Includes bibliographical references (pages 453-515) and index. "First paperbound printing, 2010"--T.p. verso.
Contents:
Shamanic Healing. Two healers of the Upper Amazon -- The Ayahuasca ceremony -- Shamanic performance -- Learning the plants -- Sounds -- Phlegm and darts -- Initiation -- Sucking and blowing -- Spirits -- Protection -- Sex -- Harming -- Healing -- Spirit possession -- Magic stones -- Shamanic herbalism -- Plant medicine -- Types of shaman -- Ayahuasca. An introduction to Ayahuasca -- Vomiting -- Questions in the study of Ayahuasca -- Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca experience -- Mechanisms of Ayahuasca hallucinations -- Other psychoactive plants -- Context and Sources. The Upper Amazon culture area -- Being Mestizo -- Beings of earth and water -- Hispanic influences -- Folk Catholicism -- Meeting Modernity. Ayahuasca meets global modernism -- Ayahuasca tourism -- Ayahuasca and the law -- Shamans fight back -- The future -- Appendices: Plants mentioned in the text ; Animals mentioned in the text.
Summary:
"In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its shamanism, sorcery, healing, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. Singing to the Plants sets forth just what this shamanism is about - what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery"--Jacket.
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