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At the center of more traditional African tribal religions is the concept of a universal force of life that finds its expression in all things—human, animal, vegetable, and mineral. The conviction that there is a oneness of all life forms, that both humans and everything else in the environment draw spiritual nourishment from the same sacred source is now known to be a common expression of shamanism and the teaching of tribal spirit “doctors.” However, when the early European explorers and settlers encountered individuals such as the Swahili mganga, the Bantu nganga, titles which translated loosely as “doctor,” they overlooked the herbal and other healing practices of the tribal doctors to focus upon their communication with the spirits of the oneness of all life. Europeans considered such personifications of the sacred source to be like that of witches and their use of spirit familiars. Hence, the native African shamans and herbal healers became known as “witchdoctors.”

Voodoo (Vodou, Vodoun, Vudu, or Vudun in Benin, Togo, southeastern Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Senegal; also Vodou in Haiti) is a name attributed to a traditionally unwritten West African spiritual system of faith and ritual practices (art by Ricardo Pustanio).

Originally, the term “shaman” applied to the spirit doctors and exorcists of the Tungus of Siberia, but in recent years the title applies as well to the medicine men and women of the various North American tribes who also serve as mediums, healers, and visionaries for their people. Shamanic methods are remarkably similar through the world, even for those peoples whose cultures are quite different in many other respects, and who are separated by oceans and continents.

The anthropologist Ivar Lissner, who spent a great deal of time among the Tungus of Siberia, as well as native peoples in North America, defines a shaman as one “who knows how to deal with spirits and influence them…. The essential characteristic of the shaman is his excitement, his ecstasy and trancelike condition…. [The elements that constitute this ecstasy are] a form of self-severance from mundane existence, a state of heightened sensibility, and spiritual awareness. The shaman loses outward consciousness and becomes inspired or enraptured. While in this state of enthusiasm, he sees dreamlike apparitions, hears voices, and receives visions of truth. More than that, his soul sometimes leaves his body to go wandering.”

A crucial element in shamanism is the ability to rise above the constrictions and restraints of linear time, to free oneself from the concept of time as being composed of minutes, hours, and days. Author John Collier opines that at one time everyone possessed such freedom, but the mechanized world took it away from us. “In solitary, mystical experience many of ourselves do enter another time dimension,” he writes. But the “frown of clockwork time” demands that we return to chronological time. The shaman, however, recognizes that this other time dimension originated “within the germ plasm [containing hereditary elements] and the organic rhythms … of eternity.”

Achieving a deep trance state appears to be the most effective way that shamans, medicine priests, and Voodoo practitioners regularly abandon linear time restrictions in order to gain entrance to that other dimension of time. Trances permit them to travel with their spirit helpers to a place free of “clockwork time,” where they gain the knowledge to predict the future, to heal, and to relay messages of wisdom from the spirit people.

Africans who still follow the old traditional ways have little sense of individualism. From the perspective of those whose worldview is one of complete unity with all things, each individual is simply a member of his or her tribal community. As such, men and women often identify themselves with names that represent tribal affiliation rather than parental heritage. At the same time, reverence toward one’s ancestors is extremely important. A tribal member may receive a vision from an ancestor that will dictate a particular course of action and receive preference over any advice offered by a living relative. Some families retain body parts of their departed relatives in containers for prayer rituals, and regular offerings are made at burial sites. Ancestral masks are commonly used in ceremonial rites to honor those in whose bloodline the family recognizes its debt of physical heritage. Since in the traditional tribal cosmology death is not the end, but merely a transition to another form of life, one may frequently encounter the spirit of his or her ancestors.

Many anthropologists and psychiatrists who have spent time studying tribal witchdoctors praise their techniques and abilities. Dr. Raymond Prince of the University of Toronto spent three and a half years with the Nigerian tribe of Yoruba and became quite familiar with the powers of several of their witchdoctors. Dr. Prince observed that Yoruba witchdoctors were men of wisdom whose creative powers had passed down from their ancestors. Various forms of tranquilizing drugs were discovered hundreds of years ago by the Yorubas, who live inland from the Gulf of Guinea.

Dr. Prince found that these native doctors were using vitamins while Americans had only begun to experiment with them. Even more important, the Canadian professor believed, was their treatment of mental patients. Tribes people with a mental illness are treated like human beings; they are not locked away behind iron bars or stone walls, as Americans and Europeans are accustomed to doing.