Lux Ferre

Rock Art – Paintings (also known as pictographs) and engravings (also known as petroglyphs) on rock surfaces in caves or rock shelters and on boulders and exposed rock in the open landscape.

Ripinsky-Naxon, Michael – Scholar whose interest in shamanism concerns the use of psychoactives, the origins of religion, and the nature of religious experience. In line with established developments in the study of

Rhythm – Shamans in many cultures make use of rhythmic music, songs, chants, dances, and movements. Instruments as varied as drums, rattles, and bells are used. Claims are sometimes made that shamans

Resource management – A significant role for shamans in many indigenous cultures, part of their mediatory and political functions. Shamans may engage with particular animals, plants, birds, fish, and similar other-than-human persons

Reindeer – Many Arctic cultures (including the Saami and the Chukchi) subsist by reindeer herding. Not surprisingly, reindeer play a role in their shamanic narratives, rituals, and cosmologies. Among the Siberian Chukchi,

Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (1912–1994) – Colombian anthropologist with particular interests in Amazonian peoples, especially the Tukano and Desana in Colombia. In addition to general publications about the cultures of these people and their

Rasmussen, Knud (1879–1933) – Early 20th-century ethnographer of the Greenlandic angakkut who was born in Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary and a local Inuit woman. In 1910 Rasmussen and his

Purity and purification – All cultures make some division between what they consider “normal” and what they consider “abnormal”; some also categorize certain things, events, and acts as either “sacred” or “profane”

Purgatives – Many shamanic rituals and performances include the ingestion of plants that result in vomiting. Some observers, including enthusiastic participants (e.g., Gordon Wasson) have mistaken this for an unfortunate and embarrassing

Psychotechnologies – Term used by Mircea Eliade to refer to the strategies shamans use to alter states of consciousness and thereby achieve “ecstasy”—from drumming and dancing to fasting and chanting, alongside other