Trance, posture, and tobacco in the Casas Grandes shamanic tradition: Altered states of consciousness and the interaction effects of behavioral variables
Anthropology of Consciousness November 8, 2023 Christine S. Vanpool, Laura Lee, Paul Robear et al. 5 citations
Tobacco intoxication and a specific ritual posture, the Tennessee Diviner (TD) posture, combined with a rapidly beating drum or rattle, were used by Casas Grandes Medio period (AD 1200–1450) shamans in the North American Southwest to reliably produce trance experiences of soul flight, transformation, and divination. A conceptual model proposes that trance experiences emerge from the interaction of human minds with entheogens, cultural expectations, physiological states, postures, and sound. Pairing tobacco with the TD posture and rhythmic drumming likely reinforced culturally desired trance states. This mutually reinforcing practice may have been part of tobacco-based shamanism in other New World cultures, and the model can be applied to understand trance induction and resulting cosmological frameworks in other cultures.