Introduction to the Special Issue Art, Shamanism and Animism

Wallis, Robert J.; Carocci, Max

doi:10.3390/rel12100853

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Many shamans suggest that most people have "spirit blindness" that is analogous to color blindness, in that the spirit-blind cannot see the spirits that are readily visible to shamans (King 1999, p. 58;Vitebsky 2001). To help communicate with the spirit-blind, shamans frequently materialize the hidden part of the physical world as well as the upper and lower worlds that most people cannot regularly access (Halifax 1982;Harrison-Buck and Freidel 2021;Wallis and Carocci 2021). Shamanic drawings, paintings, or pecking in rock walls are, thus, more akin to a photograph of a place one visited in the past, as opposed to creative endeavors based on fanciful imagination showing unreal worlds (Halifax 1982).…”

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

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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.

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

confidence: 99%