Sunday, July 11, 2010

A shamanic medicine piece




Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world.[2] A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman (pronounced /ˈʃɑːmən/ "SHAH-men"or /ˈʃeɪmən/ "SHAY-men").[3] Shamanism encompasses the belief that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment.[4] This necklace is constructed using an elk's bone, a crystal I collected in my travels through the Himalayas, a small vial containing a tiny bone and a hessonite drop, small hessonite beads on one side and jasper beads in the other side, and it is all tied together with a ribbon of cream-colored fair trade silk from Nepal. The wire I used to connect the pieces is copper.

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