Shamanism and Psychoactives: Theory, Practice and Paradoxes of a Field Study in India
Psychoactives April 1, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3390/psychoactives4020008 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
The article examines how stigma and glorification have shaped the study of entheogens in shamanic traditions worldwide, often influenced by politics and fashion rather than science. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Indigenous peoples in India, it finds that producing alcoholic beverages—fermented or distilled, sometimes with other psychoactive ingredients—is central to aboriginal (ādivāsī) cultures. This practice has been politically instrumentalized in colonial and modern times. Understanding these sacred substances is now key to grasping indigenous ontology and traditional sustainability, revealing local pharmacopeias and fermentation principles.
Study at a glance
| Design | ethnography |
|---|---|
| Population | Indigenous peoples of India |
| Key finding | The production of alcoholic beverages is a fundamental trait of aboriginal cultures in India, and the discourse on these sacred substances is key to understanding indigenous ontology and traditional sustainability. |
Abstract
Since its origins, the debate on the interaction between religions and psychoactives has been strongly influenced, both positively and negatively, by prejudices, policies, fashions and trends that had little to do with scientific research. Stigma and exaltation in different historical moments have equally characterized the study of the presence and use of so-called entheogens in the different declinations of the shamanic phenomenon around the world. This article attempts to shed light on the various trends regarding the state of the art, providing new epistemological elements on the basis of an ethnographic investigation among some Indigenous peoples of India. The production of alcoholic beverages (fermented and distilled, but sometimes in combination with other psychoactive or hallucinogens among the starters) is a fundamental trait of the aboriginal (ādivāsī) cultures of the Indian subcontinent. Not immune from an attempt at political instrumentalization, which occurred both in the colonial period and in the contemporary era, the discourse on the natural production of these sacred substances is today the key to understanding indigenous ontology and its traditional idea of sustainability. Far beyond the mere documentation of the induction of altered states of consciousness, this investigation involves the discovery of local pharmacopeias, as well as principles of fermentation and food preservation.