Journal de la Société des Américanistes
January 1, 2018
David Dupuis
15 citations
Takiwasi, an addiction treatment clinic and prominent shamanic center in the Peruvian Amazon, offers international participants retreats involving ritual emetic preparations, the psychoactive brew ayahuasca, jungle seclusion, talks, and group discussions. These activities lead participants to perceive themselves as influenced, attacked, or inhabited by usually invisible malevolent forces, with many reporting possession experiences during ayahuasca rituals. By tracing one participant's ritual journey, the author examines how participants adopt these possession motifs, their implications for symbolic identity reconstruction and collective formation, and questions the surprising role of possession within a treatment presented as shamanic.
Journal de la Société des Américanistes
January 1, 2022
Doriane Slaghenauffi
2 citations
The rise of 'shamanic tourism' in urban areas and Shipibo-Konibo villages has led to a resurgence of vernacular sorcery practices, now integrated into the new sociological context of the commercialization of local plant-based shamanism. These occult attacks target not only rival practitioners but also tourists seeking hallucinogenic experiences, some of whom become targets of sorcery rumors. These practices and occult interpretations can be analyzed as forms of resilience built by Shipibo shamans facing the integration of their communities into the international tourism market, hoping to profit from it. They can also be read as manifestations of frustration and concern over the appropriation of local shamanism by global culture, symptomatic of traditionally ambiguous ties between gringos and Amerindians.
Journal de la Société des Américanistes
February 5, 2025
David Dupuis
The term 'ayahuasca'—meaning 'vine of the spirits' or 'vine of the dead' in Quechua—refers both to a specific plant (Banisteriopsis caapi) and to the aqueous preparation in which it is always the sole or main ingredient. This beverage, with powerful psychoactive and emetic effects, is most often used for initiatory, therapeutic, or divinatory purposes and is a central tool of Amazonian shamanisms. In 1930, the Santo Daime, a syncretic religion...
Journal de la Société des Américanistes
January 1, 2025
Françoise Barbira-Freedman, Stephen Hugh‐jones
Ayahuasca shamanism is well studied, but the medicinal plant gardens commonly found at ayahuasca centers have received less attention. This paper provides detailed mapping and commentary on one such garden, identifying a relatively stable set of plants typical of Amazonian vegetalismo that defines shamans' gardens as a genre. Visitors develop personal relationships with plants, while shamans adopt biomedical and psychotherapeutic vocabulary. These ethnobotanical gardens become sites of constructive equivocation, where contrasting cultural assumptions find partial accommodation.