Understanding the Shaman’s Tribulations
Understanding the Shaman’s Tribulations – By Taba Menia – The scholarship of shamanism is closely related to ideas about traditional healing and their knowledge. Found across the world…
Tag: shamanism
Ten Treasures (and a Bonus): A Selection of Anthropological Gems You Might Have Missed from the Past Few Years
I began interviewing authors of fabulous new anthropology books for this space back in 2016. While completing 11 interviews, I also amassed a backlog of more terrific books…
The Mind of Plants: Book launch by Synergetic Press on December 15
–Synergetic Press has just released The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence, edited by John C. Ryan, Patricia Vieira and Monica Gagliano, and with a foreword by D…
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer: Siberia, Protest and Politics: Shaman Alexander in Danger
In 2021 a modest long-haired Sakha man named Alexander Gabyshev was arrested at his family compound on the outskirts of Yakutsk in an unprecedented for Sakha Republic (Yakutia)…
Prof. Dr. Ulla Johansen passed away
On 14th of February 2021 in her 94th year of life a great person, colleague in Arctic Anthropology and professor emerita of ethnology, Ulla Johansen passed away. Born…
Fifty Shades of Green: Reflecting back on the Oscar-nominated film Embrace of the Serpent in the age of coronavirus [excerpt]
The tragic death from coronavirus of indigenous actor Antonio Bolivar, star of the Oscar-nominated film Embrace of the Serpent, has made me reflect back on all the facts…
Catching up with Glenn Shepard: Interview to launch benefit photography sale with Linda Matney Gallery
This interview launches a new partnership with Linda Matney Gallery. Proceeds from the sale of selected photographs will directly support vital health services including emergency Covid-19 prevention …
Covid-19: Lessons from the Yanomami [New York Times Op-Ed]
This essay, which I translated and edited from an original draft written in French by anthropologist Bruce Albert, was first published by the New York Times on April…
The hummingbird shamans of Peru: Excerpt from "Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon"
Abanti blew the tobacco with fast furious puffs. The snuff entered my nostrils as a sequence of chartreuse explosions that expanded in chain reaction and spread backwards and…
The hummingbird shamans of Peru: Excerpt from "Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon"
Abanti blew the tobacco with fast furious puffs. The snuff entered my nostrils as a sequence of chartreuse explosions that expanded in chain reaction and spread backwards and…
Pandora’s Brew: The New Ayahuasca Part 7
Conclusion: It’s all fun and games… As I mentioned in the first post of my series, anthropologists and ethnobiologists have played an outsized role in studying and popularizing…
Pandora’s Brew: The New Ayahuasca Part 4
Ayahuasca Healings Last week (March 18, 2017), I received an email that read, in toto: Just like I promised: Get the free eBook here (right click, “Save Link…
Pandora’s Brew: The New Ayahuasca
Part 2: The New Ayahuasca Churches Yesterday I sat in on a webinar sponsored by ICEERS (the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service) and organized by anthropologist…
Pandora’s Brew: The New Ayahuasca
Savage Minds welcomes guest blogger Christina Callicott. I’m guessing that by now most of my readers will have heard of this stuff called “ayahuasca.” Everyone from Stephen Colbert…
This is your brain on Li-Lo: Ayahuasca in the Twenty-First Century
The genie is out of the bottle, tweeting about the next shamanic bodywork leadership seminar, and the bottle; well, check and see if it isn’t in the back…
This is your brain on Li-Lo: Ayahuasca in the Twenty-First Century
The genie is out of the bottle, tweeting about the next shamanic bodywork leadership seminar, and the bottle; well, check and see if it isn’t in the back…
This is your brain on Li-Lo: Ayahuasca in the Twenty-First Century
The genie is out of the bottle, tweeting about the next shamanic bodywork leadership seminar, and the bottle; well, check and see if it isn’t in the back…
This is your brain on Li-Lo: Ayahuasca in the Twenty-First Century
The genie is out of the bottle, tweeting about the next shamanic bodywork leadership seminar, and the bottle; well, check and see if it isn’t in the back…
Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon: Excerpt from ‘Broad Street’
Never tell a Matsigenka shaman his tobacco snuff is anything but katsi, “extremely painful.” I learned this lesson the way I learned most of my lessons during fieldwork…
Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon: Excerpt from ‘Broad Street’
Never tell a Matsigenka shaman his tobacco snuff is anything but katsi, “extremely painful.” I learned this lesson the way I learned most of my lessons during fieldwork…
Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon: Excerpt from ‘Broad Street’
Never tell a Matsigenka shaman his tobacco snuff is anything but katsi, “extremely painful.” I learned this lesson the way I learned most of my lessons during fieldwork…
Agony and Ecstasy in the Amazon: Excerpt from ‘Broad Street’
Never tell a Matsigenka shaman his tobacco snuff is anything but katsi, “extremely painful.” I learned this lesson the way I learned most of my lessons during fieldwork…
Good Mother Nature: Ayahuasca neoshamanism as cultural critique (conference video)
This paper imports nuances of nature-culture theory in Amazonian anthropology and demonstrates ways in which the reimagining of ayahuasca use in Australian society involves the modern idea of…
Medical anthropology, relatedness, and analytical cannibalism
Despite Hiedegger’s revolutionary claim that it is not possible to escape existence and find a view of the world from nowhere,we continue to divide anthropology into neat subfields— defined typi…