Anthropology & Humanism
August 30, 2024
Atreyee Majumder
1 citation
It is small and no more visible than a cricket in August. It likes to dress up, to masquerade, as all dwarfs do. It lodges between granite blocks, between serviceable truths. It even fits under a bandage, under adhesive. Neither customs officers nor their beautiful dogs will find it. Between hymns, between alliances, it hides itself. It camps in the Rocky Mountains of the skull. An eternal...
Anthropology & Humanism
November 21, 2010
Bruce Greyson
66 citations
SUMMARY The ubiquitous belief that, after death, our consciousness might persist in some discarnate form is fueled in part by phenomena like near‐death experiences (NDEs) and deathbed visions, mystical experiences reported on the threshold of death. Some NDEs, called “Peak in Darien” experiences, include visions of deceased people who are not known at the time to be dead. Cases of this kind...
Anthropology & Humanism
November 21, 2010
Evgenia Fotiou
21 citations
SUMMARY Drawing from data collected during fieldwork from Westerners participating in ayahuasca ceremonies in the Peruvian Amazon, I discuss the ways they make contact with spirits. I particularly focus on the issue of sorcery, illustrating differences in the ways it is perceived by Westerners and Peruvians. I argue that although it is possible that both populations have the same or very...
Anthropology & Humanism
June 1, 1996
Daniel T. Halperin
6 citations
The increasing recognition of indigenous perspectives regarding religious practices such as shamanism and spirit possession offers a welcome respite from the excesses of scientific skepticism. Anthropologists may, however, become dogmatic in the opposite direction through accepting and even promoting at face value the officially presented "emic" view. At times, ritual practitioners themselves...
Anthropology & Humanism
December 1, 1995
Janine Lewis
James Wafer. The Taste of Blood: Spirit Possession in Brazilian Candomble. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. xii. 219 pp. (Winner of the Victor Turner prize for Ethnography, 1992.) Daniel Touro Linger. Dangerous Encounters: Meanings of Violence in. Brazilian City. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. + 289 pp.
Anthropology & Humanism
December 1, 1994
Charles D. Laughlin
5 citations
This article introduces and evaluates the problem of apodicticity raised by Edmund Husserl, that is, the problem of how to access and interpret scientifically the quality of absolute necessity and certainty of insight that frequently accompanies transpersonal experiences and intuitions in contemplation. An important distinction is drawn between pure and relative apodicticity, and the common...
Anthropology & Humanism
June 1, 1993
Susan J. Rasmussen
2 citations
It is now recognized that spirit possession and a work of art share common properties. Yet few analyses stop to consider the transformative effects of possession artistry in diverse contexts, extending beyond the immediate ritual process: while visiting, in leisure, gossip, courtship, and festival settings, where local residents in effect re‐create possession in commentary about its music,...