To start off my review of this year’s International Dreams conference in Montreal, here’s a fun factoid: head shrinking in the Amazon is alive and well.
Know to the West since the 1940s, head shrinking is an important ritual for the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin (the Jivaro clans, especially the Shuar). The vengeful spirit of the dead warrior, known as the Muisak, is disempowered through this ritual. But according to dream researcher Rosa Anwandter, herself a Mapuche healer from Chile, the practical application of this process is the stifling of the dead’s dreams.
Anwandter gave a fascinating review of the dream societies of the Amazon, pointing out at least 20 relatively intact communities throughout the Amazon basin, and another half dozen or so in southern Peru, Bolivia and Uruguay. In most of these societies, dreaming is key to living in completeness. Those who are unlucky and can’t recall their dreams are called “miserable.”
Lucid dreaming is also known in the Amazon. In particular, the Guaran celebrate lucid dreams as powerful experiences that can hold key messages for the dreamer and the larger community. This semi-nomadic group consults their dreams for important community decisions, such as moving territories. Lucid dreaming is part of this ecological feed-back loop of dreamer, community, and the larger non-human ecosystem. This is psychogeography in practice.
For the Mapuche, lucid dreaming indicates a strong spirit for the dreamer. Nightmares in the Mapuche tradition are given special significance too. They are not told lightly like other dreams, but instead around a fire so the smoke can keep away bad spirits.
To learn more about Rosa Anwandter’s practice in Chile that is a combination of Western psychology and South American cultural practices, click here.
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wow this is an amazing site thanks for the visit (^_^) care to exLink?
Hey Ryan
I also studied archaeology – but only first year at Wits. We looked, in part, at shamanism among the San. I remember vividly (sic) the images of fish painted on the top of cave walls. Why fish? The shaman experienced his trance (lucid dream?) as an underwater experience and expressed this on the rock face as fish swimming above him.
If I remember correctly, the whole ritual was aimed at healing and/or group cohesion. They also painted spots and lines connecting different trance images. Some were interpreted as entoptic phenomena experienced during the waking dream.
I’m sure the study of “the bushmen” has moved on substantially since Archeaology 101 way back in ’88!
Thanks Ice 9 – is that a Vonnegut reference?
And Craig, I’m jealous of your year at Witwatersrand. Did you study with David Lewis-Williams? He’s a hero of mine because he’s one of the few cognitive archaeologists to take dreaming seriously.
Yes, it was Lewis Williams.
You know how certain years stand out like peaks on a graph?
’88 was one of those.I was rocked by the reality of human evolution and intrigued by the sophistication of the ‘backward’San – especially their trance ritual.
Hey – why don’t you travel to SA and visit the department sometime?