The terms “trance” and “ecstasy” are used in many definitions of shamanism to mean both a culturally defined form of behavior and a specific correlative physical and mental state. In fact, however, there is no evidence to indicate that this identification is warranted. According to the symbolic representations of shamanistic societies, the shaman’s ritual behavior is the mode of his direct contact with his spirits, hence it is functional behavior that follows a prescribed pattern. The use of the word “trance” to describe the shaman’s behavior, associated as it is with a specific physical and psychological state, has given Western religions an excuse to condemn this type of behavior, the associated state being considered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as wild and devilish, and later, as pathological. What is in fact condemned is the assumption implicit in shamanism, i.e. that man and the spirits are similar in essence and status, a hypothesis which is unacceptable to ideologies based on divine transcendence. The idealized view of “trance” that is fashionable nowadays also results from Western concerns. However, there is still much to do with the notion of “symbolic function.”