For over a decade, UC Davis anthropologist Manvir Singh has traveled around the globe to study a ubiquitous phenomenon that he says transcends nearly all societies: shamanism. By studying the healing traditions and cultural practices of societies across continents, Singh with his research hopes to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.
“It’s easy to ignore how many traditions that feel familiar to us resonate in contexts that seem foreign,” said Singh, an assistant professor of anthropology at the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. “And conversely, many of the traditions that seem foreign and strange share deep similarities with practices we take for granted.”
In his forthcoming book Shamanism: The Timeless Religion, Singh chronicles the origin and persistence of shamanic practices through human time and cultures, from Ice Age hunters to modern forager-horticulturalist societies to the offices of CEOs and hedge fund managers in Silicon Valley.
What is shamanism?
Singh describes shamanism as a cognitive technology. In his research, he approaches the practice through the lens of the “client,” or the person seeking out a shaman’s services.
“For the client, shamanism offers a rich, sensorially vivid experience, creating a sense that the specialist can control some source of uncertainty, like illness or the weather,” he said. “As someone who thinks a lot about cognitive science and the mind, I see shamanism foremost as a potent mental technology.”
Throughout the book, Singh grapples with the question of shamanism’s authenticity. Is it something that works? Or is it all a ruse potentially bolstered by the happenstance of chance? The answer is much more complex than “yes” or “no.”
“I often get people asking me if I think shamanism is good for societies or bad,” Singh said. “A better way to think about it, I’d argue, is that it’s like all technologies: morally neutral, but with the potential to be deployed for helpful or harmful ends.”
Understanding shamanism today
According to Singh, humans continuously redevelop shamanic practices. Where uncertainty exists, shamanic practices are likely to follow.
Whether it’s treatment of an illness or the unpredictability of weather and financial markets, Singh argues that humans seek out “experts” to help deal with the uncertainties of life. Often, these “experts” are considered superbeings, deviating from normal humanness to attain a sense of otherness that in some cases borders on the supernatural.
A spiritual shaman might gain this otherness through intense initiation rituals and by practicing asceticism. For a money manager — a “shaman-analogue,” according to Singh — it might come from working 70–100-hour weeks and depriving themselves of sleep.
“With this book, I’m making the argument that shamanism reflects universal aspects of human psychology, and how, despite our tendency to associate shamanism with remote societies and the deep past, elements of it will always recur,” Singh said.
A global exploration
A globe-trotting, intellectual investigation, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion reads like a comprehensive guide and introduction to the practice. Singh unravels its ancient origins and analyzes its modern-day practices and echoes across the globe. It’s an intimate and engaging adventure.
We join Singh as he crawls through ancient caves in France to glimpse some of humanity’s oldest art from the Paleolithic Age, including perhaps the earliest depiction of a shaman-like figure. We learn alongside him during his Ph.D. years working with the Mentawai and their shamans on the Indonesian island of Siberut. We follow his investigation into practices of neo-shamanism in places like Burning Man and the astounding and impactful application of some of its practices to fields like psychiatry. And we learn about the complex history of psychedelic use in shamanic traditions.
“I think the primitivist imagery that’s so often entangled with shamanism does a disservice to our understanding of how compelling this practice is, how widespread it is and how important it has been in so many different contexts,” Singh said. “It pushes it to be far-off when, in fact, it’s much more widely resonant.”
For Singh, this idea is especially salient when comparing modern Western medicine to medicine in other parts of the world.
“One thing that this investigation has taught me is that our own ways of healing — the clinical hospital encounter that is relatively solitary — is only one way of healing,” Singh said. “A value in studying the diversity of healing traditions is to understand that there are many other ways to organize healing — some of which are much more celebratory and social.”
Shamanism: The Timeless Religion will be released by Alfred A. Knopf on May 20, 2025.
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