One by one they squeezed into a meeting room at a Harlem needle exchange on Thursday — roughly two dozen men and women with drug problems — and Dimitri Mugianis, 50, greeted them all. This was not your average 12-step program meeting. A small altar was set up on top of a plastic box and the tall candles on it were lit and the lights were turned off.

Yeongdeung Halmang has departed Jeju until next year, leaving behind the promise of a bountiful marine harvest. The goddess of wind and sea visits the island for only 2 weeks each year, and during this time haenyeo (diving women) and others placate her with rituals and offerings. On the day of her departure, 2.14 (lunar), villages throughout Jeju hold a rite of farewell.

Shamanism is alive and well in the Hmong community today: a typical weekend for any Hmong person in this day and age is usually booked with family engagements.

As a small boy in the early ’80s, Almir Surui hunted monkeys with a bow and arrow, wore a loincloth and struggled with Brazil’s official language, Portuguese.
At 38, he is the tech-savvy, ­university-educated chief of the Paiter Surui, or “the real people,” of this western corner of Brazil.

Rustenburg – The sangoma who reportedly performed rituals on protesting Lonmin mineworkers in Marikana anointing them with a traditional lotion substance, has been shot and killed, the Farlam Commission heard on Monday.