Jesús M. González-Mariscal, Paulina E. Sosa-Cortés
{"title":"Insights for Modern Applications of Psilocybin Therapy from a Case Study of Traditional Mazatec Medicine","authors":"Jesús M. González-Mariscal, Paulina E. Sosa-Cortés","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12168","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12168","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The \"people of knowledge\" of traditional Mazatec medicine have preserved until today the ritual use of psilocybin mushrooms as part of their health care systems. The renewed interest in the effect of psilocybin on human consciousness for both therapeutic and recreational purposes usually obviates the historical and cultural background of indigenous peoples, as well as the legitimation of their practices and knowledge. In this article, through the case study of a foreign person who attended a Mazatec ritual specialist to participate in a ritual night ceremony known as <i>velada</i>, we show the importance of approaching research on psychoactive plants and mushrooms from a transdisciplinary and intercultural perspective, so that we can appreciate the profound complexity of the healing processes that take place in traditional indigenous contexts, as well as the limits of recreational uses or exclusively neopositivist and clinical approaches.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49338654","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":"Psilocybin and the Meaning Response: Exploring the Healing Process in a Retreat Setting in Jamaica","authors":"Maria Orozco, Shana Harris","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12162","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12162","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In the past decade, the consumption of psilocybin mushrooms has become a popular therapeutic tool for people looking to deal with mental and emotional health issues. The emerging interest in psilocybin therapy in the global north has led to the development of retreat centers in locations where psilocybin is legal or unregulated. Drawing on ethnographic research at a psilocybin retreat center in Jamaica, this article examines the emotional and somatic reactions attributed to psilocybin that influence the social interactions and the mental and emotional state of the guests at this retreat center. We argue that guests go through a symbolic healing process that involves the construction of a meaning response based on internal and collective experiences of altered consciousness via psilocybin. Additionally, we emphasize how both attending the retreat and the psychedelic experience there can be considered a liminal state that leads to different modes of relation while in Jamaica.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44090841","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":"Yes We Cannibal Panel Discussion: Reading, Unearthing, and Eating Anthropocentrism with Cesar & Lois","authors":"Mat Keel, Liz Lessner","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12164","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12164","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This panel discussion took place on June 26, 2021, as part of the programming for an exhibition by critical art collaborative Cesar & Lois at experimental art and research project space <i>Yes We Cannibal</i> (Baton Rouge, LA). The exhibition was entitled <i>Eat the Anthropocene with Cesar & Lois, mycelia and friend entities</i> and ran for six weeks. The panel discussion collected scholars from art, anthropology, literature, landscape architecture, and amateur Mycology to elucidate themes relevant to the artwork, which features a variety of experimental collaborations between codices and fungal life.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45732452","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":"Experiences With Sacred Mushrooms and Psilocybin In Dialogue: Transdisciplinary Interpretations Of The “Velada”","authors":"Antonella Fagetti, Roberto E. Mercadillo","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12163","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12163","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We present the set and setting of the <i>velada</i>, the Mazatec ritual of divination and healing. We highlight the subjective experiences of individuals who consumed sacred mushrooms and interpret them from their cultural and community contexts, but also from findings derived from experimental and neuroscientific research. We understand that the experiences connected to sacred mushrooms can be explained by the effects of psilocybin on the neurobiology of emotions, decision making, and visual, auditory, and bodily imagery. But we also understand that experimentation does not consider the individual and collective history of the person, and that the <i>velada</i> can provide guidance for integrating a person’s history and beliefs into experimental designs. The resurgence of psychedelic medicine prompts us into a transdisciplinary dialogue that encompasses both the anthropological perspective and the set and setting of the entheogenic experience during the sacred mushroom ritual.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45876216","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":"Santa Rosa and Singing from the Heart of the Bädi","authors":"Jorgelina Reinoso Niche","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12166","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12166","url":null,"abstract":"<p>For the Mexican Otomi of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Santa Rosa is a sacred plant used by the shaman to heal people and sing in rituals called costumbres. It is also an Antigua, a sacred deity who maintains a constant dialogue with ritual specialists. In the Otomi discourse and its worldview of Santa Rosa, as well as in its ritual process, it is eaten, not smoked. Although it is cannabis, they mention that: \"the Santa Rosa is eaten, it is sacred; marijuana, the one they smoke in Mexico, is another one that looks like it.\"</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42031194","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}
Margit Anne Petersen, Sarah Feldes, Victor Sacha Cova
{"title":"Ayahuasca Calling: Sacredness and the Emergence of Shamanic Vocations in Denmark and Peru","authors":"Margit Anne Petersen, Sarah Feldes, Victor Sacha Cova","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12165","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12165","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article addresses the sacredness of Ayahuasca from the perspective of the global shamanic vocation. If encounters with Ayahuasca are said to revitalize forms of sacredness in contemporary societies, this is perhaps clearest in cases where individuals understand themselves to be called to lead ceremonies. Recognizing the global scale of Ayahuasca shamanism, we compare facilitators of ceremonies in two societies to discern differences and similarities in how Ayahuasca vocations exist in differently modernized societies: Peru, a predominantly Catholic society with a substantial Indigenous Amazonian population and an active Ayahuasca shamanism tourism sector, and Denmark, a secular society in Northern Europe, where Ayahuasca is illegal. Building on recent reappraisals of Weber’s reflection on vocation and Durkheim’s theory of the sacred, we argue that being called by Ayahuasca to follow shamanic vocations in contemporary societies leads to tensions around the need to both justify and resist the rationalization of Ayahuasca.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.12165","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46047683","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":"“Forest medicines,” Kinship Alliances, and Equivocations in the Contemporary Dialogues between Santo Daime and the Yawanawá","authors":"Lígia Duque Platero, Isabel Santana de Rose","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12160","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12160","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper, we describe the spiritual and kinship alliances between heads of an urban Santo Daime church from Rio de Janeiro and some leaders of the Yawanawá people from the Amazonian region. We suggest that these alliances involve exchanges and dialogical relationships that hold different meanings for the diverse social actors that take part in them. Further, we argue that equivocation and functional misunderstandings have an important role in these multidirectional dialogues. Based on this case study, we approach the Yawanawá strategies for capturing otherness, and the insertion of the <i>daimistas</i> in the indigenous sociality networks. We focus especially on the Yawanawá mode of producing kin by capturing non-indigenous people and their participation in exchange networks that encompass multiple regimes of value. From the <i>daimista</i> point of view, we describe these relationships using the native category of “eclecticism.” We suggest that the <i>daimistas</i> attempt to translate the Yawanawá shamanic knowledge and the consumption of the “forest medicines,” experiencing the performance of “becoming indigenous.”</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41962642","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":"Editorial: Current Debates on Sacred Plants","authors":"Christian Frenopoulo, Sandra Lucia Goulart","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12167","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12167","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The articles in this special edition exemplify three major issues in current debates on Sacred Plants: a) the wisdom of Indigenous understandings of sacred plants, b) beneficial emerging uses of sacred plants by non-Indigenous people, c) the position of Indigenous wisdom for emerging uses of sacred plants.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47569185","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}
Keith Williams, Osiris Sinuhé González Romero PhD, Dr. Michelle Braunstein, Suzanne Brant
{"title":"Indigenous Philosophies and the \"Psychedelic Renaissance\"","authors":"Keith Williams, Osiris Sinuhé González Romero PhD, Dr. Michelle Braunstein, Suzanne Brant","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12161","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12161","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Western world is experiencing a resurgence of interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, most of which are derived from plants or fungi with a history of Indigenous ceremonial use. Recent research has revealed that psychedelic compounds have the potential to address treatment-resistant depression and anxiety, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and addictions. These findings have contributed to the decriminalization of psychedelics in some jurisdictions and their legalization in others. Despite psychedelics’ opaque legal status, numerous companies and individuals are profiting from speculative investments with few, if any, benefits accruing to Indigenous Peoples. In this paper, we suggest that the aptly named “psychedelic renaissance,” like the European Renaissance, is made possible by colonial extractivism. We further suggest that Indigenous philosophical traditions offer alternative approaches to reorient the “psychedelic renaissance” towards a more equitable future for Indigenous Peoples, psychedelic medicines, and all our relations.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.12161","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42782728","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":"Neuro-plastic Shamanism? Towards a Political Ontology of Whiteness and the Psychedelic Zeitgeist","authors":"Mat Keel","doi":"10.1111/anoc.12159","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.12159","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper argues for reorienting our investigation of the psychedelic zeitgeist towards the longitudinal history of psychedelia with a committed attention to its relationship to colonialism. It demonstrates that clinical psychedelic medicine appears to sustain the reproduction of modern colonial whiteness in line with Elizabeth Povinelli’s theorization of late liberalism. It also challenges the notion of a restricted or segregated academic area for psychedelic studies. Instead, it is imperative to place discussions of contemporary plant medicine in line with broader contemporary discussions in cultural anthropology around political ontology and decoloniality. This paper attempts to demonstrate that doing so may challenge our understanding of whiteness—reinterpreting it—by recourse to the history of the psychedelic counterculture, as a form of complex trauma, and thus potentially demonstrating new implications for decoloniality and its praxis.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49547562","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}