Ethnomycology is concerned with the roles of fungi in the human social experience. An inherently multidisciplinary field, it reaches into myriad cultural domains and crosses interests in the humanities, fine arts, and social and natural sciences. Ethnomycology's early ties to cultural anthropology are in great part connected to the history of exchanges, from the 1950s to the 1980s, between...
Shamanism and possession are central concepts in the religious practices of many “premodern” societies, with substantial similarities manifested across cultures and time that reflect their basis in human nature. Shamans and possession both involve ritual alteration of consciousness but differences between them are illustrated by cross‐cultural studies and the distinctive experiential features...
Forms of “altered” consciousness are common in human life yet at the same time (apart from dreams) seldom investigated in depth by anthropologists. The main areas where such states of consciousness have been found, and up to a point studied, are dreaming, including prophetic and creative dreams; sensations of contact of various kinds with and from the dead; the experience of music, poetry and...