Trance, posture, and tobacco in the Casas Grandes shamanic tradition: Altered states of consciousness and the interaction effects of behavioral variables

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.

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Abstract

Abstract Here, we describe how Casas Grandes Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) shamanic practices of the North American Southwest used tobacco shamanism, a ritual stance called the Tennessee Diviner (TD) posture, and cultural expectations to generate trance experiences of soul flight and divination. We introduce a conceptual model that holds that specific trance experiences are the emergent result of human minds interacting with additional factors including entheogens, cultural expectations, physiological states, postures/movement, and sound/stimulation. Experimental and ethnographic evidence indicates initiating trance with either tobacco intoxication or the TD posture accompanied with a rapidly beating drum or rattle corresponds with perceptions of soul flight, transformation, and divination/information acquisition. Both have similar results but pairing them together as they were during the Medio period likely helped ensure the culturally desired trance experiences. This practice of mutually reinforcing factors was likely part of tobacco‐based shamanism found in other New World cultures as well. We suggest our general model can be applied to other contexts to examine how various aspects of trance induction interact to produce the cultural patterns (and resulting cosmological and spiritual frameworks) anthropologists have documented in other cultures.