#dacia

“ecstasy being considered a temporary death, for the soul was believed to leave the body […] shamanic initiation includes dividing the body into fragments, renewal of the organs and viscera, and ritual death followed by resurrection, experienced by the future shaman as a descent to the Underworld (sometimes accompanied by an ascent to the sky). […] The shaman is above all an ecstatic. Now, on the plane of archaic and traditional religions, ecstasy signifies the flight of the soul to heaven, or its wandering over the earth, or, finally, its descent to the subterranean regions, among the dead.

The shaman undertakes such ecstatic journeys: (1) to meet the Celestial God face to face and present him with an offering on behalf of the community; (2) to seek the soul of a sick person, which is believed to have wandered from his body or to have been carried off by demons; (3) to accompany the soul of a dead person to its new abode; (4) finally, to enrich his knowledge by conversing with higher Beings […] of his ability to travel in supernatural worlds and see superhuman beings (gods, demons, spirits of the dead, etc,), the shaman has contributed decisively to the knowledge of death. […] we can detect an ancient Thracian ritual of ecstatic (“shamanic"?) ascent to heaven.”

— Mircea Eliade; “Zalmoxis: The Vanishing God” (1972)