On Summoning the Gods to Visual Appearance
The Oxford Handbook of Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences June 20, 2024 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192844064.013.35 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that predictive processing best explains how ritual magical practices produce subjectively convincing experiences of otherworldly beings, framing magical ritual as an "expectation management technology" that manipulates material-environmental, sensory-motor, and ideational/conceptual processes. Contends that varied techniques—sensory deprivation, hallucinogenic substances, (auto)hypnosis, hypnagogic states, and visualization—generate (hetero)phenomenologically similar experience narratives, always grounded in a material-semiotic dimension that imbues things, gestures, and sensations with meanings pointing toward an otherworldly reality. |
Abstract
Abstract This chapter considers a cross-historical selection of cases from the ritual magical traditions and discusses explanations of how such practices may produce subjectively convincing experiences of otherworldly beings on the one hand, and methodological questions of how we might best study them on the other. The chapter argues that our best model is found in the framework of predictive processing, through which magical ritual should be seen as an expectation management technology that manipulates material-environmental, sensory-motor, and ideational/conceptual processes in ways that set the practitioner up for certain kinds of perception-like experiences. The picture emerging is that magical ritual produces (hetero)phenomenologically similar experience narratives through a variety of different techniques, which include elements such as sensory deprivation, hallucinogenic substances, (auto)hypnosis, hypnagogic states, and visualization, but are always grounded in a material-semiotic dimension through which things, gestures, and sensations are imbued with meanings that point towards an otherworldly reality.