ABSTRACT This article uses a myth of the Luangans of Indonesian Borneo to reflect upon the value of sociality and its role in promoting well-being in their healing rituals. In these rituals, sociality with nonhuman beings and between participants is crucial, yet insufficient for, and sometimes at odds with, success. The article describes the multiple modes and valences of this ritual sociality,...
As more Westerners travel to the Amazon jungle to seek healing through the increasingly popular plant medicine, ayahuasca, they are exposed to an environment pervaded by the use of tobacco smoke. Mapacho is the name of the potent jungle tobacco that is central to the shamanic practices of Amazonian plant medicine healing, regarded locally not as a pathogen but rather as a potent ally: a spirit...