Journals & Publications
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| H. SIDKY., Shamans and Mountain Spirits in Hunza |
 The Hunzakut, a high-mountain people in the western
Karakoram mountains of northern Pakistan, possess a shamanistic tradition
centered around religious specialists known as bitan. These practitioners
inhale the smoke of burning juniper branches, dance to a special music, drink
blood from a freshly severed goat's head, enter into ecstatic trances, and
converse with supernatural beings. An ethnographic and historical analysis of
this little-known shamanistic tradition is offered, focusing on the rituals,
beliefs, and practices of Hunzakut bitan, the place of these practitioners in
the traditional ritual and politico-ideological apparatus of the former Hunza
state, and their role as healers and soothsayers. |
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