BRILL eBooks
June 16, 2025
Bonnie Glass‐coffin, Saundra Shanti
This chapter describes the traditions, training, alterations of consciousness, healing ritual, and ethnomedical ideologies of Cannabis sativa, which is the oldest, most widely used, yet least considered plant teacher of the psychedelic renaissance. After briefly summarizing the recent literature about the deeply intertwined histories of Cannabis sativa and its intimate relationship with human...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
August 16, 2024
Bonnie Glass‐coffin
1 citation
Christ Returns from the Jungle is an anthropological inquiry into the recent expansion from South America to Europe of the ayahuasca-based Santo Daime New Religious Movement (NRM).In it, the author addresses important research questions that could be used as a model for the study of all globalizing NRM's.These include the following: Who are the Europeans that choose to join this movement and...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2012
Bonnie Glass‐coffin
Abstract: For more than 100 years, anthropologists have collected ethnographic research among communities who assert that the spirits, animal allies, and other entities of the unseen world are “really real,” yet we have historically contextualized this information under the umbrella of cultural relativism rather than taking the veracity of these claims seriously. In the last decade, some...
Anthropology & Humanism
December 1, 2010
Bonnie Glass‐coffin
49 citations
SUMMARYFrom over 20 years of working with shamans and their apprentices in northern Peru and the United States, this article describes my own journey from scientist and skeptic to humanist and adept. It tells of the fundamental shift in consciousness I experienced as a result of a specific instance in which the veil between the seen and unseen worlds temporarily lifted, allowing me to engage...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2010
Bonnie Glass‐coffin
34 citations
ABSTRACT This paper discusses archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence for the use of the San Pedro cactus in northern Peru as a vehicle for traveling between worlds and for imparting the “vista” (magical sight) necessary for shamanic healers to divine the cause of their patients' ailments. Using iconographic, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence for the...
Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science
December 2, 2006
Bonnie Glass‐coffin
7 citations
This article explores the concepts of altruism, spiritual connection, and shamanic healing as practiced by female curanderas in northern Peru. It suggests how coessence rather than transcendence is at the heart of the shamanic journey that both healers and patients embark upon in order to transform suffering. Using ethnographic and case‐study research, it describes how the metaphors of maternal...