Anthropology of Shamanism

Abstract:
This project is a study from an  anthropological perspective of the rituals performed in the Takiwasi therapeutic community (Upper Peruvian Amazon). Each year, few hundred of urban middle-class people from Europe or USA, influenced by the New Age and interested in alternative therapies come in Takiwasi to participate to “seminars”’ including the ritual use of purgative plants, the psychotropic brew ayahuasca and retreats in the jungle. The participation to these activities seems to be able to deeply change the system of beliefs and representations of the participant. Under the influence of the plants ingested, the local speech and the highly codified ritual actions, the later develops a new relationship to the world, to others and to oneself, which result in the deployment of a new network of relationship with supernatural beings including nature’s spirits, ancestors, demons and others Christian entities. Few of them experiment some original evil possession behaviour during the ayahuasca rituals, while most participants designate themselves “infestated”, which means affected and in a certain sense inhabited by unseen evil forces from wich they want to be cleansed. This transformation of the representations is often perceived by the subject as a gain of knowledge allowing an efficient cure. Our goal is to understand the ways through which the dispositive studied, based on the use of a psychoactive plant, creates and stabilizes the presence and relationship with supernatural beings in a contemporary, pluralistic and syncretic context of a New religious movement and to evaluate in which sense the possession cases observed in the Takiwasi context can contribute to a global understanding of the possession phenomenon.

Amazonian shamanic painting is a hybrid art born from the coming together of
Western figurative techniques, indigenous body painting and visionary shamanic experiences.
It is a testimonial art by which painters express their visionary experiences to a foreign public
aiming to understand the Amazonian universe. In his watercolors and drawings, the Asháninka
healer Noe Silva Morales bears witness to his life as a sheripiare through the construction of
visionary spaces carefully painted with skins of luminous designs.

The paper examines how the association between plants and graphic arts led to the simultaneous
patrimonialization of the Shipibo-Conibo kene designs and of the traditional use of ayahuasca
by the Peruvian government in 2008. It describes the context of production and commercialization
by women of kene objets and its link to immaterial designs seen in ayahuasca sessions and
used in new shamanic paintings. It examines the notions of visuality, materiality and identity
laid out in the kene patrimonialization report and compares them to the stress put upon health
and the sacred in the ayahuasca report. Although they had several limitations, both cases state
the changing character of designs and plant use and avoid drawing inventories and reifying
knowledge and visionary practices.

At the beginning of every major turning point in human history, a new energy washes over our planet to bring about change. We are now leaving the age of Pisces, which has lasted some 2,160 years. The New Age of Aquarius will take its place for the same period of time.

The spiritual power and wisdom of women are needed in our world today more than ever before. We need to come together to reclaim, honor, and celebrate what is sacred to us, and to explore how our wisdom can influence the way we all live, work, and care for each other, for our communities, and for the Earth.

Peter Knecht. 2015. Animals Good for Healing: On Experiences with Folk Healers in Inner Mongolia (China) in Gerald Roche, Keith Dede, Fernanda Pirie, and Benedict Copps (eds) Asian Highlands Perspectives 37 Centering  the Local, A Festschrift for Dr. Charles Kevin Stuart on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, 138-167.


The opportunity for fieldwork with shamans in northeastern Inner Mongolia, together with experienced colleagues, came as a windfall, causing me contradictory feelings. On the one hand it was a pleasant surprise, because it promised the fulfillment of a dream I had long nurtured. On the other hand, however, it made me painfully aware of the limits for my work. Limits in time, because I could not use more than a few weeks each year, and limits in communication, because I lacked practically any knowledge of Chinese or Mongolian. I could not change the problem of limited time, but I was fortunate enough to find a good interpreter. His help went a long way to solve at least part
of my linguistic problem. In addition, the fact that he was a Mongol proved instrumental in opening many doors to us. Furthermore, he had a great number of friends and acquaintances in the area, something that turned out to be an invaluable asset, because these people gracefully agreed to support us in many ways and at every stage of my fieldwork. Nevertheless, my linguistic handicap was not completely overcome. For that reason, explanations I can offer for actions I have observed may often remain unsatisfactory. However, I
will make an effort to describe as truthfully as possible what I have observed in the hope of making up at least in part for my lacunae.

Kat Harrison (20th July, 2015). Plant shamanism: Ritual, symbolism & myth. The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness Salon, The Institute of Ecotechnics, October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London. (Host and compère).

Kathleen (Kat) Harrison is an ethnobotanist who loves to explore the relationship between plants, mushrooms and human beings—particularly in the realms that are often hidden: cultural beliefs, personification of species, rituals of healing and initiation, vision-seeking modalities, and artistic creations that illustrate the plant-human relationship. She also studies and teaches the deep history of humans in nature, encompassing both before and since the advent of agriculture.

Kathleen founded Botanical Dimensions in 1985, with her then-husband, the late Terence McKenna, who retired from BD in 1992. Kat has been the President and Project Director throughout BD’s history, and continues to actively manage both ongoing and new projects. Kathleen teaches courses in Hawaii, Northern California and the Peruvian Amazon. http://botanicaldimensions.org/

Luke, D. (2015, July). Exploring the apparently psi-conducive but methodologically elusive nature of ritual psychedelic use. Panel discussion paper submitted for presentation at the combined 58th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association and 39th
International Society for Psychical Research Annual Conference, University of Greenwich, 16-19th July.

Field reports from explorers, anthropologists and ethnobotanists have long since attested to the apparent psi-inducing properties of shamanic plant psychedelics, such as the Amazonian decoction ayahuasca and the mescaline-containing cacti San Pedro and peyote. After reviewing the literature an initial experimental precognition protocol was developed for use in field research and piloted in Brazil and Ecuador with participants who were taking part in ayahuasca rituals. The preliminary findings did not provide evidence for precognition under the influence of ayahuasca, nevertheless a number of methodological issues became apparent from conducting the study that may account for the findings. Taking into consideration problems identified with the test protocol a new experimental design was developed and was planned for use with participants under the influence of San Pedro cactus in a ritual context, however the implementation of the second protocol was hampered by cultural rather than internal design factors and an alternative solution was sought by testing the protocol in principle using just one participant, with encouraging findings. The process of, and problems associated with conducting and developing experimental field research with participants utilizing plant psychedelics in a ritual context are discussed and proposals for future research are put forward.

This presentation takes  look at one of the three ethnographic techniques i used in my PhD research. It provides an over view of my thesis, offers a new understanding of visual ethnography and provides preliminary conclusions on this portion of data.

This paper appears in 'Neurotransmissions: Essays on Psychedelics from Breaking Convention' (Strange Attractor Press, 2015).

By now the image of the adventurous anthropologist boldly experimenting with the psychoactive substances of their native informants is something of a cliche. Images from Carlos Castaneda’s influential series of books, in which a young anthropologist is initiated into the world of Yaqui sorcery through extraordinary psychedelic experiences, immediately spring to mind when the subject comes up. But there is a history of serious anthropological inquiry beyond Castaneda’s popularisation (and possible fictionalisation) of anthropology’s involvement with psychoactive substances. In this paper I aim to give a brief, introductory, chronological summary of developments within this field of study, from the Nineteenth Century to the present day, through presenting snapshots of key figures and their research. These will include, in order of appearance, J.G. Frazer, Weston La Barre, Richard Evans Schultes, Napoleon Chagnon, Carlos Castaneda, Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Michael Harner, Zeljko Jokic and others.

The articles in this volume are based on the papers presented at the 8th conference of the International Society for Shamanistic Research (ISSR) held in Dobogókő, Hungary (June 1-6, 2007). About seventy people participated in the conference and fifty-five papers were presented on the proposed main topics: 1. Revival or Continuation of Shamanism; 2. Visual Presentation of Shamanic Rituals; 3. Shamanhood as a Way of Identity Building among Minorities. The papers were held in three workdays and ten sessions. The conference ended with the general assembly of the ISSR.

Bu çalışmada kısaca Şamanizm ve Eski Türk inanışlarının günümüzde Anadolu kültüründeki tesirlerine değinilecektir. Türkler İslamiyet’i kabul etmeden önce baskın ve yerleşmiş özelliklere sahip Şamanizm ile diğer Türk inançlarının ritüel ve uygulamalarına göre hareket etmekte, hatta bunları canı gönülden kabul ederek inanmaktadır. Müslüman olduktan sonra da bu inanışlardan kopmakta zorluk yaşamışlardı. Bu inançlarından tamamen kopamadıkları için, yaratıcı bir çözümle, bu inançlarını İslami inanış ile harmanlamışlardır. Burada harmanlanan bu inançların bazılarına değinerek konuyu aydınlatmaya çalışacağız.

In 1937 Mircea Eliade published the article Folclorul ca instrument de cunoaştere («Folklore as an instrument of knowledge») in which he affirmed the need to investigate the reality of paranormal phenomena (levitation, the body’s ability to resist fire etc.). This text was little read in the West until the late 1970s, when a French translation appeared. The present study is an updated contribution to this peculiar chapter in Eliade’s intellectual history. Through a critical dialogue with some recent publications and trying to contextualize the article through Eliade’s work on India, I will take into consideration several crucial aspects in the making of the Romanian scholar: 1) his early works from the 1920s, as harbingers of the 1937 article; 2) the relationship between Eliade and Ernesto de Martino (1908-1965) concerning the reality of magical powers; 3) and his formative relations with Giovanni Papini (1881-1956) and Vittorio Macchioro (1880-1958), decisive in Eliade’s early Italian intellectual formation. Finally, relying on unpublished material from the Macchioro Archive at the University of Trieste, I analyze Macchioro’s interest in spiritualism, the paranormal and the academic study and spread of yoga in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century.