Societies living in a dream world: nature, knowledge and life skills in shamanic societies
Eric Navet
Des sources du savoir aux médicaments du futur 2002 DOI: 10.4000/books.irdeditions.7215 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Shamanism |
| Key points | Argues that in Amerindian cosmologies, the shaman functions as the key regulator of a fragile cosmic balance, mediating between visible and invisible worlds through holistic knowledge, while humans are depicted as disruptors of this order. |
Abstract
AbstractThe Amerindian societies conceive and live the Creation as a complex whole in a precarious balance, including visible and invisible parts which are all interelated and interdependent. The ethics which allows and organizes the living defines it, according to the Ojibay Indians, as a totality “beautiful, well ordered and harmonic”. In this framework, the myth stages the human being as a troublemaker. Between an ideal unattainable in this world -the “terre sans mal” of the Tupi-Guarani- and the constraints of the living, the chaman, keystone of the edifice, thanks to a knowledge drawn from many sources -from human and non-human natures-, and a backward and forward motion between theses worlds that the rational thinking distinguishes as “real” and “imaginary”, appears, in a holistic way, as the only agent of regulation of a system constantly threatened with chaos.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on shamanism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond | 2014 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Shamanism as the Original Neurotheology | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Cognitive Neuroscience, Shamanism and the Rock Art of Native California | 1998 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From Culture to Experience: Shamanism in the Pages of the Soviet Anti-Religious Press | 2020 | Historical analysis | |
| Anthropology, Shamanism, and Alternate Ways of Knowing–Being in the World: One Anthropologist's Journey of Discovery and Transformation | 2010 | Reflective essay or personal narrative |