Animism

The authors of this edition propose a novel and inspiring research approach to the subject of plants, which – being a form of life that is different, yet akin to us – is a constant source of nourishment and metaphors, decoration and obsessions. The articles included in this thematic block on plants enter into lively ongoing debates on genetics, feminism, ecology and plant ontology. They are excellent examples of the fact that in Polish philosophical and cultural reflection there was an understanding very early on of the challenges that posthumanism poses to our anthropocentric intellectual habits. Foreign readers will recognize in these Polish reflections a bold willingness to ask ethical and aesthetic questions of great relevance to the modern world that go far beyond the safe, though most likely imagined, limits of what it is to be human.

Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.

From ecodelic triplit, the peyoteros’ sense of place, interspecies communication and animistic healing to ecocentric entheogenic rituals, psychedelic bioregionalism, biogenetic structuralist ecopsychology and transpersonal ecosophy – this special issue of the EJE explores the verdant intersection between neurobiology and botany, shamanism and animism, and psychology and ecology, fusing mind with Nature in a boiling cauldron full of entheogenic insight.

How do we take indigenous animism seriously in the sense proposed by Viveiros de Castro? In this article, I pose this challenge to all the major theories of animism, stretching from Tylor and Durkheim, over Lévi-Strauss to Ingold. I then go on to draw a comparison between Žižek's depiction of the cynical milieu of advanced capitalism in which ideology as " false consciousness " has lost force and the Siberian Yukaghirs for whom ridiculing the spirits is integral to their game of hunting. Both know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion, but still they go along with it; both are ironically self-conscious about not taking the ruling ethos at face value. is makes me suggest an alternative: perhaps it is time for anthropology not to take indigenous animism too seriously.

Benyshek, D.  (2013).  A historical and critical overview of the artist as shaman and recent research. In A. Czyżewski  &  E.E. Djaltchinova-Malets (Eds.), Shamanhood and its arts. Budapest, Hungary: Bibliotheca Shamanistica, Akademia Kiado, and The Polish Institute of the World Art Studies, Warsaw.

Abstract: A historical overview follows the association of artists with shamans through myth, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, iconography, art history, psychology, and studies of creativity, primarily through the lens of the West. Forms of proto-art, such as the Woman of Willendorf, might represent entheogenmorphic female shamans.

A theoretical model of contemporary artists as shamans is presented.  Several traditional shamanic artists served as socially recognized shamans, spiritual practitioners who voluntarily controlled their attention to obtain information presented as forms of art. Shamanlike artists fulfilled many properties of shamanism, possibly earning implicit social designation when audiences receive psychological, social, spiritual, or physiological benefits from art.
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The concept of the archetype in modern psychology has its roots in animistic mythological thinking, part and parcel of our unconscious psychology. The unconscious constantly produces animistic motifs. Platonism and Jungian psychology are indebted to animism. The archetype is an expression of the animistic economy of the unconscious. It explains the success of the archetypal notion in understanding the unconscious. It is justified regardless of the nature of the archetype. Its ontological (metaphysical) status is therefore not an urgent issue. The archetype resides as an entity of mind in the unconscious psyche, which is the objective psyche. Such a layer of psyche is suggestive of a "divine" unconscious realm, where autonomous processes of volition and ideation are slowly brewing. The backside is that the Platonic paradigm may trigger a polytheistic regress, exemplified by naive New Age notions. The trinitarian tradition of mysticism could provide a way out for gone astray Jungians and New Agers. The path known as 'via negativa' means to gear down, to accomplish a withdrawal from the world. It provides the necessary complement that makes individuation complete.

Keywords: archetype, ontology, animism, lucid dreams, individuation, Plato, Carl Jung, contemplation, complementation.

In recent years, the topic of plant intelligence has been making the science pages of news publications with increasing regularity. Consider, for instance, November's BBC article detailing a host of expert opinions on topics such as plant cognition and the "wood wide web" that facilitates communication between trees, last year's New Scientist article on  plant thinking, sensing, and learning, which draws analogies between human brains and plant root networks (Ananthaswamy 2014), or Michael Pollan's 2013 piece in the New Yorker concerning the emerging field of "plant neurobiology" (Pollan 2013). Journalistic publications such as these are helping to bring cutting-edge scientific advancements to a broader audience, and serving to revolutionize public understandings of botanical life-ways in the  process. As is becoming increasingly apparent, plants communicate and interact with one another and with other kinds of beings in sophisticated and unexpected ways. But how, one might ask, does this relate to the social sciences and the traditionally humanistic field of anthropology?

'This book is platypus-like, unclassifiable.' - Marina Warner, London Review of Books

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Since the 19th century, dolls have served as toys but also as objects of obsession, love, and lust. That century witnessed the emergence of the term 'heterosexual' and of modern concepts of fetishism, perversity, and animism. Their convergence, and the demands of a growing consumer society resulted in a proliferation of waxworks, shop-window dummies, and customized love dolls, which also began to appear in art. Oskar Kokoschka commissioned a life-sized doll of his former lover Alma Mahler; Hans Bellmer crafted poupées; and Marcel Duchamp fabricated a nude figure in his environmental tableau Etant donnés. The Erotic Doll is the first book to explore men's complex relationships with such inanimate forms from historical, theoretical, and phenomenological perspectives. Challenging our commonsense grasp of the relations between persons and things, Marquard Smith examines these erotically charged human figures by interweaving art history, visual culture, gender, and sexuality studies with the medical humanities, offering startling insights into heterosexual masculinity and its discontents.

A simplified go-to document that shall the give the reader an overview of the pillars of African Traditional Religion. It also promises to be a book that urges the reader to find out more about African Traditional Religion because it demystifies a religion shrouded in secrecy and persecution from the major religions of the world. The Axioms of Kemet are advices and instructions from Ancient Egypt.

Latour’s Gaia serves the agenda of the rewesternization of the state of nature of the Anthropocene. Gaia’s philosophical rituals, her tamed savagery, rationalistic animism, theologico-political constructivism and leviathanic sovereignty are suffocating the spirits of the incipient decolonial states of natures.

In the following I will provide a glimpse into the variety of human experience. This means that how humans conceptualise the world they live in is not dictated upon them by a transcendent reality, but is wrought into the world by human action. As human action is diverse, also the structure and meaning of the world is diverse.
If we wish to acknowledge diversity, we have to understand how diversity is created and warranted. The aim of my talk is to show that indigenous people in Taiwan, as in the rest of the world, own the capabilities and tools for creating environments or—as French anthropologist Philippe Descola would put it—for "worlding" in their own right. Protecting diversity means acknowledging this right.

A Qualitative Investigation of United States Mediums’ Impressions of Spirits and the Afterlife - Jennifer Lyke

Taking Soul Birds Seriously: A Post-Secular Animist Perspective on Extra-Ordinary Communications - Brian Taylor

Paranormal Beliefs in College Culture: “In my house we have a ghost named Isaiah.” - Brooke Hansen, Luke St. Clair & Jessica Mancuso

Experiential Skepticism and an Exploration of Mediumship and Life After Death - Elliot Benjamin

Psychedelics and the Future of Religion:  A Review of Breaking Convention - Jules Evans

REVIEW: N.J. UFO/Paranormal Spring Conference  April 11th, at the Hamilton Garden Hilton - T. Peter Park

ABSTRACTS: ‘The Emerging Field of Paranthropology’: Panel at 58th Annual Parapsychological Association/39th Annual Society for Psychical Research Conference, University of Greenwich, 18th July 2015 - Serena Roney-Dougal, Stanley Krippner, David Luke & Jack Hunter

Editorial CSIC, Colección Biblioteca de dialectología y tradiciones populares, 332 páginas, ISBN: 978-84-00-10347-7 ---  Resumen: Son numerosos los estudios sobre chamanismo, pero casi inexistentes las monografías que abordan directamente lo que hace el chamán o chamana, por qué y para qué lo hace. Basándose en seis años de trabajo de campo entre un conjunto de chamanes, tanto nativos de las regiones amazónica y andina como españoles formados en la selva tropical, Santiago López-Pavillard ofrece una novedosa aproximación a una antropología implicada en la que se entrelazan descripción etnográfica, debate teórico sobre conceptos y métodos, y reflexión experiencial sobre la práctica etnográfica y sus efectos en el investigador. Todo ello le permite desarrollar una reconceptualización de la figura del chamán y de la práctica chamánica en torno al uso ceremonial de «plantas maestras» como la ayahuasca y el tabaco, a partir de la cual construye una crítica de los paradigmas disciplinarios de la antropología social y cultural, y desde la que plantea, también, un debate de gran actualidad sobre la naturaleza y el alcance del conocimiento científico en general.

Chamanes, ayahuasca y sanación muestra un aspecto particularmente complejo de nuestra sociedad, como es la coexistencia de diversas racionalidades que obedecen a distintas concepciones de la Realidad. Para ello, se hace necesario distinguir con claridad un conjunto de nociones como son las de salud/sanación, religión/espiritualidad o creencias religiosas vs. conocimiento espiritual, desde las que tratar de entender cómo y por qué se da una progresiva introducción de concepciones animistas en la sociedad occidental.

The Siberian Northeast shows striking parallels between the cosmologies of hunters and reindeer
herders. What may this tell us about the transformation from hunting to pastoralism? This article
argues for a structural identity between hunting and sacrifice, and for the domestication of the
reindeer as the result of hunters’ efforts to use sacrifice to control the accidental variables of the
hunt. Hunters can practise their ethos of ‘trust’ with prey only through highly controlled ritual
enactments. We describe two: the famous bear festival of the Amur Gulf region and the consecrated
reindeer of the Eveny. Both express the same overall logic by which sacrifice functions as an ideal
hunt. The animal is involved in a relation not of domination but of trust, while also undergoing a
process of taming. We therefore suggest that the reindeer’s domestication may be based not only
on ecological or economic adaptations, but also on cosmology.

El presente texto se subdivide en tres partes: en la primera se discute como desde la migraciones iniciales del continente asiático, se llegó a la formación del horizonte mapuche; en la segunda se ilustra la cultura mapuche, y en particular sus creencias espirituales (feyentún), así como podían ser antes de la entrada española en el Mapu; en la tercera, en fin, se analiza como se ha transformado el feyentún debido a la Guerra de Arauco, a la evangelización cristiana y a la destrucción de la independencia mapuche al final del siglo XIX, concluyéndose con una mirada a las diferentes formas en que se presenta el feyentún en la actualidad. Este libro será publicado próximamente en la Comunidad Europea por Proyectos Editoriales Feyentún.

Abstracts (English and Russian) :
Strong ritual ties are characteristic of early stages of epics in general (Zhirmunsky 1985; Putilov 1997) and of Philippine epics in particular (Manuel 1963). The hudhud has been repeatedly claimed to be a non-ritual epic as opposed to the alim ritual songs (Lambrecht 1965; Peralta 2001, 2007). However, evidences of ritual connections of the hudhud genre are to be found not only in Barton's (Barton 1946, 1955), but even in Lambrechts's works. This paper continues a study of ritual functions of the hudhud performance, (Stanyukovich 1981, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007) on the basis of analysis of early sources and fieldwork in Ifugao since 1995.
Hudhud personages are not just folklore figures, they belong to the halupe, a class of deities in the Ifugao pantheon. The specialization of halupe deities is to control emotions and memories; they are believed to be ma'ule, 'kind', i.e. benevolently disposed towards humans and to act on behalf of humans in their interactions with other deities. The halupe deities form the core of halag, so-called "women's religion" (Barton 1946). They are also addressed in rituals performed by males.
The hudhud-singing area is within the geographic boundaries where female agricultural rites were defined in the early 20th century (Barton 1946). It will be demonstrated that female hudhud singing during agricultural activities (weeding and harvesting) traditionally aimed to remind the benevolent deities of the needs of humans in order to secure an abundant harvest. Even today informants define the contents of hudhud di 'ani/page -'hudhud of the harvest/rice') as "it is all about rice". Women's singing in the fields pursues the same goal as the agricultural rites performed by males, i.e., to ensure the magical increase of rice.
Regional variations in hudhud epic singing result in the distribution of ritual functions between different genres within the frame of one ritual situation. This paper will discuss the role of the hudhud epic and hudhud-shaped ritual songs in funeral rites in order to make the soul of the deceased admit its new status, to achieve reconciliation between its living relatives and the soul of the dead, and to restore the territorial boundary between the dead and the living that has been jeopardized by a recent death. For that, the soul of the deceased, led by a spirit conductor Domia by means of hudhud singing, must be convinced to 'forget' the way back and to 'cool' its emotions towards its living kin, in that intense positive emotions towards those left on earth are just as dangerous for the living as are the negative ones.

Abstract Russian: Статья представляет собой теоретическое исследование антропологии эмоций, написанное на материалах, собранных автором в ходе многолетней полевой работы со сказителями, шаманами и другими ритуальными специалистами горных народов Филиппин (1995-2013). Основной круг проблем, рассмотренных в статье, относится к ключевым темам антропологии и эпосоведения: фольклор и действительность, эпос и обряд, антропология религий, шаманизм, антропология пространства, символика материальных предметов в фольклорном тексте и ритуале, обряды жизненного цикла, этнолингвистика, традиции и инновации в повседневной жизни коренных народов.

Современные филиппинские материалы (расшифровки записанных автором сказаний и интервью) анализируются в сопоставлении с ранними - конца девятнадцатого-начала двадцатого века. Представления ифугао и яттука о взаимодействии мира людей и мира духов, живых и мертвых даются в сопоставлении с фольклорными традициями других народов – как родственными сказаниям филиппинских горцев, так и обладающими только типологической близостью с ними (народы Сибири, Монголии и др.). Это позволяет автору придти к выводам, значение которых выходит за рамки исследования австронезийского культурного ареала.

[Abstract] The identification of mental visions through prehistoric artwork has been the central focus in the archaeology of shamanism. Vigorous debate surrounding the shamanic trance concerns whether the neuropsychological model is sufficient for interpreting meanings of such art. This chapter provides reviews of how the study of mental visions has become involved in the archaeological debates, how shamanism archaeologists use neuropsychological theory to interpret archaeological remains, and what problems are in this archaeological approach. A case study which focuses on the prehistoric Eskimo art in the Bering Strait region is approached. The assessment of the neuropsychological theory in this case study reveals that such trance model is not reliable to interpret prehistoric art. In contrast, the author suggests that a recent theorizing of animist ontology provides more effective explanations.

“O rizoma é uma estrutura de pensamento inteiramente alternativa e bizarra. O rizoma tende a crescer na horizontal, imediatamente abaixo ou acima do solo, criando estolhos. É impossível classificar, orientar ou intervir no seu crescimento. O rizoma não tem um princípio ou um fim, carece de qualquer eixo de indexação ou de simetria. É caracterizado por um intervalo sem significado. O rizoma pode quebrar-se num ponto e reconectar-se por completo sem perder o seu sentido, porque em vez de ter um sentido ele produ-lo. O rizoma tem memória curta. Ele convive com a própria amnésia porque não há ninguém a quem se possa queixar. É caracterizado pela anti-genealogia: gera múltiplas versões dos acontecimentos, muitas vezes contraditórias, e favorece a liberdade e o acaso.”

Rock art, once an often-neglected subject, is increasingly considered a meaningful social practice among past and present communities. This thesis adds to a growing body of research that regards rock art as more than art or ideation, but as a means for establishing one’s identity in relation to their physical and social worlds. To demonstrate this, I focus on a corpus of Hohokam petroglyphs in the South Mountains, near the center of the Phoenix Basin in south-central Arizona. I make the case that these petroglyphs were instrumental in ritual practices that displayed and conveyed religious knowledge between performers and audiences. Rock art therefore positioned people in relationships of power with other people, as well as other-than-human agents, regarding the control and distribution of religious knowledge.
I rely on contextual factors throughout this thesis to investigate the nuances of petroglyph-related ritualism. Hohokam rock art was created and used on at least seven types of stage, each varying in ritual depth and entailing different performers and audiences. This shows that rock art, although uncommon, cross-cut social identities, and the religious knowledge involved was not institutionalized within a select few social positions, such as shamans or similar politico-religious offices.
Hohokam rock art is relatively visible and accessible; this “openness” paralleled the fluidity of religious knowledge within the larger Hohokam world and complements what we know from village settings. My chronological assessment nevertheless shows that this was not always the case. I use four relative-dating techniques—proximity analysis, cross-media design correlation, repatination, and artifact associations—to argue petroglyph-related ritualism in the South Mountains was performed mostly during the Preclassic era (~A.D. 500-1100). A cessation in rock art by the onset of the Classic period (~A.D. 1100-1400) resulted from an usurpation of religious knowledge by emerging leaders in the wake of a fracturing ritual system. This social transformation met little resistance, in part because the new religious order maintained qualities of the previous ritual system, yet emerging leaders reconfigured it in ways to justify and substantiate their new authority.

Stories of pagan redemption. Guardians of the land, loss of powers, and human disrespect. Exile of the faery folk under capitalist privatization of the commons, industrialization,  christianization and war. Longing for deliverance. Animist sanctuaries. The vestigial goddess. Survival of holydays, libations, and rites of the stones.

As proposed in 2012 by the 3th International Geological Congress, the Anthropocene is the geological epoch of the Quaternary Period following the Holocene, the age that accounts for the transformation of humans into a force shaping the Earth, and of human actions into a geological phenomenon. Current debates on the Anthropocene are introducing new figures of impersonality, modes of political agency that are shaking the certainties of modern political philosophy. A key protagonist of this epistemic turn is Gaia, the Earth, the Greek Mother of most Western gods. Borrowing from James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis and addressing the Earth beyond the organisms/environments, humans/nonhumans divide, Bruno Latour has turned Lovelock’s planetary vitalism into the cornerstone of a new state of nature. Latour’s Gaia is a philosophical demon replacing Hobbes’s Leviathan and introducing a new political theology of nature. As in Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical naturalism, Gaia’s archaic relations with things and bodies suggest a return of animist and totemist paradigms and confront political philosophy with unprecedented questions.

This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that sentience is a fundamental and ubiquitous element of actuality. Thereafter is presented a brief exploration of why panpsychism has been spurned.
The article was commissioned by High Existence.

– Introduction
– 1. The Genetic Argument
– 2. The Abstraction Argument
– 3. The Inferential Argument
– Why Panpsychism is Spurned
– End Remarks

Originally published 15 January 2018: http://highexistence.com/panpsychism-3-reasons-why-our-world-brimming-sentience/ [note different subtitle]

Accompanying audio version: https://youtu.be/B7B_RmZQp5Q

©Peter Sjöstedt-H 2018

Divine Molecule Talks at Tyringham – Part II
Exploring Entheogenic Entity Encounters  – A private symposium. Tyringham Hall, May 29th – June 1st, 2017. (Curator and compère) by Anton Bilton, Dr David Luke & Rory Spowers.

Dr Luis Luna - On Encounters with Entities in the Ayahuasca Realm. A Phenomenological View

Dr Michael Winkelman - Visionary Experiences, Entities and Alien Worlds: A Natural Evolved Psychology

Prof Ralph Metzner - Entheogens, Radical Empiricism and the Nature of Reality

Chris Timmerman - Subjective Experiences and the Sensed Presence Phenomenon in Human Research with DMT

Dr William Richards - Ineffability and Revelation on the Frontiers of Knowledge

Prof Chris M Bache - LSD and DMT Entity Relation

Dr Angela Voss - What is the Daimon? An Exploration of the Oracular Intelligence

Prof Bernard Carr - Making Space and Time for Mind and Psychedelia

Daniel Pinchbeck – Psychedelic Initiations and Ecological Megacrisis

Prof Jeffrey Kripal - Biological Gods: Science (Fiction) and Some Emergent Mythologies

Whitley Streiber - Stories from a Life: a Lifetime of Anomalous and Unexplained Experiences

Dr David Luke – Summary of the Symposium: What we think we know about DMT entities and how to go about exploring them

En los últimos siglos, las ideas religiosas se han desvinculado de las ideas sobre el desarrollo, en sentido amplio. Ahora, algunos trabajos pioneros en la antropología están retomando estos nexos. Una característica en común en estos trabajos es la de cuestionar el análisis según categorías distintas y separadas, a favor de considerar “las relaciones entre las relaciones” del mundo. Este nuevo abordaje nos ayuda a repensar las cuestiones religiosas y filosóficas a fondo, y los posibles caminos de desarrollo que afrontamos. Se consideran estas nuevas direcciones en
torno a las razones de la transición de sociedades de cazadores a sociedades de pastores, según la vuelta animista de la antropología amerindia de las últimas décadas y los debates mundiales al respecto. Al repensar los procesos de “domesticación” de los animales en los Andes, se examinan las posibles diferencias entre la caza y el sacrificio de los animales desde la perspectiva de los cazadores o pastores, en su dimensión ética y según la noción andina de la “crianza mutua”. Se trata de ritos dirigidos al Señor de los Animales y su contraparte femenina, tomando ejemplos del presente y del pasado, como una posible base ética para el desarrollo productivo en los Andes

Anyone who stays in the Western Amazon lowlands for a while will be confronted with a multitude of disturbing experiences: indigenous or mestizo people tell stories that sound rather mythical and unbelievable to moderns, though people insist on their literal truth. Furthermore, one may witness situations where indigenous explanations seem fairly logical while applying what one has learned during his or her socialisation in the so-called West becomes increasingly difficult. Considering this, it appears that what many local people hold as literal truth is difficult to be proven – or falsified – by the common means of scientific documentation and reproduction. This kind of truth seems to be located on an ontological level that is different from, or only in parts overlaps with, the ontology of pragmatic life that is undoubtedly shared by indigenous people and their visitors.