Shaman Ceremony Research Paper

Last year, my family had a shaman ceremony to protect our family. A shaman ceremony is when a shaman goes into the spiritual world to talk to the bad spirits to stop making us sick. We called a shaman to come in to do a ceremony for us. We killed two pigs for the ceremony and it was mainly to protect my family from the spiritual world. Before the ceremony, we would call our relatives, families, and friends to come and help. The main idea of the ceremony was to offer money to all the bad spirits to stay away from my family. We also offered money to our ancestors to protect us too. Every Hmong families should do a shaman ceremony once a year.
During the ceremony, we chopped the pigs into pieces and then cook it to make a big meal for all the people that came. The guy’s jobs was to chop the pigs into different pieces so we could make different kinds of food. The women’s jobs were to get all the vegetables ready and to cook the food. They washed all the vegetables and then cut them into small pieces. There were a lot of men and women helping each …show more content…
When the shaman finished doing the ceremony, he told my parents about how my ancestors were very poor in the spiritual world, and they needed money. We had to burn a lot of paper, which was money in the spiritual world to my ancestors. He also said that my family were in a great shape, and we did not have any bad spirits bothering us. Then the shaman was invited to sit in the middle of the table with some of the elders. The middle of the table was the most important spot and it was for the shaman only. The first thing we did was thanking the shaman for all his hard work. One of my uncles poured two cups of beer for the shaman and for each of the elders to thank them for helping. When my uncle finished thanking them, we kowtowed to the shaman and the elders to show respect that we truly appreciate it. They all drank the beer and the meal officially