This article explores the Amazonian Kichwa concept of paju in Ecuador’s Napo Province, contributing to discussions on the extension of individual bodies to social relations, economic exchanges, and environmental conditions. While anthropological scholarship has often contrasted paju with shamanic knowledge by portraying it as feminine, cooperative, and oriented towards reciprocity, this article...
This article examines Yanomami knowledge as a decolonial epistemology of the forest and, secondarily, places it in dialogue with Maya mythic memory in order to argue that Indigenous cosmologies should be understood as complex ontological systems rather than residual forms of folklore. Drawing on Enrique Dussel’s concept of the mythic-ontological core and the decolonial critiques of Aníbal...
What do hunter-gatherer rock art motifs portray, and what does this tell us about their religious experiences? David Lewis-Williams was instrumental in establishing the connection between certain cultures’ corpora of art, shamanism and altered states of consciousness imagery. But one aspect of that spectrum of consciousness has been previously understudied. This is the place of Jung’s ‘Big...
KinshipJune 22, 2026Gustavo de Godoy E Silva, André Sanches de Abreu
Godparenthood and sponsorship are essential to Ka'apor sociology. They are present in two of the main rituals of Ka'apor: the naming ceremony and shamanism. The naming ceremony, included in the ritual beer drinking, is vital for identifying people and ensuring the health of children. In shamanism, the encounter between the shaman and his assistant godchildren, the "auxiliary spirits," is...
Abstract. This review discusses the book Bogoraz, Vladimir Germanovich. From the Archive: Selected Works on Shamanism, 1934–1936 (2018), prepared for publication by the Russian researchers Marianna Shakhnovich and Ekaterina Teryukova. The review briefly summarizes the book and discusses its design, focusing particularly on those scholars who compiled the archival materials. The discussion then...
Presently, the spread of Spanish over native communities has caused a gradual displacement of the languages that are practiced in these spaces, especially in activities that are part of their identity and cosmogony as a community. Therefore, the following work aims to examine the process of linguistic displacement in the Nahua shamanic ritual of the Cuacuila community within the municipality of...
Bu makale, Kuzey Kamçatka’nın yerli halklarının (Koryaklar, Çukçiler, Evenler) manevi inançlarının ne bir “yanlış bilinç” ne de “aslında” başka bir şeye dair olduğu varsayımından hareket etmektedir. Vampir şamanlarla ilgili inançları, manevi dünya, insan ruhu ve öbür dünya gibi daha geniş bir kültürel bağlamda ele alıyorum. Şamanlarla ilgili söylemlerin bu tanımlamasının ardından, makalenin...
This study evaluates the feasibility of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for identifying biochemical differences in Nicotiana species (N. spp.) in ceremonial, handcrafted Indigenous smokeless tobacco products from Ecuador and Peru. NIR spectra of three N. spp. Nicotiana tabacum (N. tabacum), Nicotiana glauca (N. glauca), Nicotiana rustica, (N. rustica) and three smokeless tobacco samples (SLT),...
Korkyt-Ata—the legendary Turkic poet, musician, and philosopher—occupies a central place in the cultural memory of Turkic peoples as a figure situated at the intersection of history, mythology, and music. Shaped by epic, mythological, and cosmological motifs, his image combines symbolic archetypes with traces of a historical personality. While mythological interpretations have been widely...
Abstract The visionary beverage known as ayawaska ( yage, oni , caapi , camaranti , etc.) among the Indigenous Nations of the Amazon has, over the past century, generated increasing academic interest and popular fascination, leading to a boom in psychedelic tourism and “neo-shamanism”. This article attempts to account for the uses of ayawaska within the contemporary cultural context of the...