Art and Spirit: The Artistic Brain, the Navajo Concept of Hozho, and Kandinsky’s “Inner Necessity ”

Laughlin, Charles D.

doi:10.24972/ijts.2004.23.1.1

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The use of imagery and decorated objects as active shamanic agents to help successfully navigate between realms is cross-culturally common. Shamans work to ensure their other-than-human helpers properly reflect the correct ritual key and correct spirit door, and otherwise have the attributes to ensure the shaman's success (Goodman 1988(Goodman , 1990Halifax 1982;Laughlin 2004). Of course, the use of pots as other-than-human partners in the middle world (e.g., the Playas Red jar animating the reservoir) and as transitory aids in shamanic ritual (e.g., the Polychrome pots with depictions of the spirit world) is not mutually exclusive, given that the same pot could serve different functions in different contexts, just as shamans do.…”

Section: Other-than-human Beings: Pots As Made Beingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shaman Pots, Sympathetic Magic, and Spinning Souls among the Medio Period Casas Grandes: Altered States of Consciousness in Other-than-Human Persons

VanPool

2024

Religions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Medio Period (AD 1200 to 1450) Casas Grandes shamans used tobacco and possibly other entheogens to initiate trance states that allowed their spirits to travel across the cosmos. These trance experiences involved a sense of vertigo and soul flight that is cross-culturally common and occurs with tobacco-based nicotine intoxication. The Medio Period shamans also relied on and interacted with other-than-human persons during their travels, including macaw- and serpent-linked deities, as well as animated objects designed to participate in their shamanic journeys. The animated objects included Playas Red and Chihuahuan Polychrome pottery effigies of humans, macaws, and snakes with shamanic themes that represented the spirit world. I propose these pots were animate “pot-people” created for shamanic rituals. They were created with unusual designs including painted images and incised patterns that emphasized the spinning/vertigo that was central to the shamans’ soul flight experience. In some cases, the pots were literally spun, as evidenced by the distinctive wear patterns on their bases. The shamanic designs on the pots that reflected the upper and lower worlds, the depiction of spinning in the pottery decorations, and the literal spinning of some pots reflected the sympathetic and mimetic magic that linked them to the spirit world. They were imbued with the liminal nature of the creatures they depicted, and the symbolic and occasional literal emphasis on spinning would allow them to enter into a shamanic trance in a manner similar to their human counterparts. They, thus, were designed to enter into ASC in a manner that paralleled their human counterparts.

show abstract

Section: Other-than-human Beings: Pots As Made Beingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shaman Pots, Sympathetic Magic, and Spinning Souls among the Medio Period Casas Grandes: Altered States of Consciousness in Other-than-Human Persons

VanPool

2024

Religions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A drum with incorrectly drawn designs will lead the shaman astray, potentially causing his spirit to endlessly wander the world looking for his way back to his people. Likewise, a poorly drawn sand painting will not attract the Holy Wind or will fail to place the spirits in the right framework to cooperate with humans (Laughlin 2004). While Bear (a powerful spirit) can help Puebloan and other Native American healers cure illnesses, he can also cause human death (Hallowell 1926;Parsons [1939Parsons [ ] 1996Vitebsky 2001).…”

Section: Shamans Spirits and Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Art as volition is central to this effort. As a result, a significant part of shamanic ritual focuses on ensuring that the art properly reflects the other-than-human persons involved and to ensure they are approached in a manner that encourages their benevolence (Goodman 1988(Goodman , 1990Laughlin 2004).…”

Section: Shamans Spirits and Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reality of Casas Grandes Potters: Realistic Portraits of Spirits and Shamans

VanPool

2021

Religions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most Native American groups believed in a form of animism in which spirit essence(s) infused forces of nature (e.g., the wind and thunder), many living plants and creatures, and many inanimate objects. This animism created other-than-human persons in which spirits were fused with matter that allowed them to interact with and even influence humans. Art in Western culture tends to denote “imagination”, and many scholars studying Native American art bring a similar perspective to their analyses. However, many Native Americans do not equate art with imagination in the same way, but instead use art to realistically portray these other-than-human persons, even when they are not typically visible in the natural world (e.g., the Southwestern horned-plumed serpent). Here, we apply a cognitive framework to evaluate the interplay of spirits at various levels that were created as Casas Grandes artisans used art as a means of depicting the inherent structure of the Casas Grandes spirit world. In doing so, they created links between ceremonially important objects such as pots and spirits that transformed these objects into newly created animated beings. The art thus simultaneously reflected the structure of the unseen world while also helping to determine the characteristics of these newly created other-than-human persons. One technique commonly used was to decorate objects with literal depictions of spirit beings (e.g., horned-plumed serpents) that would produce a natural affinity among the ceremonial objects and the spirit creatures. This affinity in turn allowed the animated ceremonial objects to mediate the interaction between humans and spirits. This approach transcends a view in which Casas Grandes art is considered symbolically significant and instead emphasizes the art as a component that literally helped create other-than-human collaborators that aided Casas Grandes people as they navigate ontologically significant relationships.

show abstract

Tapping the Plate or Hitting the Bottle: Sound and Movement in Self-accompanied and Musician-accompanied Dance

Mason

2014

Ethnomusicology Forum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Art and Spirit: The Artistic Brain, the Navajo Concept of Hozho, and Kandinsky’s “Inner Necessity ”

Cited by 5 publications

References 45 publications

Shaman Pots, Sympathetic Magic, and Spinning Souls among the Medio Period Casas Grandes: Altered States of Consciousness in Other-than-Human Persons

Shaman Pots, Sympathetic Magic, and Spinning Souls among the Medio Period Casas Grandes: Altered States of Consciousness in Other-than-Human Persons

The Reality of Casas Grandes Potters: Realistic Portraits of Spirits and Shamans

Tapping the Plate or Hitting the Bottle: Sound and Movement in Self-accompanied and Musician-accompanied Dance

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About