Category: Shamanism

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

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…

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…

Purity and purification – All cultures make some division between what they consider “normal” and what they consider “abnormal”; some also categorize certain things, events,…

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…

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…

Psychonauts – A term sometimes applied to neo-shamans, Chaos Magickians, techno-shamans, those ingesting entheogens, some Pagans, and other contemporary Westerners exploring the realms of altered…

Psilocybin – A hallucinogenic or entheogenic alkaloid (4-phosphoryloxyN, N-dimethyltryptamine) of the tryptamine family present in many species of fungi, the best-known being the genus Psilocybe,…

Protection – A significant role of shamans in many indigenous communities is to provide protection from enemies of various kinds, including sorcerers, witches, predators, enemy…

Price-Williams, Douglass – Professor emeritus in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has, as part of his research into psychological anthropology and…