Observations placeholder
Mircea Eliade - Sami out of body flight
Identifier
010975
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Mircea Eliade – Shamanism Archaic techniques of ecstasy
According to the seventeenth century authors, confirmed by folklore, the Lapp shamans held their séances entirely naked, like many other Arctic peoples and attained genuine cataleptic trances during which their souls were believed to descend to the underworld to escort the dead or to seek the souls of the sick. This descent to the land of the shades began by an ecstatic journey to a mountain as among the Altaians; the mountain, as we know, symbolises the Cosmic Axis and hence is at the Centre of the World. The Lapp magicians of our day still remember the miracles of their ancestors, who could fly through the air
The source of the experience
SamiConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Communication with a Spirit helperCommunication with bodied souls
Communication with disembodied souls
Disembodied soul
Psychopomp
Soul loss
Underworld