SHAMANISM, INTOXICATION

AND EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE

by Jani Pestana

Introduction

This paper looks at practices of shamanic healing through a paradigm

of embodied knowledge (Csordas 1990; 1993). These practices
require healers to travel into extraordinary realms of existence. For
this, they make extensive use of their body to receive knowledge. The
interpretation, direction and integration of these experiences happen
through a lifetime of culturally sanctioned training and experience. I
show that Csordas’s paradigm is useful for analyzing the practice of
shamanic healing.
My interest in this topic stems from personal experiences with
non-ordinary states of consciousness (Grof 1998). I have attended
two healing ceremonies (led by South-American curandero); the first
involved the intake of a psychoactive compound called ayahuasca1, the
other involved meditational painting. Furthermore, I have experienced
a number of psychedelic compounds either alone or with fellow
travelers. The philosophical pondering that followed always led me
along different paths to the same meta-questions: what am I (are we)
to make of the experiences that follow the ingestion of a psychoactive
compound? Is there knowledge to be found? One thing is clear: it was
me who was experiencing these things, with a unity of body and mind,
and the experience was always personal, emotional and effectual –
even in a group.
This text proceeds as follows: After this introduction, I will explain
the concepts used in this paper. I explain the shamanic practices of

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healing and trance. Next, I elucidate the concept of embodied knowledge

as posited by Csordas (1990; 1993). I make clear why this concept could
be especially useful for understanding the trials a shaman goes through
on his or her quest for healing. After this, I analyze a shamanic healing
session in which I was present. I will break this healing session down in
to individual parts for the sake of analysis, combining ethnography and
literature. Finally, I conclude with a summary of this text.

General Shamanisms

The figure of the shaman proves that knowledge gained in these kind of
intoxicated states is valuable. The institute of shamanism, in its various
forms and appearances, is millennia old, and many believe it to be the
world’s oldest form of religion (Eliade 2004; Dubois 2009). Taussig
claims the institution to be, “a made-up, modern, Western category,
an artful reification of disparate practices, snatches of folklore and
overarching folklorizations” (Atkinson 1992: 307). This analysis is no
doubt true; the European colonization and the academic discovery of
the topic have imposed their own conceptions, desires and beliefs upon
this practice (Dubois 2009: 3-25) and in this way fabricated the modern
institute of shamanism, its practice and practitioners.
However, this does not mean that what these people did and still do,
is in any way an artificial enterprise. The literature still being produced
on a wide range of topics concerning shamanism proves that this
subject continues to intrigue researchers (for an overview, see Atkinson
1992; Sidky 2010; Whisker 2013; Webb 2013). Additionally, these
practices are experiencing a boost in the Western mind. More and more
Westerners turn to shamanic practices in an attempt to regain touch
with themselves and the mysteries of life. Researchers are discovering
a new trend of ‘shamanic tourism’ wherein Westerners travel to South
America to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies (Fotiou 2010; Herbert
2010; Homan 2011). And a new phenomenon is on the rise, which
involves South American shamans traveling all over the world. They

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hold ground every weekend, or every other weekend, in a different

place and people can inscribe to partake of the ceremony they offer.
Usually these ceremonies involve some kind of psychoactive plant, but
this is not always the case. The two ceremonies I mention earlier are
part of this kind of traveling. Shamanism, for all intended purposes, is
still very much alive.

Shamanic Healing

Here I will generally define the concept of shamanic healing. These

healing rituals vary considerably in different contexts – how the
ritual is performed, who undergoes the intoxicated state, the use of
paraphernalia, the etiology of diseases, and what or who the ritual
focuses on. There are, however, also similarities between contexts.
Eliade states that the type of illness that requires these rituals is
clear: soul-loss. The disease is caused because the soul has strayed
away, or has been stolen. The cure consists of finding it, capturing
it, and returning it to its body. Possession or intrusion by a magical
object can also be the cause, in which case the harmful object or demon
must be expelled. Sometimes, the two occur together i.e. soul-loss and
possession (Eliade 2004: 215; see also Dubois 2009). As Lesage in
this issue explains in relation to Africa, illnesses occur because of an
imbalance in relationship to community, ancestors, spirits and the Great
Being. In this etiology, the physical, mental, social, and spiritual realms
are connected. The focus is drawn away from the ill person (the centre
in Western traditional medicine), and emphasizes a balance; individual,
communal and spiritual. DuBois mentions that the set of assumptions
for a workable treatment depends on the way disease is conceptualized
in a culture (DuBois 2009: 139). If the disease is conceptualized as
soul-loss, caused by an imbalance or an attack, then only a shaman
can cure this illness, because he is the master of all matters concerning
the soul. The shaman goes into invisible realms to retrieve the soul or
exorcise the culprit damaging it.

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The way in which he or she does this is by achieving what Eliade

(2004) calls ‘ecstasy’ or ‘trance’, but what I call intoxication – trance
is always an intoxication but not every intoxication can be considered
a trance. As Lesage (2014) notes, altered states of consciousness or
intoxicated states are a part of the healing and diagnostics process. Joris
in this issue sees intoxication as, “an altered state of consciousness
which can lead to insights unimaginable in a clear state of mind”.
These insights pertain to the spirit world, the location of the soul, or the
intruding object or spirit. Noll argues that the visions obtained during
intoxicated states is the prime goal of the shamanic training, and possibly
also of the experience itself (DuBois 2009: 121). An intoxicated state
is achieved through a vast arsenal of methods: drumming, chanting,
trance-dancing, fasting, meditating, general abstinence, and intake of
psychedelic drugs are all valid methods (Eliade 2004).
DuBois notes that this intoxicated state is only a part of the
ceremony. This state is accompanied by a variety of other ritual actions
that are essential for the healing to work. This can include setting up
the altar, offerings, cleansing the ceremonial ground of impurities (both
physical and spiritual), procuring items (sometimes done by the family
or community of the afflicted), or the proper collection, preparation,
and administration of psychotropic substances (DuBois 2009).

Embodied Knowledge

This section deals with a concept that Csordas calls ‘embodied

knowledge’ (Csordas 1990; 1993). For him, it is a methodological
concept, useful for analyzing the world around us. He aims for it to
be a new paradigm in anthropology, by which he means, “a consistent
methodological perspective that encourages reanalyses of existing data
and suggests new questions for empirical research” (Csordas 1990: 5).
It is a new way of looking at new and old data. The starting point of this
methodology is that “...the body is not an object to be studied in relation
to culture, but is to be considered as the subject of culture, or in other

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words as the existential ground of culture and self” (Csordas 1990: 5).
This paradigm for Csordas is defined by (1) the perceptual experience,
and (2) a mode of presence and engagement in the world (Csordas
1993). Embodiment brings together the theories of Merleau-Ponty and
phenomenology, and Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’. I will now elaborate on
these two concepts, based on two articles by Csordas (Csordas 1990;
1993).
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is also an attempt to establish a
paradigm shift. This theory starts from the primary mode of knowing,
which to Merleau-Ponty is bodily perception. According to him,
our senses don’t just perceive external stimuli in a point-by-point
registration. No, before the perception there are no objects – on the
level of perception there is still no subject-object distinction. The
world at the point before perception is still pre-objective. It is only
by focusing our attention on something – by perceiving it – that
it becomes objectified (Csordas 1990; 1993). Csordas (1990: 10)
recollects Merleau-Ponty’s tale of the boulder, which is already there
to be encountered, but is not seen as an obstacle until one has to go over
or around it. So before formlessness is perceived as being something
of form, there is a measure of indeterminacy. This indeterminacy is an
important factor in our lives according to Merleau-Ponty. The concept
of indeterminacy in perception teaches us that with perceiving there
is always more than is being grasped (Csordas 1993: 150). From the
moment that an indeterminate, formless perception is being objectified,
and thus formed, there is an infinite amount of possibilities of other
forms being closed off. Merleau-Ponty aims to overcome the dualism
of mind and body, by showing that “...consciousness projects itself into
a physical world and has a body, as it projects itself into a cultural
world and has its habits” (Merleau-Ponty; quoted in Csordas 1990: 10).
The second theory on which the concept of embodiment draws its
inspiration is that of the ‘habitus’ by Bourdieu. As the ending of the
above mentioned quote hints, the habitus can be seen as the social
side of bodily perception. The habitus, according to Bourdieu, is “a

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system of perduring dispositions which is the unconscious, collectively

inculcated principle for the generation and structuring of practices and
representations.” (Csordas 1990: 11). The habitus for Bourdieu has
a double function; on the one hand it is the principle that generates
practices because of its relation to objective structures, while on the
other hand its relationship to a totality of practices is their unifying
principle (Csordas, 1990: 12). The habitus is social rules inscribed and
internalized in the body in such a way that they appear to be completely
normal for the group of which one is part, and will be followed
unconsciously while also serving as a unifying principle for the group.
At the same time, it is also the body that is the primary mode for
continuation of this habitus in the form of teaching, language, mimesis,
for example. For Bourdieu, there is also a principle of indeterminacy
in practice because no one ever fully masters the symbolic schemes
and practices cultivated by his or her environment. No child is ever the
clone of his or her parents. This makes it possible for change to enter
the circle, and for different symbolic schemes to become part of the
habitus.
The synthesis, for lack of a better word, of these two theories brings
forth the methodological concept of embodied knowledge. Csordas
sees his paradigm of embodiment as being of a higher order than both
phenomenology and habitus (Csordas 1993). One of its key elements
is the collapse between the dualities of mind and body, and subject and
object (Csordas 1990: 7), as was also the goal of both Merleau-Ponty
and Bourdieu. Embodiment is, to paraphrase Van Wolputte (2004:
258), not situated in discourse, but in lived experience; it is about
making sense in a pre-symbolic – as evidenced in the pre-objective as
seen by Merleau-Ponty; can one impose symbolism on something that
is not yet an object? - but not pre-cultural way. According to Csordas
(1990: 36-37), when taking up the paradigm of embodiment, there are
some critical considerations: the first is that our bodies are not objects
to us but an integral part of the perceiving subject. On the level of
perception it is pointless to distinguish between mind and body. But

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the body can be objectified, by reflecting upon the mind-body duality.

Secondly, because the body is not an object, others are also not object,
but another self, which can also be objectified. A third implication is in
the distinction of cognition and emotion. The elimination of the subject-
object divide also holds true between cognition and emotion. Emotion
used to be seen as separate from cognition, as not being rational. Now
we can envision emotion as embodied thoughts that have great impact
on the self, and give the sense of being involved. (Csordas 1990: 37).
This paradigm is useful for looking at a shamanic healing session
that involves the ingestion of psychedelic compounds. In a state
of mind where even the most ordinary of things seem stranger than
we can suppose (to paraphrase Terence McKenna), you can only be
certain that you yourself are experiencing this. When the reality around
you falls apart, your only certainty is yourself and your body in the
chaos that ensues. Then, when even your body starts giving way, the
Cartesian mind/body duality becomes very hard to entertain. How then
are we to view these experiences? Embodied knowledge brings these
challenges to the foreground, and views the body as “the existential
ground of culture and self” (Csordas 1990: 5). It is through the body
and mind, not separate but in complementary union that knowledge
can be gained from these non-ordinary states. As Jackson states
(1983), ritual meaning is often non-verbalized because it surpasses and
confounds language. Shamanic healing could be seen of as embodied
epistemology, knowledge-in-action through the act of achieving ecstasy
and commuting with the spirits or ancestors in a world beyond this one
(Van Wolputte 2004: 258).
Embodied knowledge thus enjoins the theories of both Merleau-
Ponty’s phenomenology and Bourdieu’s habitus to give us a paradigm
about how the body is the first line of perception and at the same time
the beholder of what will be perceived when paying attention. I will
now use this paradigm to take a look at a shamanic healing session in
which I was present.

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Shamanic healing seen through

the lens of embodied knowledge

This section will present a personal ethnographic account of a shamanic

healing ceremony. It is recollected from memory, because I did not
participate as a researcher, but for personal motives. Because of this, I
refrain from using names, and will refer to the shaman as the shaman. I
include it for two reasons: (1) to give the reader a feel of what this type
of ceremony involves, and (2) because it connects the different parts I
will analyze, giving a more holistic account.2
The ceremony took place in December 2012, and lasted a whole
weekend. Participants (as this includes myself, I write we, unless stated
otherwise) arrived on Friday afternoon or evening and left Sunday in
the afternoon or evening. Friday evening started with a temazcal (sweat
lodge)3, followed by a sharing of intentions by the whole group, and
drinking ayahuasca – it is done in darkness or low light to facilitate
the emergence of visions (Metzner 1998). Saturday, after breakfast,
we had a group talk about our experiences, which were interpreted by
the shaman, although everyone could state their thoughts. The rest of
the day, we were encouraged to rest or take a walk, and reflect upon
the night before, alone or in a group. Saturday evening there was a
second sharing of intentions, followed by drinking. Sunday morning
started with a second temazcal, another sharing of experiences, and an
extensive meal. After this, participants trickled out the door.
During this weekend, a temporal community was created. The
sleeping room was shared, and so was every meal. We helped build the
temazcal and light the fire, cooked together, and shared our intentions
and experiences. We were both patients and community, supporting
each other in our difficulties.
We, the participants at the ceremony, were all initiate shamans
ourselves for a weekend - this is in line with the notion of psychedelics
being a democratizer for shamanic experiences. The others had to
follow a specific diet for a week (I did not have this chance, knowing

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about the ceremony the morning it began). We had to participate in

building the temazcal, experiencing first hand that this is not something
done lightly. We all ingested the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, and we
all tried to heal ourselves, as a shaman heals himself during training,
with the shaman standing guard over our well-being.

The Shaman

The shaman arrived at the place of ceremony after I was already there.
He did not look at all like the romanticized picture of a (Chilean)
shaman: A small, grey-haired man who dressed modern, and talked
English. When anyone asked him something, he would take the time
he needed to answer, using the least but best words he could. His look
was that of a man with great wisdom, unknown to most humans. It
seems fitting to analyze the shaman first, as he is the one leading the
ceremony, the master of souls. I explain and analyze how he came to
lead these sessions.
A person comes to be a shaman, not out of his own will but because
he or she has been called. DuBois writes:

As is the case with many mystical traditions in various

religions around the world, the shamanic role is
typically regarded as a calling, a supernaturally
initiated personal relationship between a living
human being and one or more spirit guides… The
future shaman may also undergo a serious illness
or near-death experience that marks entry into a
shamanic role. [Dubois, 2009: 56]

Eliade (2004) describes a second and third way of becoming a

shaman; hereditary transmission and free will. Whatever the case, it
is a very emotional experience for the initiate, who sometimes has no
idea what is going on, and tries to fight it. But emotions are connected

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to experience and via this way to knowledge through the body, as Joris
explains in his introduction to this issue. Knowledge here is the result
of emotion.
This is where the training begins. The initiate shaman has to maintain
a certain physical diet: mainly plantains and fish, no sugar, salt or other
spices, no fat-bearing foods, pork, chicken, eggs or alcohol. Sexual
abstinence is very important, and mostly, isolation is another big factor.
This is all complemented with the rigorous intake of a psychedelic
compound, or compounds (Luna 1984; 2011, McCallum 1986). This
is an extreme bodily condition and the individual will feel this just as
any other human being will feel changes of this magnitude being made
to the body. The difference is that in the context of shamanic training,
these dietary restrictions have an underlying symbolic reason. The
avoidance of fat, especially pork4 and fried fats, are said to lift the spirit
higher up into the spirit world. The eating of fat is said to be a very
grounding experience. This is a purification ritual that is not only good
for the body, but would also leave the individual completely purified of
any possible negatives when dealing with the spirit entities.

The Temazcal

Parts of this experience are harder to remember as I was myself part of

the temazcal, and it was an intense event. The temazcal is a sweat lodge
made from putting tree-branches in the ground in a particular system, so
it forms a low hanging construction. This construction is then covered
with many layers of blankets to prevent the heat from escaping. In the
middle, there is a hole in the ground where heated up lava stones are
dropped by an associate of the shaman. The fire where these stones are
heated is straight across the small entrance to the temazcal. Between
the fire pit and the temazcal itself, there is a statue or stone (in my case
a stone turtle), which serves as the connection between the earth and
the temazcal. During the building of the fire and covering the temazcal
with blankets, I asked the associate about it. He said the temazcal has

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a uterine symbolism. People enter to die and be reborn symbolically.

About the symbolism behind the construction, he would not speak.
The temazcal was a very bodily experience. A line was drawn
starting from the fire passing the turtle and to the entrance. We had
to enter the temazcal on one side of the line, and had to exit on the
other. We were in there for what felt like an hour. Every quarter was
spent on one of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. In between
we had breaks for drinking, and new stones were tossed on the fire. I
was dying of the heat. The shaman also sat in the temazcal, singing,
rattling and drumming the whole time. He had the endurance and the
breath to withstand the intense heat, owing to his years of training. I
myself felt very strong emotional feelings, and through these obtained
knowledge about personal matters. Around me, others also had very
emotional experiences. One person started crying halfway through the
second temazcal session and did not stop.
The participants went into the temazcal receiving only little
explanation. I had asked about the symbolism of the temazcal beforehand
and thus had a little more knowledge. We were instructed to enter on
this side of the line and exit on the other, and to not leave the temazcal
during the session. I view this line as being a line of life. As we entered
the temazcal for the first time, we were about to die (symbolically)
and thus could not cross to the living. When we left, we had died and
were on the other side of life. The remainder of the weekend we would
spend in symbolic death (in liminality), healing ourselves in the Great
Beyond. The second time we entered the temazcal we were still dead,
and could not cross the line in to life. Exiting the temazcal on the other
side, we were reborn and thus back on this side of life.

The Ayahuasca

The initiate shaman who achieves psychedelic intoxication is not very

different from the novice Westerner who enters this realm, except in
two ways: a culturally sanctioned tradition of this use, and a symbolic

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system that underlies it, acquired through millennia of experience.

This is interesting because the healing ritual I experienced involved
everyone attending to experience this non-ordinary reality through
intoxication via psychotropic compounds, shaman and patients alike.
Before ingesting the psychedelic, we did breathing exercises. Then,
we had to state our intentions before the group and before mother
ayahuasca, so that she could help us with our ailments. The shaman,
sitting behind his altar, lit a ceremonial cigarette, and blew smoke over
his self and the ayahuasca, to purify and cleanse both. We had received
a little pouch of tobacco ourselves and had to sacralize it with our
wishes and intentions. Then we lined up and before receiving our cup,
threw the tobacco into a little fire. After everyone had drunk their cups,
the shaman drank his and the lights grew dark.
To describe the psychedelic experience is to be at a loss for words,
because it is a place, a mindset where creativity seems endless, and
language has to be made up on the spot.5 The word that comes closest
to describing it, both the beautiful and the horrific parts, is the usage
of the world sublime by Kant. For someone who does not have any
form of socially instituted training, the psychedelic experience can
potentially be true chaos. But this non-ordinary realm is described very
accurately, and probably unknowingly, by Merleau-Ponty in his uttering
of the pre-objective concept. Terence Mckenna has called psychoactive
compounds products that achieve the dissolution of culture6. This, in
my opinion, is the truest sense of the word pre-objective as seen by
Merleau-Ponty. When looking at a chair, the chair is not only visually
distorted, but all mentally learned associations to a chair as an object
to sit upon also become dissolved. It is not that I do not know a chair
is for sitting, or I would not sit upon a chair, but the societal conviction
that a chair is made only to sit upon is firmly challenged. In fact, all
societal convictions become subject to scrutiny and challenge. And not
only is this the case cognitively, but also emotionally. There is a firm
conviction that what is being felt is at least as true, or even more true,
than when not under the influence.

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But if this experience is anything like the pre-objective Merleau-

Ponty talks about, where does the habitus fit in? This is precisely where
the role of the shaman comes into play. The shaman can create order
in this non-symbolic, pre-objective realm by being able to build upon
many years of cultural experience and training in traveling to these
realms. This means that some of the pre-objective has been objectified,
for example in the form of spirits. And these objectifications could
become part of a habitus in the form of a cosmology, ontology and
epistemology. The psychedelic experience for the shaman could thus
be the total pre-objectification of the world around him guided by a
remembered habitus, an ontology about this realm made possible by
years of extensive training.

Conclusion

I have looked at shamanic healing utilizing Csordas’s paradigm of

embodied knowledge. I argued that this is a useful concept to look at
such an event because of the uncharted but ultimately bodily experience
of such a happening, a paradigm that incorporates uncertainty or
indeterminacy, on both a perceptual and social level, can answer
previously unanswered questions and pose new questions pertaining
to old and new research. In this article, I used the paradigm to look
at some of the practices that made up a particular healing session.
The participants, shaman and patients alike, threw their body in to an
intoxicated state and came back with emotional experiences, which
were then objectified and turned in to knowledge by the shaman. His
habitus, a lifetime of culturally sanctioned training and experience with
these states of mind, gave him the knowledge and skills to manage
others who entered these states, and to converse with them about their
experiences.
Shamanism is still very much alive today, both in the world and
in academic research, using this methodological paradigm could
help researchers look at shamanic practices from a different angle.

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All shamanism involves using the body in one way or another. This
methodology can be a useful tool to view the diverse practices of
shamanism around the world from a more-or-less unified perspective,
which could help in understanding this extensive phenomenon, finding
differences and mutualities. Understanding this might give us insights
in to why shamanic tourism is on the rise, or why shamans are coming
to Europe to lead these types of ceremonies.

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Homan, Joshua E. 2011. Charlatans, Seekers and Shamans: The Ayahuasca Boom in Western
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Endnotes

1 Ayahuasca is the name of both the psychedelic brew, and one of it’s components. For a detailed
reading, see Mckenna, Callaway and Grob (1998).

2 A shamanic healing session is a holistic experience. Giving a full account is impossible in this
respect. Hence the breaking up into parts, which will be done as carefully as possible.

3 Many participants, including myself helped build the temazcal and the fire needed to heat the
stones. Unknowingly, this is where the ceremony began. I got a feel for the preciseness of
the operation, the importance of this instrument for the people who use it, although I did not
know anything about sweat lodges. Jackson terms this practical memises (1983:340).

4 One can wonder as to wether this is the underlying reason why pigs are seen as dirty animals
and pork is a forbidden food in the Islamic and Judaic religious traditions.

5 For some very beautiful accounts of the psychedelic experience see Huxley (1954); or look up
Terence Mckenna describing the “average” DMT-trip.

6 According to Mckenna, these substances will cast doubt in you “if you are a Hasidic rabbi, a
Marxist anthropologist, or an altar boy, because their business is to dissolve belief systems,
…and then they leave you with the raw datum of experience...” (Mckenna 1984).

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