During the last decades, ayahuasca gained much popularity among non-Indigenous and out-of-Amazonia based populations. In popular culture, it has been advertised as a natural remedy that was discovered by Indigenous peoples ante millennia and that has been used for shamanic healing of all kinds of ailments. This “neo-shamanic,” and often recreational, use of ayahuasca, however, has to be...
This chapter redresses the imbalance between the representation of ayahuasca and tobacco not only in contemporary search engines but in the literature. It explains ayahuasca's steady ascent by analysing the decline of the use of tobacco. To complete the review of Arawakan languages spoken in the Ucayali valley, the Yine know such persons as either kagonchi or monchi. The possibly older...
O canto dos Shipibo-Konibo (grupo indígena das terras baixas peruanas) em curasrituais revela que um marcador de tempo em sua linguagem vernacular pode se referir aum passado mítico e a um “mundo espiritual” do presente. Neste artigo serãoapresentados e analisados o passado recente do grupo no que diz respeito à bebidaayahuasca, o significado de seus trançados e sua identidade “étnica”. Aqui...
The form of spirit possession performed by practitioners who are readily initiated into Dominican Vodou requires them to be excellent (inter-)actors, dancers, and poets. The article focuses on the ritual practice of spirit possession in the Southwest of the Dominican Republic with emphasis on the question as to what constitutes effectiveness of spirit performance and how it is produced. The...
Abstract The experience of indigenous people in their confrontation with the growing interest of people from northern countries in drinking ayahuasca has hitherto received little attention. First a brief historical summary is presented in order to show how the use of ayahuasca had already changed its meaning and value among Shipibo-Konibo around the 1960s. Observing that visitors' interests...