Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2009
H. Sidky
23 citations
ABSTRACTThis study, which is based upon ethnographic data collected between 1999 and 2008 in Nepal, examines the connection between the shaman's altered states of consciousness (ASC; i.e., what goes on inside the healer's mind/brain) and therapeutic changes that take place in the patient's mind/body. Unlike other studies that primarily emphasize the shaman's internal psychological state, this...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2008
Sara E. Lewis
40 citations
ABSTRACT There is an increased controversy surrounding Westerners' use of ayahuasca. One issue of importance is psychological resiliency of users and lack of screening by ayahuasca tourism groups in the Amazon. Given the powerful effects of ayahuasca coupled with lack of cultural support, Western users are at increased risk for psychological distress. Many Westerners who experience...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2008
Boris H. J. M. Brummans
4 citations
ABSTRACTIn this autoethnographic essay, I reflect on my brief personal experiences of conducting field research on ways in which way a small group of Tibetan Buddhist monks enact a monastic total institution in Ladakh, India. More specifically, I analyze my experiences in view of the relationship between dual and nondual mind, as discussed byHenry Vyner (2002)in Anthropology of Consciousness,...
Anthropology of Consciousness
May 1, 2008
Adam J. Rock, Jessica Wilson, Luke Johnston et al.
18 citations
ABSTRACT The subjective effects and therapeutic potential of the shamanic practice of journeying is well known. However, previous research has neglected to provide a comprehensive assessment of the subjective effects of shamanic‐like journeying techniques on non‐shamans. Shamanic‐like techniques are those that demonstrate some similarity to shamanic practices and yet deviate from what may...
Anthropology of Consciousness
May 1, 2008
Zeljko Jokic
ABSTRACTThe main aim of shamanic initiation among the Yanomami people of the Upper Orinoco River region in Venezuela is the metamorphosis of the human body into a cosmic body, or what I term “corporeal cosmogenesis.” During the initiatory ordeal, the neophyte undergoes an intense experience of death through dismemberment by the spirits and subsequent rebirth, thus overcoming the human condition...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2007
Andy Letcher
30 citations
This paper addresses the question of what happens to consciousness under the influence of psychedelic drugs—specifically of psilocybin, or “magic” mushrooms— and performs a Foucauldian discourse analysis upon the answers that have been variously proposed. Predominant societally legitimated answers (the pathological, psychological, and prohibition discourses) are those that, in Foucault's sense,...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2007
Paul Devereux, Stanley Krippner, Robert Tartz et al.
This article discusses preliminary data on advancing what we know about “sacred sites” and their effects on dreaming. Thirty‐five volunteers spent between one and five nights in one of four unfamiliar outdoor sacred sites in England and Wales. Another volunteer awakened them following the observation of rapid eye movement and asked for dream recall. The same volunteers monitored their own...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2007
Sarah Williams
8 citations
These meditations, which begin with Stephan Schwartz and Mark Schroll's contested and contesting histories of the lineage and founding of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (below), contribute to the imagining of what Bethe Hagens calls "the relatively new interdisciplinary field of anthropology of consciousness.” Ethnographic vignettes from fieldwork of anthropologists, as well...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2007
F. X. Charet
5 citations
In the first part of this article we briefly describe the design and development of a Consciousness Studies concentration at Goddard College, a student centered, progressive educational institution in the northeastern United States. We emphasize the tensions we experienced between different orientations in Consciousness Studies and especially the one related to the scientific and transpersonal...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2007
Steven Mentor
The emerging transdisciplinary field of consciousness studies merges transpersonal psychology with recent brain studies. In this paper, I argue that this new discipline must come to terms with the rhetorics of control in the history of brain research. I establish parallels between the discourses of lobotomy and psychosurgery, Electrical Stimulation of the Brain (ESB), and cybernetics, using the...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2007
Chris Hables Gray
Consciousness studies is not just an academic field, it is an industry as well with active research programs in medicine, business, and the military. As advancements in technology offer more access to the brain, attempts to instrumentalize the resulting knowledge will shift the very definitions of consciousness. Consciousness of this process is a necessary first condition toward keeping...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2006
Peter N. Jones
27 citations
In this paper, I discuss the results of a large‐scale archival and data base research project that investigated the history of the scholarly use of the terms shamanism and shaman in English‐speaking North America. This was done to provide a historical grounding in the hope of arriving at an operationally sound definition of the term. Twomajor findings emerged from the data: first, current uses...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2006
Jörg Fachner
Cannabis is known to change auditory perception and music appreciation as many musicians and music listeners report in narratives, interviews and biographies. An ethnographic pre/post study was conducted in a habituated naturalistic setting, combining qualitative and quantitative methods with four single case studies. Physiological results were gained with a mobile bedside EEG imaging machine...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2006
Edith L. B. Turner
This article traces some important changes in anthropology during the last 100 years, especially with regard to the study of consciousness. Vignettes of the field material of a number of scholars given here exemplify that the philosophy under which we have studied in the past is now no longer limiting itself but is extending its provenance all the way to the study of spirituality. Earlier, the...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2006
Bethe Hagens
1 citation
Plato spoke of geometry as an extremely rare natural gift of consciousness, but also as a mode of perception accessible to anyone initiated into the tradition by a master. Such teachers were the shamans of his day, and it was these individuals who convened the mystery schools and sponsored initiations into the esoteric philosophies of geomancy that have grown from their vision. Though the...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2006
Adam J. Rock, Paul J. Casey Rock, Peter B. Baynes
This study develops the methodological framework advanced in Rock, Baynes, and Casey's (2005) experimental study of ostensibly shamanic journeying imagery in naïve participants. Specifically, the present study experimentally investigates the impact of the word landscape, featured in Harner's (1990) shamanic journeying to the Lower World instructions, on the number of landscape‐related images...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2006
Marlene Dobkin De Rios
Higher Wisdom. Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics. Roger Walsh and Charles S. Grob eds. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005. 267 pp. ISBN 0‐7914‐6518‐7. $24.95 (paper); ISBN: 0791465179. $81.50 (hardback).
Anthropology of Consciousness
2005
Mark A. Schroll, Stephan A. Schwartz
16 citations
This essay (written by Mark in dialogue with Stephan and including supporting commentary by Stanley Krippner and others1) is not a comprehensive survey of psi and anthropology, nor does it contain a thorough overview of Castaneda's work. Rather, it seeks to explore two primary questions. First, whatever became of the interest in psi and anthropology that led to the founding of the Society for...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2004
Peter N. Jones
18 citations
Among the newly enchristianed "extreme sports" category, ultrarunners and the sport of ultrarunning is on the fringe edge. What makes ultrarunners and their "sport" interesting is that ultrarunners regularly report experiences that can be equated to various types of mystical experiences during their "sporting" events. This paper briefly discusses ultrarunners, a hypothetical mystical (mythical)...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2004
Michael Winkelman
The numerous perspectives offered on consciousness reflect a multifaceted phenomenon that results from a system of relations. An etymological approach identifies linguistic roots of the meanings of consciousness and illustrates their concern with self‐referenced informational relationships of an organism with its environment, a "knowing system" formed in the epistemological relations between...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2004
Grant J. Rich
This is an interview with author Lester Grinspoon, M.D., whose work on psychoactive substances over the last thirty‐five years has been highly influential. His book, Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine (written with James B. Bakalar), is a classic source on the medical marijuana controversy. His books Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered and Cocaine: A Drug and Its Social Evolution are standards in the...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2004
Joan B. Townsend
26 citations
I draw from my papers and oral presentations to address several issues of Core and Neo‐shamanism. These include clarification of definitions and distinctions between traditional shamans, Core shamanism, Neo‐shamanism, and urban shamanism. Finally I propose an evaluation of Core and Neo‐shamanism.
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2003
Evajane N. Fridman
21 citations
Nine Worlds of SEID‐MAGIC: Ecstasy and Neo‐Shamanism in North European Paganism. Jenny Blain. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. 192 pages $20.95 Paperback.
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2003
Ashwin Budden
In this paper, critique the classic psychoanalytic anthropological construal of dissociative spirit possession as a pathological phenomenon. I review some of the relevant theoretical and ethnographic literature on this subject but focus on the work of two prominent psychoanalytic anthropologists to explore divergent views of the psychological nature of pathological and religious experience....
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2003
Robin Rodd
Shamans of the Piaroa ethnic group (southern Venezuela) conceive of power in terms of knowledge derived from visionary experiences. Märipa is an epistemology concerning the translation of knowledge derived from the integrative mode of consciousness, induced primarily through the consumption of plant hallucinogens, to practical effect during waking life. I integrate mythological,...