Forms of “altered” consciousness are common in human life yet at the same time (apart from dreams) seldom investigated in depth by anthropologists. The main areas where such states of consciousness have been found, and up to a point studied, are dreaming, including prophetic and creative dreams; sensations of contact of various kinds with and from the dead; the experience of music, poetry and...
The basic principle of folklore is constant—unveiling the hidden riches within the ordinary things of everyday life: a fine contribution to, and coordination with, the humanities. Examples are the study of the oral/orality; life stories of the obscure; practices of ‘hidden’ amateur musicians, studied ethnographically rather than through written scores or the ‘great’ composers; research by...