komainu, but Salvador said I should put it down when filling out the form.” “Ah,” Lucy said. “Salvador thinks I should go all-in on it. [...] I’m taking a break from making statues.  I made some to sell to help cover tuition, so… think I’m going to wait six months before making more.” “What do they do?” Verona asked.  “And you’re dodging the question.” “You’re asking about buying them before you know what they do,” Lucy said. “Bachelor practitioners buy ’em, and it’s not because I’m that great an artist,” Zach said.  “They might make it easier to find a date that’s willing to come to your place, I guess?” He looked increasingly awkward as he got into it. “Might make it hard to get a long-term girlfriend,” Lucy observed.  “Giant… are they wood?  Naked?” “I give them clothes.  Technically.  And I do both stone and wood.” “Would you do a guy?” Verona asked.  “Skimpy loincloth?” “I don’t – no.  I don’t know,” he said.  “Can we drop it?” “Dropped,” Lucy said. “If you can’t talk about it, you probably shouldn’t go all-in like Salvador wants,” Avery commented.  “All I’m going to say.” “Yeahhhh,” Zachariah replied. - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.9
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