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Nathan Porath

4 papers in the library · publishing 2008-2025

Papers

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The Ensoundments of the Materially Ethereal in Indigenous Riau (Sumatra)

October 1, 2025 Nathan Porath

This chapter is focused on sounds associated with ethereal matter (semanget) and its embodied manifestation that vitalizes human, animal, and material physicality. I discuss the therapeutic sounds which are humanly generated to mobilize the materially ethereal to “repair bodies” in the Sakai shamanic healing rituals called dikei. The Orang Sakai lived on the edge of the Malay kingdom of Siak....

15 The Ensoundments of the Materially Ethereal in Indigenous Riau (Sumatra)

Amsterdam University Press eBooks October 10, 2024 Nathan Porath

This chapter is focused on sounds associated with ethereal matter (semanget) and its embodied manifestation that vitalizes human, animal, and material physicality.I discuss the therapeutic sounds which are humanly generated to mobilize the materially ethereal to "repair bodies" in the Sakai shamanic healing rituals called dikei.The Orang Sakai lived on the edge of the Malay kingdom of Siak.Most...

“Not to Be Aware Anymore”: Indigenous Sumatran Ideas and Shamanic Experiences of Changed States of Awareness/Consciousness

Anthropology of Consciousness May 1, 2013 Nathan Porath

AbstractAnthropologists working on altered states of consciousness (ASC) have suggested that we should do away with psychologizing concepts and use people's own terms for these experiences. With material drawn from the Orang Sakai of Sumatra this paper shows that practitioners who utilizeASCdo recognize the alteration of states of awareness as preconditions for numinous interactions. Also...

Seeing sound: consciousness and therapeutic acoustics in the inter‐sensory shamanic epistemology of the Orang Sakai of Riau (Sumatra)

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute September 1, 2008 Nathan Porath

This article explores therapeutic shamanic sounds in relation to Orang Sakai ideas of (altered) consciousness. The argument given is that within a shamanic epistemology the very idea of producing sound involves an assumption of the material existence of non‐physical beings as sound‐makers. Such sounds are conceived to be as materially real as are ordinary physical sounds. The article argues...