In this chapter, the mechanisms for creativity that were briefly introduced at the end of chapter 8 are considered in more detail. Generally, I refer to these procedures as shamanic mechanisms, and to the individuals who carry them out as shamans. The term ‘shaman’ is not used consistently in the anthropological literature. Some of the areas of disagreement are

1. (i) whether the term should be restricted to its original Siberian context and to probably historically related systems such as those of Mongolia and Korea or whether it should be used more widely;

2. (ii) whether the term ‘shamanic’ should be restricted to practitioners involved in individual healing or extended to those involved in wider social processes;

3. (iii) whether soul-flight, spirit-mediumship and spirit-possession vocabularies should all be classed as shamanic, or only the first.

In each case I opt for the more extended usage. The restricted usage at (i) would deny any analytic (as opposed to descriptive) usage of the term, whereas that at (ii) makes little sense within the MMF, given its general position on the individual–society dichotomy. With regard to (iii), there are undoubtedly social contexts where distinctions between different vocabularies are significant, but this does not seem to me to be sufficient justification for abandoning a useful comparative term.

It may be noted that my usage has considerable precedent, particularly in American anthropology.