One who can interact and mediate with the spirit world on behalf of their community, usualy by exctatic trance techniques ( That is their spirit/soul leaves their physical body in order to travel to a world of pure spirit rather than physical matter) for the purposes of
divination, information gathering, healing and to recieve wisdom.
Believed to come from the Tungus word "
saman" meaning (very roughly)holder of knowledge.
Some anthropologists maintain that shaman are the basis of most magician/
sorceror archetypes in folklore.
In
modern times the word is overused, and seems to have become , in the minds of the modern illiterate, purely connected with various character classes in computer RolePlaying Games.