Shamanism and the nonhuman

[drugo]

I've just uploaded some thoughts to my blog about shamanism, social science, and the nonhuman. Has the 'feeling' spoken about in the piece moved you at any times? What about with using psychedelics? I've certainly had some 'unity' experiences that deflated my humanly ego down to the level of a shared mutli-specied earth

http://culturaladmixtures.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/claude-levi-strauss-anthropologist-or-shaman/

[Seldom]

One person whose work I would recommend looking to for this idea is Gilles Deleuze, perhaps it's because I've recently revisited it but what you've posted about reminds me of his essay immanance: a life .. the self organising animacy of what he calls inorganic life is a persistent theme of his work, which can be difficult to find an entry point into given the density of its prose, and widespread jargonistic-abuse of his terminology in the secondary literature, but i'd say it's well worth it if you want to go further.

The idea that some basic form of awareness may be an essential property of all matter is an old one, the chapter 'Mysticism' from William James' Varieties' is a classic treatment of the history and psychology/phenomenology of the basic sentiment .. the unfortunate thing from an empirical perspective is the prevalence of the view that consciousness is an emergent property, which for work of the kind that you seem to be doing can be a real stick in the front spokes .. for a difficult but more cogent approach I'd also suggest the theory of individuation proposed by Gilbert Simondon .. and stay away from Freud the funsponge and his theory of the 'oceanic feeling' in civilisation and it's discontents .wish i had more time to elaborate, but it's cool to see the cross fertilization of continental philosophy and ayahuasca culture .. so keep posting, i'll be watching ;)

edit* in answer to the question ^, yes yes and of coarse.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Seldom

[woodwoman]

I yearn to live wild and free like an animal, when I was little I would run around on my hands and feet pretending I was a horse. This built strength!

I have also been a bear, eagle and tree, just in my thoughts feelings and sometimes actions. It is really fun and benificial but who has time for that shit?

Society was built to turn us away from this more natural human state of harmonic resonance with our natural world. Therefore our current state is unnatural and hence we do not experience the true joys of connection with plants, animals, Earth and the universe. This perversion is leading to low birth rates, suicide and unhappiness. We focus more on metal and money than life. We all feel it to be wrong but how do we change it?

Free Land For All = Freedom Forever!

I have found alcohol, among others, to exagerate the remembering of this connection but it has never created a lasting connection and there seems to always be a hangover .

[drugo]

Yes, I think Deleuze's philosophy and in particular his monistic ontology fits well with much psychedelic thought and with narratives of psychedelic experience. It has become a powerful discourse in the anthropology of indigenous Amaoznian shamanism and cosmology, as detailed in the work of Viveiros de Castro. It is a shame that Deleuze was so vehemently critical of mysticism and drugs. And it was a shame that William James didn't get to try the range of psychedelics that are more or less readily available in Western society today. This is not to say that nitrous can't do the trick, the qualitative difference of nitrous on its own to nitros with, for example, LSD, is something that James' writing would have benefited from.

I do have a lot of time for continental philosophy. I'm reading Benjamin's On Hashish at the moment. But the hype of obfuscated wordsmith-ery and French theory snobbery that permeates much continental thought and contemporary acolytes of the tradition does bore me more and more over the years.

Chip Horner wrote an interesting thesis that explores Deleuze and ayahuasca. You might be interested: https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDUQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.neip.info%2Fhtml%2Fobjects%2F_downloadblob.php%3Fcod_blob%3D1174&ei=BDxvU6OtOoPUkwWs_4FI&usg=AFQjCNHmgJXczRIZ-u2_xBXX9u_f6ku2lg&sig2=2JlJXJ1eiijAqaAyn6nMeA&bvm=bv.66330100,d.dGI

Thanks for the immanence of life chapter. I look forward to reading that!

[drugo]

Woodwomen! Thanks the poetic sharing.

Thinking of shapeshifting into animals, in thoughts, feelings, and actions, and this being grounding, natural, and connection to 'harmonic resonance', it's interesting that for many indigenous Amazonians, this reality of the possibility of turning into an animal in thoughts, feelings, actions, and even corporality, is the source of both moral esteem and moral decay, of health but also of sickness. The cosmology of animality in Amazonia is also replete with toxic, insane, and corrupt sensibilities. Shapeshifting haunts the indigenous Amazonian imagination and helps to communicate and embody moral life and social relations in communities. Thus in this cosmology and this idiom, the spirit of alcohol, may be seen to punish and betray the drinker on the day after boozing up.

[drugo]

It would not be unreasonable for "low birth rates, suicide and unhappiness" to be understood as being the result of different animal and nature spirits attacking the indigenous Amazonian community and vulnerable souls.

[drugo]

Anyway, just some ideas to consider how some other cultures (that live imbedded deep in nature) perceive, understand, and relate to nature.

[Seldom]

It is a shame that Deleuze was so vehemently critical of mysticism and drugs.

No! this is simply not the case! dating back to his book on Hume he cites the fact that rather than a self being a necessary precondition of experience, drugs show that experience does not depend on the possession of a self, meaning a self is anterior or even periphery to the raw datum of experience (as is the case of Hume's theory of human nature)

in his 'letter to a harsh critic' he states "So I’ll move onto your other more cruel and hurtful criticism, when you say I'm someone who's always just tagged along behind, taking it easy, capitalizing upon other people's experiments, on gays, drug-users, alcoholics, masochists, lunatics, and so on, vaguely savouring their transports and poisons without ever taking any risks. You turn against me a piece I wrote where I ask how we can avoid becoming professional lecturers on Artaud or fashionable admirers of Fitzgerald. But what do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy, that is, in the power of falsity, rather than in representing things in a way that manifests a lamentable faith in accuracy and truth? If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write. And what do my relations with gays, alcoholics, and drug-users matter, if I can obtain similar effects by different means?"

(the last bit, you may notice about similar effects being achieved by different means comes from Burroughs, a figure Deleuze exhibited deep admiration for, not least for his drug exploits .. see for eg. his paper 'on the superiority of Anglo-American Literature')

The 22nd Series - Porcelain and Volcano from The Logic of Sense is a philosophical encounter with the alcoholic temperament, and ends with the words "oh psychedelia" ! (p.183) .. The last chapter of What is Philosophy? called From Chaos to the Brain states that biochemically based technologies developing new forms of pharmaceutical intervention are preferable over psychoanalytic treatments for mental pathology .

I don't know where you've picked up the sense of him being 'vehemently critical' . I remember Graham Harman of OOO fame calling his work a 'materialist mysticism' and 'lava-lampy-monism' . One of the most famous still living exponents of his work Manuel Delanda has a well known disdain for mysticism (but who, interestingly, still trips), but i think his vision of Deleuze has to be seen within the context DeLanda's primary goal, i.e making D and D+G intelligible to scientists and analytic philosophers .. for a different approach I'd recommend Joshua Ramey's The Hermetic Deleuze, or for someone that really did get Deleuze in a frighteningly deep way, writings of the lunatic Nick Land .. (an article worth reading irrespective of individual predilection .)

in addition to his NoS experiences James also wrote of his experiences with mescaline, which are included in his discussion of 'anesthetic revelation' in the chapter on mysticism in Varieties'

I do have a lot of time for continental philosophy. I'm reading Benjamin's On Hashish at the moment. But the hype of obfuscated wordsmith-ery and French theory snobbery that permeates much continental thought and contemporary acolytes of the tradition does bore me more and more over the years.

Chip Horner wrote an interesting thesis that explores Deleuze and ayahuasca. You might be interested:

Bahh! what i hate more than obfuscation is bad scholarship, and tired old criticisms of straw men made of "a self-certain, thinking subject with respect to the knowledge and control of objectified being" .. (no one thinks that! who is he criticising!) - .. also, come on, spirits cannot be virtual! virtuality is not a realm, nor can it itself be actualized in individuated forms Deleuze's ontology acknowledges only the virtual, the intensive and the extensive, so to say you had contact with a 'virtual' spirit (even saying that makes me cringe!) is analougus to saying to a Hegelian that you had contact with a negative spaghetti monster .. it's a pre-individuated multiplicity which specifies the structure of a space of possibilities .. it's a scientifically oriented designation, not some egregious anthropomorphism .. that paper is masters level as well .. if i was adjudicating the mark he got for that paper .. crikey ..

[compost]

^theres also some great passages from A Thousand Plateaus re mysticism and drugs..like 'on sorcery' and the passages discussing drug experience in terms of speed and slowness, that is, in intensive and non-human terms...

[drugo]

Hi Seldom. Thanks for the in-depth response. I appreciate it.

I haven't read Deleuze for a couple of years now. Your post makes me want to go a read some more. My comment on Deleuze's anti-drug perspectives comes from Peta Malin's work:

"Machinic Assemblages: Deleuze, Guattari and an Ethico-Aesthetics of Drug Use"

"The affect of this image of the drugged body is that, in A Thousand Plateaus, drug use and the drug using body become almost entirely tied up with–or overwhelmed by–their wretched limit: the ‘vitrified and empty’ (285), ‘dreary’ (160) and ‘sucked-dry’ (150) body of the ‘addict’ (163) or ‘junky’ (153). This is not accidental. For while Deleuze and Guattari do acknowledge the creative potential of drug-use (delighting especially in the work of Artaud, Burroughs and Michaux), and do very briefly question the inevitability of the drug-assemblage’s downward spiral to catastrophe (165), they ultimately argue that the only lines-of-flight that drugs can enable are false and empty ones. Lines of tragedy. It is this uncharacteristic determinism that I would like to briefly critique, in the hope that it might be able to prevent the work of Deleuze and Guattari being prematurely abandoned as a set of tools for productively rethinking drug use. "

Thanks Compost, I'll check out on sorcery. I am not sure where I picked up the notion of Deleuze being a staunch atheist. I have definitely heard it among his surrogate pupils at different universities over the years. You did make me think of this piece that critics the readings of Deleuze as athiest, which again, I read years ago. It may be of interest, if you haven't read it already:

NO WEREWOLVES IN THEOLOGY? TRANSCENDENCE, IMMANENCE, AND BECOMING-DIVINE IN GILLES DELEUZE

JACOB HOLSINGER SHERMAN

"In what follows, I first introduce Hallward’s critical reading of Deleuze, and then weigh it in light of Deleuze’s own writings, including Deleuze and Guattari’s important ‘Plateau 10’ on becoming. My response to Hallward includes both applause and critique. Hallward is to be congratulated both for showing clearly the presence of a crypto-theological becoming-divine throughout Deleuze’s texts, and for exposing the dualistic, anti-relational, and quietist tendencies in these same writings. However, where Hallward reads these latter invidious tendencies as a consequence of the former mystical elements, I want us to be more discerning still. Deleuze intends his divine line of flight to deliver the world from a reductive naturalism to a more robust, ecstatic, even enchanted materialism. Ultimately, Deleuze fails at this project, but rather than tracing Deleuze’s shortcomings to his flirtations with theology, as Hallward does, I argue that these aporias stem from the peculiar theology of absolute immanence that Deleuze develops. It is Deleuze’s immanentism and not his theophanic mysticism that finally vitiates so much of his thought. We can, therefore, preserve what is most valuable in Deleuze—his project of cosmo- logical and metaphysical re-enchantment—not by expunging the theological element in his thought, but by completing it in the direction of transcendence. Drawing attention to a remarkable mid-century essay by Thomas Merton, I argue that where Hallward faults Deleuze for his contemplative and theophanic elements, Merton suggests that it is only by fully and adequately engaging these through a recuperation of transcendence that the world of bodies, polities, and relations can be saved. Hallward concludes his study by dismissing his subject—“those of us who still seek to change our world and to empower its inhabitants will need to look for our inspiration elsewhere,”—but it may be that by laying bare the theophanic and contemplative Deleuze, Hallward has instead pointed the way to his redemption."

Interesting to hear that DeLande is a tripper. I know what you mean about the problems of trying to move, apply, or operationalise Deleuze to the social sciences -- making it 'intelligible' to the sciences. Often it comes out the other end like a clunky structuralist account that naturalises (or objectifies) phenomena; bagged and tagged as covert taxonomy.

Seldom, would you be so kind to tell me the title and segment of the Deleuze on Hume text that explores drug experience and the negation or redundancy of self. It ties in with a paper I am writing on spirit possession at the moment. Many thanks.

[Seldom]

i can, but it's not really related to the idea of possession

*edit - and re-reading your request the passage doesn't describe a 'negation or redundency of the self' .. - the section i referred to describes that where for eg. for Kant the basic categories that explain the being of the subject are conjunction of transcendental faculties of understanding [classifying generalities] and intuition [perception of particulars], for Hume the subject [read 'self'] is a kind of crystallization or 'congealing' that happens in a field of raw intensities [impressions, which are primary] and low intensity replicas of these [ideas] which is given structure by the force of habit or routine .. the basic point is that the self from this perspective depends on the flux of sensation to exist, rather than, as with Kant, a self is required for sensations to occur .. it's if anything an inversion, not a a negation, negation is a technical termo f modal logic that means 'not', as in the negation of P is simply ~P, as a logical operator it's not synonymous with words like 'destruction' .. and it doesn't imply a redundancy either - a proposition or redundant if it's made of information that can be inferred from the body of whatever it comes from .. it doesn't simply mean unimportant ..

.. but it comes from his doctoral thesis titled Empiricism and Subjectivity . as far as I know there's no .pdf available online, but if you have access to Jstor i remember there being a number of solid articles/reviews

Edited May 12, 2014 by Seldom

[Seldom]

p.s - i think most of the negative things he has to say in relation to drug use relates to their potential to establish habits that diminish a person's receptivities, capacities to affect and be affected .. it's possible to find in his work his own efforts to dissuade

being prematurely abandoned as a set of tools for productively rethinking drug use. "

. for eg.

Are we to speak about Fitzgerald's and Lowry's
alcoholism, Nietzsche's and Artaud's madness
while remaining on the shore? Are we to wish
only that those who have been struck down do
not abuse themselves too much? Are we to
take up collections and create special journal
issues? Or should we go a short way further to
see for ourselves, be a little alcoholic, a
little crazy, a little suicidal, a
little of a guerilla--just enough to extend the
crack, but not enough to deepen it
irremediably? LOS (157)

Edited May 12, 2014 by Seldom

[compost]

the notion of deleuze as staunch atheist probably stems from his work being largely characterised as an attack on anything transcendent.. but as seldom likes to say, its preferable to stay clear of the secondary literature..cos the substance is in both the content and the expression..

theres also some heavy shit in the essay 'to have done with judgement' where peyote gets a mention.

[santiago]

Shamans are extinct. The historic shamans influence is acceptable as knowledge wasn't common. Knowledge of rainbows, eclipses and so on. Really, did a shaman ever really explain light particles. Which really means Einstein had more knowledge of the universe than all the shamans that existed. I believe that shamans believed but that doesn't make it right. I also believe that modern day shamans have scientific knowledge but still use the power of influence as opposed to science. Also they strive for money and acceptance, and he can't just burn the body and blame it on spirits if it goes bad.

[Seldom]

^ yet in fact they have, in their own way. the significance is their orientation toward what they take to be knowledge .. take fish for example: I find no obstacle to entertaining the idea that fish may be gods, stardust, or food, that they may make me sick and play different roles in ecosystems and origin myths .. Those who wish to separate any symbolic essence of fish from its “real” counterpart and extol the finality of their understanding should maybe themselves be separated and confined .. it's deeply naive to dismiss the tribal elder who affirms the fish’s divinity because no one has a monopoly on completely understanding what fish are: they may well be biological, ideational, astrological, nutritional, transdimensional, emetic, mythological beings. i think it's wrong to myopically fixate on science to the exclusion of all other insight ..

[paradox]

science has close to no capability of measuring the internal human experience. most 'modern' cultures also have next to no comprehension of the complexities & capabilities of the internal human experience. so it's no surprise that people in our dominator culture have never even begun to comprehend these things. for them to begin to comprehend would entail conceding to the fact that for all the domination & taming of the outer physical world that their culture has achieved, they are actually profoundly unsophisticated compared to many of the more traditional indigenous cultures that have developed very sophisticated maps of inner space that 'modern' humans are so utterly primitive as to not even have the capability to begin to comprehend it. at this point cultural cliche's like the western idea of 'noble savage' is just insulting. the fact is, in the not too distant future modern western culture is going to look just about as naive as the ancient romans in terms of our understanding of the universe

it is a pity when someone who has spent their entire life looking at one side of a coin cannot even comprehend that the other side exists & thinks that the guy thats spent his life looking at the other side is a delusional fool for trying to explain what it looks like.

to use the crappy coin metaphor again.. it's impossible to explain the other side of a coin to someone using a language who's reference points are entirely based on one side of the coin.

culturally subjective arrogance is a trap we can all fall into, what with human stupidity being more or less infinite & all.

rant rant rant... sorry.

Edited May 12, 2014 by paradox

[drugo]

Awesome. Great. Thanks for the links and ideas and stuff. Appreciated!

[BillyThKid]

I cannot bring myself to say i am a Shaman, because im not. i am but an acolyte training under a shaman, but even still i have gleaned some shaman wisdom and words.

Shamanism to me means many things but the following helps put some of it into words: Shamanism is the belief and realization of the spirit world around us and its importance in everyday life and how to best understand that spiritual world of sorts. However, the human brain has long since developed barriers in the brain which prevent us from seeing or interacting with the spirit world around us. It is the use of Psychedelics by a shaman to "spirit walk" which helps break down that barrier in our minds to allow us to see what we are intended to see for a time. It is a Shamans "job" to make heads or tails of what he or she has seen. depending on if the shaman is spirit walking with a patient or not changes many of these factors.

Shamans (as i know them) are "witch doctors" of sorts though i dont really like that term. They practice Natural healing though the use of plants from psychedelic to herbal. I myself practice in natural healing of myself and others. It has been an area of great interest to me. While Psychedelics heal the mind, they only do so much for the body, so it is important to know how to care for that as well with the hundreds and thousands of plants which have medicinal properties.

Being that i still consider myself an Acolyte i have focused on practicing the Medicinal healing more than the spiritual healing because i do not feel like im ready to take on the responsibility of another persons spiritual being or anything related to that. I can hardly make sense of my visions much less someone else's dream.

Shamans are the bridge between our world and the spirit world, it is said that a blind shamans vision beats the vision of a thousand seeing men. that would be because a shaman looks at things with his spirit and not his eyes.

Im sure not everything i have said lines up with "shamanism" or what everyone thinks shamanism is, but this is just how i have come to see it, and i see it in many other ways as well.

Also, shamanism is thought to have been the very first religion dating back more than 80,000 years.