Cancer incidence among Hmong Americans has increased significantly since the early 2000s. Familiarity with and understanding of the disease is low due to limited exposure in countries of origin, lack of terminology, reliance on shamanic healing practices, and restricted access to screening. Health and healing within Hmong culture have been the domain of shamans, whose practices focus on...
The article discusses the abandonment of shamanic beliefs among the Naga indigenous tribes, reflecting a cultural stigmatization inflicted by colonialism. The article contextualizes two select novels, “Spirit Nights” and “Son of the Thundercloud” by Easterine Kire, situating the narratives within the Indian decolonial discourse. Employing a close textual reading method, the article reassesses...
The article explores the cultural significance of the sacred groves (kāvus) of Kerala and their relationship to various notions of nature, ecology and indigenous spirituality. We employ a mixed method of research that combines textual sources and oral exegesis as well as anthropological fieldwork to investigate the spaces within the kāvus that are designated for Tantric healing and empowerment....
For over five decades, there has been a significant quantitative discrepancy between the traditional knowledge of psychoactive plants of Old World and New World. While some 20th century scholars believed that it was motivated by cultural differences between the populations of the two regions of the globe, this consideration failed to take into account that the acquisition of awareness of the...
This review integrates anthropological and neuroscientific perspectives to elucidate music-induced trance processes and their relevance to non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs). The objectives are to deepen the understanding of trance phenomena, delineate links across diverse trance expressions, and inform future neuroscientific research. Drawing on anthropological insights, we examine...
This article is not explaining how scientifically shamans are able to smooth the way for candidates in winning electoral politics, but rather this article aims to explain how the formation of discourse is built to support the rationality of political shamans so that there are still many who trust and use their services. Using the object of study at the moment of the election of the village head...
Sorcery, black magic, and supernatural harm are central to many Amazonian shamanic traditions, yet their role in contemporary Western psychedelic culture has received little systematic empirical attention. Ethnographic work suggests that Western participants in ayahuasca tourism often downplay indigenous sorcery frameworks in favour of psychological or therapeutic interpretations of difficult...
This paper examines the relationship between women in the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar who visit and become shamans and the violence they experience. It shows that in many cases, women’s engagement with shamanism arises in the context of physical violence from their husband or male kin. Yet this paper also resists functionalist explanations that render violence as the sole cause of shamanic...
Here, the reader is taken through the history of shamanistic beliefs and practices to highlight its parallels with the contemporary helping professions. Seeking their power to heal, exorcise evil spirits, and commune with the dead, some consider shamans offer a mystical means of dealing with the vicissitudes of life. As can be said of people undergoing psychoanalytic treatment, altered states...
This interdisciplinary research monograph examines a broad range of Exceptional Human Experiences (EHEs), including Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), Reincarnation Memories (RMs), Deathbed Visions (DBVs), Terminal Lucidity (TL), Shared Death Experiences (SDEs), and Mystical Consciousness (MC). These phenomena have been reported across cultures and historical periods and continue to attract...