Shamanism and the spiritual exercises of the ancient Greece

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Ginna Fernanda García Aguilar

Abstract

The author tries to differentiate clearly the spiritual exercises of the Greek philosophical schools from the shamanic practices. In the author´s opinion the comparison between the two phenomena is a reductionism in which incurred some researchers. The sense of the spiritual exercises in ancient Greece was the transformation of the subject by himself; a practice oriented to educate better citizens in a specific kind of political structure and social praxis. Though shamanistic rituals are connected with the operation of the political community, too, these are based on a balance between gods and human beings and they are aimed to search knowledge that operate as a device of symbolic order for the community´s activities.

Keywords:
Shamanism, spiritual exercises, philosopher, shaman, itself, community.