Ok, first things first, if or when someone makes a sheet for the shamanism created in that post, please don't forget to add a more specific title to it. Since shamanism has such a wide meaning, it has been kinda present in the RP way before people started to mention it by name. In my sheets for example, I call it the halagan shamanistic tradition simply because other posts (and my own posts) had already set up for a wider meaning of things that isn't limited to just the one thing one of my heroes is involved with.
What is more curious is that actual central asian shamanism only appeared now, meanwhile, the wider use of the word, the one that includes basically anything no matter if centered on a wiseman, a babalawo, a miko, a pajé or even the rivaling incan highland kubu and lowland piais, has been around for longer, with the earliest being the weekly slough post, I believe, with the hain worshipping slough in peculiar ways.
Religious terms are such a drag to deal with, especially since the nature of our world makes everything a loan word, even the loan words, so meanings get a bit hazy. When the concept of sin showed up without a proper moral code to contrast against, for example, it was kinda amusing.
For a certain storyline, I thought a lot about if I should use or not the word Nagual, mostly inspired by the deliberate use of nagualism in academic texts to describe certain guardian spirits (In the same vein as the totem and the aforementioned shamanism).
If it was just the case of using a localized word versus one word within your own language it would be easier, but then you have cases like the word Fetish in my language, originally used by the Portuguese to poorly describe western african religious practices ("feitiço" being a word of meaning similar to spell, like the stuff Harry Potter does), then popularized in france where it got a new meaning, which returned to Portuguese under the word "fetiche" (which means both the religious stuff and the kinky stuff). That of course, not counting the fact the word had a root in latin with yet another meaning.
There is another amusing example of such behavior, but not only does it spoil Ilunabar's stuff, but it also has nothing to do with my suggestion of avoiding just using the word Shamanism when dealing with a possible creation sheet. (just like most of this rambling/post)
), and likewise the prophecy of most of us could be identified with some effort if only due to the text's voice, verbage, topics, etc.
