Apart from performing magic, a shaman is an individual selected on a spiritual basis and who is highly trained and has power to communicate with both the living and the dead, hence at times referred to as a shamanic professional. Shaman is a word derived from saman meaning a priest, but tends to sound like a religion. It is an anthropological word referring to different kinds of practices and what people believe, with the human world communicating to the world of spirits or the dead. It is believed that shamans treat diseases and illnesses by restoring the soul. The shamans go to supernatural worlds to get ways of dealing with problems that are found in different shamanic communities. They also visit other worlds to bring cures for diseases in human souls caused by things that are not from the same world. Shamans dwell in the world of spirits which ends up affecting the human world.
According to plot kin, shamanism is regarded from different perspectives, depending on different shamanic communities. One of them is a pharmacist, a pharmacist is a person who cures diseases may be by administering medicine or removing some unwanted content from the body, but a shaman as a pharmacist heals by cleansing and removing all the unnecessary spirits from the human soul. This is a power they get after visiting the spiritual world to gain knowledge and power and they are even able to bring back the lost elements of the human soul from wherever even if it is not within the human world. Through this process of healing, a shaman is able to perform the same work a pharmacist would do, hence given the title pharmacist.
The other role of a shaman according to plot kin is a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist is a person who specializes in healing mental problems known as psychological illness. However a shaman has the power to heal mental illnesses as it is one of the common shamanic illnesses but through spiritual powers. This describes how the shaman is a psychiatrist according to plot kin.
Psychopomp is another word used by plot kin, meaning a shaman who has the power of finding the lost souls and guides them to where they belong. The shaman waits for the soul of a dying person and guides it to the spiritual home and helps it separate from the physical body. Depending on one’s religious or spiritual believes, when someone is dying, the soul is caught unprepared and therefore it forgets its original home or where it belongs. In such a case psychopomp is able to direct it home and also comfort it. When someone is dying psycho pomp waits to ask the soul where it wants to go and directs it.
Shaman is a word borrowed from an Altaic word Saman, meaning the priest of the Ural Altaic people. Plot kin, therefore, brings out this role as a priest especially when the shaman performs rituals to make the spirits happy. In the human world, priests are said to be the mediators who talk on behalf but in the spiritual world, the shamans speak on behalf of the shamanic community. Here the shamans communicate to the living and also the dead and deliver gifts to the spirits on behalf of the shamanic community.