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To truly understand the meaning of shamanism one must uncover the original definition. The word shaman comes from the language of the Evenk, a small Tungus-speaking group of hunters and reindeer herders from Siberia. It was first used only to designate a religious specialist from this region. By the beginning of the 20th century it was already being applied to a variety of North America and South American practices from the present and the past. Today people have gone as far as defining the word shaman as any human that acknowledges that he/she has had contact with spiritual entities. Well at least the term still refers to human beings.
The Siberian shaman's soul is said to be able to leave the body and travel to other parts of the cosmos, particularly to an upper world in the sky and a lower world underground. How can anyone know what the people of Mesoamerica were seeing if they in fact were even in these states of trance. A broader definition is that shamans would include any......

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Approximate Word Count: 1702
Approximate Pages: 7 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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