Within online drug fora communities, there are some "educated and informed" users who can somehow provide reliable information on psychoactive compounds and combinations. These users, also called "e-psychonauts," may possess levels of technical knowledge relating to a range of novel psychoactive substances (NPS). The present project aimed at identifying and describing the e-psychonauts'...
This paper attempts to rethink the relationship between the practice of shamanism and the political-economic ‘context’ it is held to emerge from in contemporary Mongolia. In the face of an extraordinary ‘revival’ in shamanism, anthropologists have sought explanations for the phenomenon that centre around a concern with how to locate it in relation to the social, economic and political...
Salvia divinorum (Lamiaceae) is a herb native to Mexico where it is used by Mazatec shamans for spiritual and divination purposes. S. divinorum products are easily available to consumers and are used worldwide as legal highs because of the hallucinogenic effects caused mainly by salvinorin A. Highly popular videos and websites on the internet depicting the use of S. divinorum products have...
In the online drug forum communities there are some 'educated and informed” users who can provide somehow reliable information on psychoactive compounds/combinations. These users, also called 'e-psychonauts”, may possess levels of technical knowledge relating to a range of ”novel psychoactive substances“ (NPS). Our project aimed at identifying and describing what available in terms of the...
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive substance from the Amazon rainforest regions of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Although its use originated among indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin, it has become increasingly popularized in Western society through the transnational markets of spirituality and religiosity driven by globalization, Postmodernity, and new forms of religious practice. In this...
This paper exploits the interconnections between alcohol use and politics, to examine changing forms of Sakha identification in the Sakha people’s northeast Siberian Republic, Sakha (Yakutia). The Sakha people are an indigenous Siberian community; their territories have been under Russian administration since the early seventeenth century. The public event that is this paper’s main focus – the...
It was shortly before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, when a young Polish woman by the name of Maria Czaplicka organized the predominantly female Yenisei Expedition. Czaplicka had been trained in anthropology at Oxford and was the author of the book Aboriginal Siberia, which summarized contemporary scholarship on the area (mostly Russian and Polish). Her book became a compendium for the...
The shaman’s song is reflected in epical literature in the theme of the Otherworldly Journey. As recorded by ethnologists, the shaman’s song, a record of as well as engagement with such a journey, summons up a bizarre dreamscape populated by fantastic beings, and engages with a specialized poetics employing linguistic paradox, trance-inducing rhythms, and nonsense words—these last considered by...
In the Native American world, the bear appears as the most appropriate animal for acting as instructor and helper during the process which an individual has to undergo in order to become a shaman. Many hunting peoples regarded the bear as the shaman of the animal world. Furthermore, bear’s descent into the bowels of the earth, every fall, to spend its period of hibernation, was regarded as a...
Reviewed by: Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton by Cunningham, Eric Steve Odin Cunningham, Eric. Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton Eric Cunningham’s Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen and the Psychedelic Eschaton is an adventurous, original, and illuminating work that with deep insight undertakes an...