What Is a Hmong Shaman?
A Hmong shaman is the religious leader and healer within the Hmong people. The Hmong were first recorded in China around 3000 B.C. A shaman is considered the bridge between the spirit world and our physical world. Shamans oversee all rituals that the Hmong people believe connect with spirits.
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The Hmong
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The Hmong people were persecuted in ancient China and moved south to Indochina and parts of southern Asia. They are recorded to have helped the United States during the Vietnam War. The 2000 U.S. Census recorded about 42,000 Hmong in Minnesota and about 160,000 total in the United States. There are still several million Hmong in China, Thailand and Laos. The Hmong National Organization states that about 50 percent of the Hmong people have converted to Christianity, though many still observe shaman rituals.
Hmong Religion
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The Hmong traditionally practiced Ua Dab, a religion based on a spirit world where dreams, illness and death are related to spirits that influence fortune. The Hmong shaman is able to change a person's condition, heal an illness and ensure health and good luck. There are a variety of spirits such as ancestral, house and nature, which affect daily life.
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Becoming a Hmong Shaman
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Men, women and children can be chosen to be a shaman. There is generally a long illness that the person recovers from. A current shaman must diagnose the sick person as a future shaman and become his teacher. The person must agree to becoming a shaman and then begins a usual three year course to learn the proper chants, rituals and names of the evil spirits that bring illness. The chosen person learns as an apprentice via example and imitation. There are no books to teach or learn from; all learning is mnemonic, personal and experiential.
What Does a Shaman Do?
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A Hmong shaman will either battle evil spirits or negotiate with spirits to restore order and a person's health. A shaman believes he can see spirits and talks to them in chant and dialogue. The shaman cures an illness by retrieving the lost or captured soul of the ill person in an elaborate ritual. Hmong shaman lead sacrifices of animals that people give them as a gift to heal. Value is determined by an animal's size. A goat is considered the most valuable to sprits, followed by cows, pigs and chickens. A chicken would be sacrificed to cure a common cold, while a goat would be used to cure severe epilepsy and mental illness.
Healings
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Healings are believed to either take place immediately, or can take up to months. The best meat from the sacrificed animal is given to the shaman and in modern times, shaman are given payments from $50 to $300, depending on the shaman's reputation and the seriousness of the person's illness. If the illness is not cured, the shaman is not blamed; the thought is that another evil spirit or a more powerful spirit came to hurt the person.
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