I chose not explore one shamanic culture, but rather shine a spot-light on the androgynous nature of the shamanic life and practice in it's different manifestations, today, in the past, and around the world, especially in: Asia, North, Central and South America, and Africa. In this paper I will try, and give an overview of the androgynous element of shamanism, and shamanic cultures as it is displayed in different cultures around the world. It is mostly through ethnographic material, and mythology that I will try and track different rites and practices prevalent in the shamanic world. The ambisexual shaman as healer, oracle, ritual leader, mirrored the image of the ambisexual deity. It is through countless archeological excavations that we learn of the place of androgyny in shamanic life, ritual, and myth around the world. He has also named 47 tribes in Eurasia, Africa, Madagascar, Burma, India, Indonesia, the Near East, Northeast Asia, the South Seas, and Americas who had ritualized transvestism. These beliefs and practices have spread from the Mesopotamian highlands west to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, Europe, and Africa and east to Indonesia, South Asia, the Far East, Australia, Oceania, North America, and South America. Hermann Baumann has named thirty seven particular regions where mythologies and worship of ambisexual deities and powers existed. It is in those years which gender role started being linked to biological sex, and a kinship society was formed. The androgyne as a symbol in shamanic cultures is usually given a very clear figurative expression, in contrast to, for example, the ying-yang Taoist symbol which points to the same truth in a much more abstract manner.Īmbisexual deities are known to have been worshiped since Upper Paleolithic times (33000 BCE and 17000 BCE). Archaic symbols always have an ontological significance. In the archaic level of culture, symbolism is sacred for it points to something which says something that is a 'Truth' about the world and it's structure, a revelation of the this structure is a revelation of the divine, which the structure of the world is a reflection of. Although the merging of the male and female forces, or rather the transcendence of them, is incorporated to a certain extent in all mystical traditions, it is in the shamanic tradition that we find a more explicit version of the androgynous practice. It is through shamanic cultures which maintain the archaic androgynous structure in their practice and worship that we are able to learn about this topic. The sexual diversity of shamanic culture, as well as the arising sexual diversity of current post-modern times allows us to open ourselves to the endless ways in which the gender and sexuality continuum manifests itself, outside of the dichotomous male-female categories. While androgyny itself is 'a concept breaker', as it combines the male and female contrary concepts, it is quite easy to get caught in one manifestation of it, for example 'crossdressing'. I wish to go beyond the usual conception of androgyny. The term sex will strictly describe the biological reality of a person, and sexuality will be used to describe an individual sexual orientation and behavior. The usage of the word gender in this research paper will be to describe the set of characteristics, which defines maleness, femaleness, or any additional gender category, from the range of categories in any given culture. When I use the term 'shamanic cultures', what I mean is the way shamanic culture prevailed through the years and in different parts of the world, and not necessarily in the way it prevails today. I will try and show different ways in which the transcendence of gender categories manifests, and try to answer what purpose do these practices, rituals, and myths serve? My focus in this paper will be on shamanism, and shamanic cultures. In this paper I wish to explore the transcendence of gender categories as a means for entering a different state of consciousness through ritual, theurgy, trance, worship, and healing. The exploration of the cultural and social construction of gender is usually done in the context of social liberation, but it is liberation of a deeper sense that I would like to touch on. The mythology, rituals, and practices which challenge the socially constructed perception of gender, is a cross-cultural phenomenon, many times related to rites of a mystical and religious nature. As other socially and culturally constructed categorization systems, the arbitrary perception of gender is many times presented as 'natural' and universal. Gender is one of very basic human classification, identification, and self definitions.

Shaman alternate spirit wolf forms