Editorial 04/14

Powers and Principalities

Okay, in the past few letters from the editor, I've been looking at magic. Most of the discussions concerned the wizard archetype, but there are other kinds of spell casters out there. I received a note about Shamans in the feedback section, so I figured it would be a good idea to talk about them, and their more civilized counterparts, priests. (Hey, someone gave a topic idea free and clear, I'm not turning that service down.)

Typically what distinguishes a wizard from a priest of some sort (and I'm including Shamans in that grouping for now for reasons which will hopefully become clear) by the source of their power. Wizards tend to draw on unknown forces, bending them to their wills to create magical effects. Priests, however, have a much more personal relationship with the source of their power. The power they draw from is intelligent, or at least quasi-sentient, and has it's own desires and goals. If the priest serves those desires, great. If not, the priest may lose the power to work magic all together. In addition, a priest is limited in what (s)he can do by the nature of the power that grants the magic. A god of healing makes a priest that can fix a broken leg, but isn't going to do much for the priest who wants to rain fire on her/his enemies. A shaman who wants the crops to grow isn't going to get far contacting a spirit of a volcano, but will need a rain spirit, or a ground spirit or something similar.

Now, what distinguishes a priest from a shaman? You could say that the difference is that priests are civilized and shamans are not, but you'd probably be wrong in many cases. Priests can function in a wild setting among barbarians, while a shaman could work in a city setting (although this is more rare in literature than a wild priest).

The primary difference as I see it is in the nature of the relationship between the devotee and the power. How does a priest gain power? (s)he prays, worships, leads a flock to follow the power in question, essentially, (s)he is a servant of the power. Priests are normally organized by some kind of hierarchy, the nature depending on the nature of the worshipped power. They have to follow rules set down by the power, or they get in a lot of trouble. It is a relationship sort of similar to an employer and employee, with the priests being like middle managers. They have authority, but it is granted by someone higher up, and if they displease the higher ups, there is going to be trouble.

The shaman, on the other hand, sees the relationship of being between equals. When the shaman wants something, (s)he may perform rituals, but they tend to be the method of communicating, not something done to make the powers happy. The shaman negotiates with the powers, to access their abilities. Sometimes the powers the shaman works with want something done, so the shaman does it, not because (s)he was told to do so, but because now the powers will owe her/him a favor (s)he can call in later. Generally the shamans refer to the powers they work with as spirits rather than gods. In practice there is little difference but it helps to reinforce the difference in the relationships between shaman and spirit from those between priest and god.

Now, shamans don't just exist in the pages of fantasy literature. There is a lot of real world shamanism, which I'll take a look at next time.