Whether we call them witch doctors, shamans, or healers, these mystical men and women understand forces the modern world can't comprehend.
“Witch doctors” are the victims of some truly unfortunate irony: While considered noble healers and guardians who would protect others from witches and general malady, many popularly understand these herbalists as witches themselves — and witches whose medicinal knowledge simply cannot aid others in the slightest.
By virtue of the role’s inherent traditionalism, most cultures’ witch doctors are still doing the same things they were doing back when they were considered the “good” guys. But with the development of modern medical science — and the colonialism-created allegorical figure widely viewed as a physical, spell-casting fact — the shifting scales of history have dumped witch doctors on the “wrong” side of the fence.
Today, we — especially those of us in the West — implicitly believe witch doctors to be benighted at best and malevolent at worst. Same goes for shamans, healers, and all the other various practitioners of divination and traditional medicine still found in dozens of cultures around the world.
Some of these traditional practitioners still make an honest living, but most are trotted out at festivals (willingly, plenty of the time) only as human curios, living museum pieces emblematic of a comfortingly distant past.
This is how we end up with jarring intersections of the traditional and the modern on the world stage, as was the case just this summer when shamans of several South American tribes were asked to take part in the Olympic torch relay ceremonies.
But whether their roles are ceremonial or not, what part do shamans, witch doctors, and the like play in the world of today? The answers lie with the eye-popping photos below.
A Brief History Of Medicine Men And Shamans
Witch doctors have existed, in one form or another, in cultures across the world since ancient times. They're healers and spiritual leaders, depending on spells and rituals to cure ailments.
In Native American cultures, for example, medicine men (and women) conducted ceremonies to cure diseases and control spirits. Though the details of such ceremonies are often kept secret from outsiders, artist George Catlin witnessed a medicine man in work at Fort Union (present-day North Dakota) in 1832.
Catlin watched as the medicine man gave a sick man different roots and herbs, then started "shaking his frightful rattles, and singing songs of incantation." The man wore "the skins of snakes, and frogs, and bats, — beaks and tows and tails of birds, — hoofs of deer, goats, and antelopes," which were somehow deformed, and therefore filled with healing power.
Public DomainGeorge Catlin's Medicine Man, Performing His Mysteries over a Dying Man. 1832.
Elsewhere, including South America, Asia, and Celtic Europe, shamans long played an important role as healers and spiritual guides. They're known for entering a trance in order to help their communities, often by healing illnesses, changing the weather, or excising evil demons.
What Are Witch Doctors? The Debate Over The Term
Similar to medicine men and shaman, witch doctors have operated in places like Africa since ancient times. The term — which was coined by white colonists — is sometimes used to describe herbalists and healers who play a similar role as medicine men and shaman.
According to the website Work the World, for example, places like Tanzania often have a village "Babu." These healers uses their knowledge of plants and herbs, as well as the spiritual realm, to treat patients.
But significant confusion surrounds the terms "witch doctor" and "healer. Though National Geographic notes that the term "witch doctor" is often a derogatory term for a traditional healer, they also report that witch doctors are different from healers. Namely, witch doctors use spells to to heal illnesses or other ailments that are blamed on witchcraft.
colaimages / Alamy Stock PhotoA "witch doctor" in Ethiopia in the 1930s. Some claim that the term "witch doctor" was an invention by foreign writers, and that they are more like traditional healers.
Likewise, an African expert told The New York Times in 1970 that the term "witch doctor" was simply an invention of foreigners to describe healers.
Either way, these healers have continued to operate into modern times.
Witch Doctors In Modern Times
Belief in witches and witch doctors continues in places like Africa. In 2009, witch doctors in Gambia kidnapped some 1,000 people suspected of being witches. They were taken to detention centers, beaten, and forced to drink hallucinogenic concoctions which left many severely ill.
This witch hunt was purportedly triggered by President Yahya Jammeh, who believed that his family had been the victims of witchcraft.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoVictims of the Gambia witch hunt were forced to drink a hallucinogenic liquid.
Indeed, National Geographic reports that a fear of witches has resulted in violence against albino people (since witch doctors purportedly believe that their body parts and hair have magical powers) and people with HIV/AIDS, since the spread of the disease is often blamed on witchcraft.
That said, many people also seek out with doctors for help with ailments and illnesses. Some Westerners have even turned to witch doctors because they've found modern medicine lacking.
According to a 1978 article from the Washington Post, an American public relations executive named Sheldon Ritter decided to visit a witch doctor for help with a persistent limp that Western medicine couldn't cure. During a trip in Senegal, he sought out a healer who told him he had "bad blood."
The healer made 18 small incisions on Ritter's knee, covered the area in brown powder, and wrapped it in a bandage. To Ritter's shock, his limp all but disappeared.
Similarly, the National Geographic show "The Witch Doctor Will See You Now" followed people who turned to witch doctors because Western medicine had failed to help them. As NBC News reported in 2011, a woman with asthma drank hallucinogenic tea and broth from a boiled termite nest in Peru, someone with chronic back pain was treated with "tongue acupuncture" in China, people with tinnitus and eczema were treated with cow urine and yoga in India, and a woman who had claustrophobia and panic attacks ate the still-beating heart of a slaughtered chicken in Africa.
As such, the legacy of witch doctors — and shaman and medicine men — is very much alive today. Take a look at what modern witch doctors look like in the stunning gallery above.
After reading about witch doctors, discover the horrifying history of symphysiotomy, or "chainsaw childbirth." Or, learn about the gruesome history of bloodletting as a medical treatment.
