Open Mind
April 26, 2026
Madison Knight
Both *Ceremony* and *Storyteller* serve as important written works that demonstrate the relationship between medicine ritual in the work of healing and harm for the Laguna Pueblo people. Author Leslie Marmon Silko demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between these two elements while creating parallels to time immemorial and the present. This paper seeks to analyze the presence and connection...
April 23, 2026
Eli Stark-Elster, Mamosebetsi Sethathi, Breyten Van der Merwe et al.
Reliable documentation of the traditional use of serotonergic psychedelics has long been confined to the Americas. Prevailing narratives often overstate the global prevalence and uniformity of traditional psychedelic use, extrapolating from a limited set of well-documented cases. Here, we report evidence of psilocybin mushroom use among Basotho traditional healers and non-healers in Lesotho and...
International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research
April 19, 2026
Krushnakant Nagargoje, Arvind Rawat, Kirti Maurya
The origins of human spirituality extend far beyond organised religions and formal philosophical systems, emerging instead from early experiential practices embedded within indigenous cultures
British Journal of Sociology
April 11, 2026
Catherine Tan
Behind its worldly and socially conscious aesthetic, the wellness industry serves the health and fitness interests of North American and European consumers by commercializing non-Western and Indigenous healing traditions, including shamanistic practices. Explored in this paper, "American shamans" seek to heal a range of maladies by collecting traditions found outside of their own cultural...
General Section
April 10, 2026
Khinayat Babakhumar
The article is devoted to the analysis of relics of the Kazakh shamanic tradition among the Kazakh diaspora in Turkey, which was formed as a result of forced migrations from East Turkestan (Xinjiang) in 1949–1956. Based on field materials from 2023, oral testimonies, ritual texts (saryny), paremiological formulas, and narratives, the study examines the transformation of the shamanic complex in...
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals)
April 10, 2026
Nicola Strizzolo, Nico Bortoletto
This paper examines how lifestyle sport practitioners experience forms of transcendence, altered perception, and connection with nature, and considers whether these experiences can be meaningfully interpreted through concepts associated with shamanic practice. Drawing on Roger Caillois’ taxonomy, it explores how elements of ritual, ecstasy, and symbolic imagination appear within contemporary...
Religions
April 1, 2026
Xiaoshuang Liu
Mental illness has become increasingly prominent in the modern individuation process in China. Correspondingly, contemporary shamanic practices in the north of China have gradually focused on mental issues and have constructed an indigenous concept related to them: “virtual illness.” Based on many years of fieldwork conducted in the shamanic regions of the north of China, this study focuses on...
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society
April 1, 2026
Olof Ohlson
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...
Religion and the Arts
March 31, 2026
Mi Chen
This paper examines shamanic rock art through Chi Zijian’s The Last Quarter of the Moon , a Mao Dun Prize-winning novel that portrays the spiritual world of the Evenki people. The novel’s depictions of reindeer, shamans, hunters, celestial bodies, and rivers are interpreted as religious symbols and aesthetic forms that encode ritual practices, cosmological beliefs, and spiritual communication....
Vestnik NSU Series History and Philology
March 29, 2026
I. Golovnev
Purpose. The aim of this research is to examine the experience of using cinematic resources to reshape the worldview among the population of a multi-confessional country using scientific and artistic approaches. One of the key aspects of Sovietization was the anti-religious campaign, designed to get rid of heterogeneous confessional “prejudices” and construct in the consciousness of the masses...
Общество философия история культура
March 18, 2026
Vladislava S. Tyutyunnik
The article is devoted to the study of the mythopoetic foundations of dance as a stable cultural code linking ar-chaic ritual practices with modern choreographic forms. The paper considers dance as a dynamic system rep-resenting universal mythologems through plastic vocabulary, choreographic drama and space-time organiza-tion. The author applies a mythopoetic approach synthesizing the methods...
Arts
March 17, 2026
Zhilong Yan, Manyi Pei
Daoism is an important indigenous religion of China that emerged from ancient totemic worship and shamanic practices, encompassing mysterious ritual arts known as fulu (talismans and registers). Daoist fulu writing constitutes an important content and manifestation of Daoist spiritual calligraphy, representing a significant embodiment of Daoist sacred knowledge and mystical power. This paper...
International Journal of History and Archaeology Research Studies
March 16, 2026
S Sajeer
This article examines the encounter between Tibetan Buddhist monastic traditions and indigenous animist cosmologies in the hill societies of present-day Arunachal Pradesh between the eighth and early nineteenth centuries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork by Verrier Elwin, Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, and Niranjan Sarkar, alongside material and archival evidence, the study traces how the...
Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
March 10, 2026
Ya Yambao Yang, Mandy Yang, Tiffany Wing Lam Yip et al.
BACKGROUND: Hmong people experience a disproportionate burden of mental health challenges. While prior studies have examined mental health within Hmong communities, no study has focused on Hmong shamans’ experiences with depression. This study explores how Hmong shamans understand, experience, and respond to depression. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 12 Hmong...
Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
March 7, 2026
Yuheng Sun
Shamanic music constitutes the deepest stratum of organised sound in Chinese civilisation. Emerging from Neolithic animistic beliefs that attributed spirit to every phenomenon, it developed into a sophisticated sonic technology for mediating between human society and the unseen world. This paper traces the trajectory of shamanic music from the earliest bone flutes of the seventh millennium BCE...
Preprints.org
February 27, 2026
Luis Miguel Gallardo
preprint
This comprehensive literature review synthesizes the published scholarship on transpersonal psychology, transpersonal psychotherapy, and transpersonal hypnotherapy from the field's inception in the 1960s through 2026. Drawing from 283 unique scholarly sources across multiple databases, this review examines the theoretical foundations, philosophical underpinnings, clinical applications,...
The Oxford Handbook of the Anthropology of Religion
February 19, 2026
Morten Axel Pedersen
Abstract Despite repeated pronouncements concerning its imminent death as a topic worthy of anthropological attention, shamanism has experienced a revival. However, it has not been subject to or the vehicle of much new and influential theorizing. Based on ethnographic work in Mongolia and Inner Asia, this chapter seeks to do some of the conceptual groundwork for a workable theorization of...
International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research
February 17, 2026
Mukesh Gurung
This paper examines the significance of paraphernalia used by the shamans of Darjeeling Himalaya. The grant of Darjeeling on the 1st of February 1835 by the Chogyal of Sikkim to the English became a major turning point in the history of Darjeeling. The plantation of tea in the hills intensified the migration from Nepal. The emigrants carried their culture and traditions along with them. The...
Bulletin of Science and Practice
February 14, 2026
N. Sapieva, Zh. Ermekbaykyzy
This article examines research related to the use of fetishistic beliefs in the shamanism of the Kyrgyz people in the southwestern part of the Fergana Valley. Such beliefs have not been extensively and deeply studied within Kyrgyz ethnography, despite being an important issue. To study fetishistic beliefs and the sacrality of various fetish objects used in shamanic practices based on elements...
Pharos Journal of Theology
February 14, 2026
Manat Kanagatov, Tatyana Seryozhkina, Zukhra Ismagambetova et al.
The purpose of this study was to identify the ontological and cultural foundations of the shamanic tradition in the Turkic culture of Kazakhstan through the concept of altered states of consciousness (ASC). The research focused on how ASC structured the shamanic worldview, shaped ritual practices, and transformed under post-traditional social conditions. The methodological framework combined...