{"title":"The devil's picture book and tautology fetishism: A response to Sosteric et al. regarding the tarot and decolonial futures","authors":"Yvan Greenberg","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/anoc.12225","url":null,"abstract":"A recent Letter to the Editor in Anthropology of Consciousness, by Sosteric, Ratkovic, and Sosteric, is positioned as a critique of my article “Imaginal Research for Unlearning Mastery: Divination With Tarot as a Decolonizing Methodology.” The letter posits that the esoteric tarot is a repository of colonial ideological propaganda, and because of that, it cannot and should not be used as a tool for decolonial practices. However, the letter is misleading in its implications that what I have proposed in my article cannot be a methodology for decolonizing mental models, and includes statements about my position which are incorrect. This response clarifies and expands on ideas from my article—both about the tarot and also about the carceral mental models my article attempts to address—in part by highlighting the modern/colonial underpinnings of Sosteric et al.'s critique.","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139866496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to A Brief Hystery of the Phantasm","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12224","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12224","url":null,"abstract":"<p>“A Brief Hystery of the Phantasm.” Anthropology of Consciousness, 2023, 34 (1), 181–228.</p><p>In paragraph 8 of the “The Return of the Mythological Phantasm” section, the text “Deleuze's phantasm becomes the ‘transcendental ideal of phantasy’<sup>31</sup> (1987, 155) juxtaposed to his earlier Nietzschean-Bataillian notion of phantasm as immanence and deeply subversive, base materialism” was incorrect. This should read: “Deleuze's phantasm becomes the ‘transcendental ideal of phantasy’<sup>31</sup> (1987, 155) juxtaposed to his earlier Nietzschean-Bataillian notion of phantasm as immanence and deeply subversive difference in itself”.</p><p>In the “References” section, the text “Tracz, R. Brian. ‘Imagination and the Distinction between Image and Intuition in Kant.’ <i>Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6</i> (38): 1087-1120.” was incorrect. This should read: “Tracz, R. Brian. 2020. ‘Imagination and the Distinction between Image and Intuition in Kant.’ <i>Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6</i> (38): 1087-1120.”</p><p>In the “References” section, the text “Hollan, Douglas W. and C. Jason Throop. <i>The Anthropology of Empathy: Experiencing the Lives of Others in Pacific Societies</i>. Brooklyn, NY: Berghahn Books.” was incorrect. This should read: “Hollan, Douglas W. and C. Jason Throop. 2011. <i>The Anthropology of Empathy: Experiencing the Lives of Others in Pacific Societies</i>. Brooklyn, NY: Berghahn Books.”</p><p>In the “References” section, the text “Baudelaire, Charles. ‘Every Man His Chimæra.’ In <i>Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry</i>, edited by Thomas Robert Smith and translated by F.P. Sturm, 113–114. Project Gutenberg. Accessed January 2, 2022. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47032/47032-h/47032-h.htm#Page_113.” was incorrect. This should read: “Baudelaire, Charles. 2014. ‘Every Man His Chimæra.’ In <i>Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry</i>, edited by Thomas Robert Smith and translated by F.P. Sturm, 113–114. Project Gutenberg. Accessed January 2, 2022. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47032/47032-h/47032-h.htm#Page_113.”</p><p>We apologize for these errors.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.12224","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139618603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A deceased doctor healing the living in the enchanted world of the Brazilian Northeast","authors":"Sidney M. Greenfield, Antônio Mourão Cavalcante","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12223","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12223","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The theme of this paper is that people in Northeast Brazil refuse to let a good person who helped them during his (or her) lifetime die. They do this through several of the religious traditions practiced in the region. Beings, human and other, now in another plane of reality established in modern thinking, cross the conceptual divide and return through mediums or other intermediaries to heal the living. We examine two religious traditions, “folk” or “popular” Catholicism and Kardecist-Spiritism, focusing on the spirit of Argeu Hebster, a medical doctor who lived in the municipality of Marangaupe in the state of Ceará until his death in 1977. The return of the doctor is told in stories told to the authors while doing ethnography that provide the data used in analyzing the enchanted worlds of the two religions.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138996379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christine S. VanPool, Laura Lee, Paul Robear, Todd L. VanPool
{"title":"Trance, posture, and tobacco in the Casas Grandes shamanic tradition: Altered states of consciousness and the interaction effects of behavioral variables","authors":"Christine S. VanPool, Laura Lee, Paul Robear, Todd L. VanPool","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12222","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12222","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Here, we describe how Casas Grandes Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) shamanic practices of the North American Southwest used tobacco shamanism, a ritual stance called the Tennessee Diviner (TD) posture, and cultural expectations to generate trance experiences of soul flight and divination. We introduce a conceptual model that holds that specific trance experiences are the emergent result of human minds interacting with additional factors including entheogens, cultural expectations, physiological states, postures/movement, and sound/stimulation. Experimental and ethnographic evidence indicates initiating trance with either tobacco intoxication or the TD posture accompanied with a rapidly beating drum or rattle corresponds with perceptions of soul flight, transformation, and divination/information acquisition. Both have similar results but pairing them together as they were during the Medio period likely helped ensure the culturally desired trance experiences. This practice of mutually reinforcing factors was likely part of tobacco-based shamanism found in other New World cultures as well. We suggest our general model can be applied to other contexts to examine how various aspects of trance induction interact to produce the cultural patterns (and resulting cosmological and spiritual frameworks) anthropologists have documented in other cultures.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.12222","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135342334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imaginal research for unlearning mastery divination with Tarot as a decolonizing methodology, NOT. Authentic paths towards decolonization","authors":"Mike Sosteric, Gina Ratkovic, Tristan Sosteric","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12219","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12219","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A recent article in <i>Anthropology of Consciousness</i> entitled ‘Imaginal research for unlearning mastery: Divination with Tarot as a decolonizing methodology’ argues that the Western Tarot may be a useful tool to facilitate decolonization despite (or perhaps in spite) of the colonial and imperial imprints of the accumulating class. This response points out the Tarot is in fact a tool developed by the accumulating class, designed specifically to facilitate the imposition of elite master narratives. This letter calls into question the appropriateness and effectiveness of using the Tarot as a tool for decolonization.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136103577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the qualitative nature of conscious states: Insights from a structuralist theory of mind and meaning","authors":"Carles Salazar","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12221","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12221","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The point of departure of this paper is Penrose's definition of conscious action as that in which stimulus and response are linked by a non-algorithmic relationship, which Penrose defines as ‘understanding’. My purpose is to explore the nature of this understanding by means of a two-step process. The first step is provided by Tononi's Integrated Information Theory of consciousness. This theory provides us with a quantitative measure of conscious states that we need to transform into qualitative meaning. In the second step, we obtain this qualitative meaning with the help of the structuralist theory of mind. From this perspective, meaning originates in the set of qualitative contrasts that define the alternative courses of action that might have been implemented. Work on the analogy between quantitative bits and qualitative binary oppositions does not solve the hard problem of consciousness, but it might help to reformulate it in a new, productive way.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.12221","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135166078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Nanny of the Maroons and the Upper West Side” and “Omaj pou Evelyne Sincère”","authors":"Ayanna Legros","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/anoc.12190","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50141181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The invisible other: Rituals and Egyptian perception of the unknowable","authors":"el-Sayed el-Aswad","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/anoc.12196","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper is positioned within broader scholarly debates about ritual-religious and psychological elements underlying the phenomenon of altered states of mind in Egyptian Muslim contexts. This research examines the intricate relationships between ritual, consciousness, and the unseen/unknowable world reflected in the imagination and practices of urban and rural communities belonging administratively to the city of Tanta in Egypt. This comparative study proposes that the image of the embodied invisible Other, in both benevolent and malevolent forms, impacts the state of consciousness of persons participating in two different rituals, the <i>zikr</i> (remembrance of God) and the <i>zār</i> (the exorcism of spirits). This inquiry concentrates on the transformation of the states of people's consciousness, namely the <i>majzūb</i> (those mystically attracted to God) and the <i>malbūs</i> (those possessed by spirits), through embodied engagement with the invisible Other that is made visible through participation in the ritual performances of the <i>zikr</i> and/or the <i>zār</i>. Rituals performed by Egyptians, particularly those who experience altered states of consciousness, display both a psychic (emotional) experience and an encounter with the invisible Other that may be depicted as divine or otherwise non-divine. Each case of the <i>zikr</i> ritual and <i>zār</i> cult relates to its participants' perception of reality.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50132000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When microbes meet: Decay and microbial spirituality in the post-human art market","authors":"Amanda Lyn","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12216","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12216","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The future of art is dirt and decomposing shit. A deconstructed intestinal sea of microorganisms, spread out into the soil they were released back into following the extinction of their complex vessel. The genetic information they exchanged with each other as well as with their container, now existing in a vague memory, perhaps a feeling of sadness and longing, as they digest the once cherished artifacts of their human predecessors.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46008283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}