Anthropology & Humanism
June 1, 1996
Daniel Halperin
6 citations
The increasing recognition of indigenous perspectives regarding religious practices such as shamanism and spirit possession offers a welcome respite from the excesses of scientific skepticism. Anthropologists may, however, become dogmatic in the opposite direction through accepting and even promoting at face value the officially presented "emic" view. At times, ritual practitioners themselves...
Journal of Ethnopharmacology
May 1, 1996
C Desmarchelier, A Gurni, G Ciccia et al.
63 citations
The Ese'eja is a hunter-fisher-gatherer tribe of Amerindians which occupies the south-eastern part of Perú. Their culture cannot be disassociated from religious beliefs. Disease can be caused by accident, distraction or indolence, or by evil powers. These evil powers come either from the direct action of a harmful shaman or by interactions with the Devil. A description of shamanic practices is...
March 28, 1996
Caroline Humphrey, Urgunge Onon
Abstract In the great ritual just described, shamans danced between the home trees, with their images of ancestral disasters, and the outer tree, bearing its spirits of double-edged fortune and maleficent void. Nothing in this shamanic universe was a single indivisible unit, and nothing was simple or devoid of threat. Such a universe arose, I suggest, from the shaman’s real-life practice, which...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
1996
Dan Merkur
1 citation
Abstract For the Scandinavian tradition of the history of religions, in which I was trained, not the numinous, but the experience of the numinous is the sui generis subject matter of the discipline; and historians routinely emphasize the experiential aspects of religions. The better to understand religious experience, I work interdisciplinarily with psychoanalysis. Freud's treatment of group...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
1996
T Lyttle, D Goldstein, J Gartz
84 citations
This paper investigates the supposedly psychedelic Bufo toad and the allegedly psychedelic drug bufotenine, which is contained in the skin and glands of this toad. The bufo toad has held a place in human mythologies and medicines worldwide since archaic times. Used by ancient peoples for a variety of purposes, its most spectacular effects, according to lore, involve magical and shamanic or...
Journal of Ethnopharmacology
October 1, 1995
S Hajicek-Dobberstein
34 citations
In the legendary biographies of some Buddhist adepts from the 2nd- and 9th-centuries there are some clues which can be interpreted to reveal that the adepts were consuming psychedelic Amanita muscaria, 'fly agaric', mushrooms to achieve enlightenment. This secret ingredient in the alchemical elixir they used to attain 'realization' was, of course, unnamed, in keeping with their vows to maintain...
Patient education and counseling
September 1995
S W Gunn
A description is presented of the medical beliefs of the totemic people on the Northwest American coast. The principles of Shamanic therapy are analysed. The consequences for therapeutic views by medical schools are discussed.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
April 1, 1995
J. D. Lewis‐williams
41 citations
The construction of archaeological arguments is a continuing source of concern. In comparatively recent years archaeological data have come to be seen as a text that can in some sense be ‘read’. Rejecting this approach in favour of arguments constructed by the intertwining of disparate strands of evidence, this article explores the possible meanings of a southern African rock art motif....
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 1994
Stanley Krippner
Enigmatic, anomalous dream reports challenge the Western philosophical worldview, hence they are ignored or derided by most mainstream philosophers and scientists. Nevertheless, there is compelling evidence from research in parapsychology that at least some of these reports have consensual validation and waking life consequences. Shamanic models of reality (which reflect shamanic philosophies)...
Amazonía Peruana
June 14, 1994
Bruno Illius
7 citations
La importancia que tienen los alucinógenos en la función social de los grupos étnicos de la Amazonía es ya conocida. Este artículo nos muestra el recorrido que tiene la producción de la artesanía, labor exclusivamente femenina, y los diseños que emplean para la elaboración de textiles y alfarería. Estos son transmitidos por el shamán que, en la toma de ayahuasca y mediante la alucinación...