Same Sex Behaviour in Magicians, Shamans and Witches.

Randal Styers

In Edward Westermarck's 1908 survey of same-sex behavior among various peoples of the world, he
recounts numerous examples of male witches, magicians and shamans (or prospective shamans)
adopting female dress, hairstyles, and activities and seeking in various ways “to be transformed
physically into women.” He cites Waldemar Bogoras's account to explain that among the Chukchi of
Siberia “nearly all the shamans were former delinquents of their sex.” The shaman becomes a
“disclaimer of his sex,” submitting to a “most unnatural and voluntary subjection” to a husband. Further,
Bogoras's account confirms that “in some cases at least there can be no doubt that these
transformations were connected with homosexual practices.” Shamans engage in this “change of sex” in
the belief that this transformation leads to great magical power.

As Westermarck explains:

We have seen that the effeminate men are frequently believed to be versed in magic; their
abnormalities readily suggest that they are endowed with supernatural power, and they may resort to
witchcraft as a substitute for their lack of manliness and physical strength. But the supernatural qualities
or skill in magic ascribed to men who behave like women may also, instead of causing hatred, make
them honoured or reverenced.

Many aspects of Westermarck's text are notable, but of particular interest here is the way in which the
discussion of magical practices provides him an opportunity to explore human sexual diversity.

Arnold Van Gennep's Les rites des passage (1908) follows a similar course. Citing Westermarck's
analysis, Van Gennep discusses the prevalence of homosexual practices in various initiation rituals,
though Van Gennep downplays the social and symbolic significance of these practices (seeing them
instead as primarily amusements and means of social incorporation). Speaking of ritual pederasty
among the Pueblo Indians and the Arunta, Van Gennep asserts that such acts might be called a “magical
lubricant” serving the interests of social unity.

The sexual proclivities of the magical and religious practitioners of primitive society are also a significant
theme in Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk (1914), from the prominent early sexual reformer
Edward Carpenter. Carpenter asserts in this text that homosexuals “of a more effeminate and passive
sort” have a distaste for “the ordinary masculine occupations and business of the world” and “an
inclination to retire into the precincts of the Temples.” In primitive society these inclinations lead them
not only to religious service but also “to such things as Magic, learning, poetry, music, prophecy, and
other occupations not generally favoured by the normal man, the hunter and the warrior.”

Carpenter argues that primitive homosexuals develop “faculties like divination, clairvoyance, ecstasy,
and so forth, which are generally and quite naturally associated with religion.” Carpenter cites the
evidence collected by scholars such as Frazer, Westermarck, and Elie Reclus of the “most marked and
curious” connection between homosexuality and cross-dressing (on the one hand) and magic and
shamanship (on the other). Thus, Carpenter asserts, sorcerers are often known to adopt women's
clothing, and this cross-dressing can be taken as an indication of homosexuality.
Like Westermarck before him, Carpenter configures a culturally venerable lineage for same-sex behavior
by linking these practices to visible and prominent members of non-Western cultures. This strategy
became common among early sexual liberationists. In his effort to explain the “world-wide attribution of
magic powers to homosexuals,” Carpenter posits a connection between “the homosexual temperament
and divinatory or unusual psychic powers.” But, he argues, magical power is attributed to homosexuals
not simply because of their divergent sexuality but because of their distinctive character as
intermediates positioned between the dominant gender roles. By combining feminine emotionality with
masculine practicality, “intermediates would undoubtedly be greatly superior in ability to the rest of the
tribe and become inventors, teachers, musicians, medicine-men and priests.”

Further, since old religions are labeled with the charge of magic as they are superseded, and since many
primitive religions were “largely sexual, even homosexual,” earlier same-sex rites become associated
with sorcery and occult powers. Carpenter concludes that while the “normal sex types” provided the
foundations of society, “it was largely the intermediate types who developed the superstructure. The
priest or the medicine-man or shaman was at first the sole representative of this new class, and we have
seen that he was almost invariably, in some degree or other, of Uranian temperament.”

This theme of the link between magic and sexual nonconformity has been widespread in the scholarly
literature.