Negotiating with evil. Power artefacts, shamanic relics and brain responses in African healing practices
Silhouettes africaines January 1, 2016 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.4000/13o05
Summary
The brain architecture of Homo sapiens has evolved to engage with immaterial objects in a spirit world, facilitated by shamans through Integrated Mode of Consciousness (IMC). This process connects various brain structures and is reflected in art and healing practices. In contemporary Africa, shamanistic elements persist in rock art, music, and rituals, influencing social and physiological dynamics through psychoneuroimmunological responses. The study examines African artefacts and their connection to IMC across different cultures.
Study at a glance
| Population | various African cultural groups including San hunter-gatherers, Kongo, Ewe, Bozo, and Lega |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Shamanistic practices and artefacts in Africa reflect a connection between brain architecture and psychophysical responses to spiritual entities. |
Abstract
From its evolution in Africa about 100 thousand years ago, the brain architecture of all populations of Homo sapiens has shown a tendency to deal with ‘immaterial objects’ in a spirit world where virtual reality entities operated. The contact with this world was achieved by ‘shamans’, who mastered to enter it, connecting sympathetic and parasympathetic structures by psychointegrators (Integrated Mode of Consciousness, or IMC). The visual description of internal imagery, symbols and metaphors elaborated during this ‘soul flight’ is today considered ‘art’. The overall goal was a negotiation with evil spirits and their output: physical disease and social disorder. Spirits (or the like) produce manipulations of social and physiological dynamics with psychoneuroimmunological responses - up to symbolically induced biological changes - by eliciting endogenous healing responses and other recuperative potentials (symbolic medicine).In today’s Africa, many relics of this shamanistic world are still evident in rock-art, symbols, music/rhythms, witchcraft/sorcery rituals, power objects, death resolution, healing practises. Analysing different typologies of African artefacts, we connect their psychophysical structures to the IMC of the perceiver and consider basic cross-cultural brain responses in healing practises; we span from San hunter-gatherers’ trance dances to Kongo ‘fetishes’, from Ewe healers to Bozo drummers, from Lega associations to Ebola reactions in modern Liberia.