HISTORY OF CHAMANISM AND CONSCIENCE
As in almost all the works we have worked, the subject could be opened with a brief historiographic review of what has been understood by shamanism. In Western literature, the term, since the 16th century, when Russian travelers ran into the Tunguse peoples and adapted the term they used . At that time they were lifted with sorcerers and sorcerers, dark magicians in short;negative connotations from the dogmatism of hegemonic Christianity – and especially of the Catholic Church and its armed arm, the court of the Holy Inquisition – which was demonizing these practices until they disappeared (in the old world) finally with industrialization (triumph of thereason and scientific/mathematical knowledge of reality). Thus the universe of the persecutions of witches (whose etymological origin dates back to the pre -Roman Pyrenees and their original meaning would refer to their ability to "fly", but not with a broom as Christians believed, but in a psychic way, being able to visit thusother animistic realities as we will see below) late-medieval/modern .
In the nineteenth century, positivist evolutionism resumed interest in these practices;Without the mystical-catholic approach, which discarded them by demonic, but with the rational-scientific optics that, without understanding them because of their logical-mathematical schemes, subordinated them to a primitive stadium (material concept of "progress" and "evolution”) From the history of religions . This line of subordination to the primitive, in the field of religious issues, of the shamanic experiences from superb Western perspectives, will resume them (saving the distances for their great analytical work, where it already states that the phenomenon is more a mystical issue than religious)Mircea Elíade, as seen in his work, and the first great analysis of the subject, shamanism and archaic techniques of ecstasy (first edition 1951). However, this already discards the hypotheses, which at the beginning of the 20th century broke into the academic scene, which associated shamanism with mental health (schizophrenia, hysteria, etc.) Recognizing all the effort/work that the training or shamanic initiation entails
Retaking to the previous chapter, we see how oral culture confers to the mode of shamanic knowledge an advantage over western cultures, since it is tremendously practical when responding to present problems. It is not responsible for giving concrete solutions for delimited historical frameworks;such as the model of scholastic knowledge or as it is in the current case what we could call as rationalism, which are continuously demystified and tested by making new explanatory models arise that allow us to understand the world following this logic. However, something common to all Western modes of knowledge is that they try to achieve absolute objectification, which is radically opposed to the Subjectivation Chamanic model of all the phenomena surrounding its world (Viveiros de Castro: 2013). So shamanism is adaptive to any historical framework that is presented to it, because it is a worldview. This is one of the reasons why it still persists in practically the entire planet, regardless of the degree of westernization of each region.
However, this way of conceiving shamanism is very current (previously western culture had treated it as individual disturbances, associated with mental health, or simple and primitive religions, as already said). This position has become defined by authors such as Viveiros de Castro, and which he calls as perspectivism (Viveiros: 2013);Framework of Common Understanding for the study of the different cultures of the continent-that is, to look at them with other optics with respect to the traditional ones-, where the distinction between culture and nature is not separated in the way as radical as we could understand in Western conceptions,that tend to a dichotomy of confrontation between the human (culture) and the non -human (nature). What historically has been called the barbarian, the closest to animality, something that since classical times has always tried to avoid;For Amerindian conceptions there is no such separation, there is no distinction between culture and nature because there is no idea of the non -human (non -cultural).
This is what Viveiros, citing Descola, names as animism;ontological perspective according to which everything in the universe;From ourselves to animals, stars, diseases, plants … have awareness of themselves (a subjectivity, which we conceive as their own and exclusive to humans, would be present in all entities) and behave with a logicthat is common to all. Therefore, human beings, unlike Western conception, would not be the owners and masters of nature, whose ultimate goal would be to control it to meet all the needs that arise to us. But the human being would be another species, among so many other beings that populate this universe, and would have an interrelation with all these other entities;So the difference between these beings and we would be pure appearance (see animal skin in front of human skin), and reality would be disguised into our eyes (the material would be pure fantasy), being able to access it with the help of the help ofThe shamans -which would be the experts in communication with the other experts who are in turn shamanic entities. The common is therefore human beings and the rest of the entities would be the daily aspects of life such as eating, sick, dying … only that each one would see it from their own point of view (we understand that the pig is foodAnd the pig understands that plants are their food) but we would all act following this common vital scheme.
That said, it is very complex. that entails. Therefore, we will focus on its transverse character as an ecstasy technique (Eliade, 2001) or ecstatic method (Fericgla, 2000) within a conglomerate of social relations, where the shaman exercises as a guide/teacher as a specialist in said altered statesof consciousness (EAC).
Consciousness is also configured as a cultural product, since each society establishes which is the "normal" way of treating and coding the information we perceive creating its own world, that is, its own worldview . Clarified this, emphasize that an EAC is anyone who is not the one with full vigil, ergo does not imply the consumption of entity, although these are the ones that most "expand" such consciousness since we are in animistic societies where the supernatural world ("about-”From our perspective) it is of vital importance in everyday life.
Therefore, and more detailed;The EAC are those in which our usual perception of the world is distorted, which allows to come into contact with a spiritual world that has historically come to call trance . The thinking procedure in the state of vigil is of a linguistic analysis, while when our state is distorted we think in a metaphorical way (Fericgla: 1989). This distortion is achieved through various techniques that cause alterations in the channels receiving brain information. There are two ways in which the Amerindian peoples reach these EAC;The first of them that implies the "abstinence" of stimuli or saturation, such as fasting, silence, meditation, music, dance … and the other technique that implies an intake of preparations that can be of plant origin oranimal, where we would find ourselves
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