“Eric, you no longer have an Americano soul,” my Avá-Guaraní sister told me as my 2006-2007 fieldwork was ending. In 2005, her mother became my ritual sponsor in the naming/ensouling ritual, mitã karaí, identifying me as “Yvyrajú”, indicating the tree for which I was named/ensouled. That ritual enmeshed me in relations of familial reciprocity, positioning me in their cosmology, and identified...
This paper develops a quadripartite panpsychist theory of shamanism(s). This fourpart framework revives and combines four theories: (i) mystical constructivism, (ii) role-taking theory, and (iii) mental imagery cultivation as a cultural practice founded upon (iv) a panpsychist philosophy of ultimate reality. I argue that this quadripartite model allows for the recognition of something ‘real’ in...