If you are interested in altered states of consciousness, or trance in Shamanistic practices, you’ll really want to stick out for this one.

Hello, everyone. I am Dr Angela Puca, and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a university lecturer, and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Shamanism, Esotericism, and all things occult.
This video is a recording of my talk for the British Psychological Society’s Transpersonal Psychology Section, “States of Interconnectedness in Shamanistic Practices.” A big thank you to the British Psychological Society for inviting me to give this talk and especially to the Transpersonal Psychology Section: Charmaine, Tammy, Steve, and all of those involved in hosting the event. Thank you again so much, and I hope you liked the talk.
In today’s talk, I wanted to focus on the matter of trans-states and altered states of consciousness when it comes to Shamanism. How can we better understand these states when we look at the religious phenomena happening there? Are there, perhaps, different ways that we can use to better understand this phenomenon? Perhaps trance might not be the most useful way of describing and conceptualising this phenomenon.

So, my methodology. I will start by introducing my methodology. So far, I have conducted five years of field study, and my fieldwork has been conducted in Italy. So, this is going to be focused on the Italian context. However, I know from working with colleagues that certain patterns have emerged, even in other countries and even Europe. But my focus and my specific study was in Italy. I used participant observation, participated in rituals and events, and stayed with some of my informants. I used interviews, questionnaire surveys, and casual conversations, which, believe it or not, proved to be very useful in finding new leads and connections. Also, discourses emerged from a Facebook community that I created ad hoc for my PhD study. I created a Facebook group called “Practitioners of Shamanism in Italy” so people could join. Of course, they knew that I was a researcher and I could anonymously use all the content produced within that group, but it also turned out to be quite a useful methodological tool. I have also used textbooks, articles, and internet posts produced within the community.

As for my data analysis, perhaps it is important to highlight because that clarifies how I use terminology and conceptualise what I see. First, I use a deictic approach, and there is a way whereby I try to solve the very difficult task of defining things as malleable and fluid, such as Shamanism. That also applies to other religious phenomena, for instance, Paganism. Certain religious phenomena don’t have a central dogma, are not institutionalised, are quite difficult to pinpoint, and create a very stark definition and set boundaries that will tell you what represents those phenomena and has to be excluded from those phenomena.

I found it quite useful to use this specific methodology that comes from Michael Lambek, and it comes from the Latin Deixis. Deixis refers to a term that only acquires meaning when put in context. So, for instance, the words ‘here’ and ‘there’ are meaningful words but only in so far as they are put within a sentence or context. But words such as here and there, just by themselves, don’t tell you much about what here and there means. So, I used this deictic approach – context-sensitive – to define religious phenomena. I also used discourse analysis, which is another useful methodological tool, in my opinion, especially when it comes to certain religious phenomena such as Shamanism. This means I identify patterns of meaning emerging from the discourse the community creates around what they do and believe. It’s not about what every single individual thinks or says. Still, it is more about patterns of meaning and semantic patterns that emerge because they allow you to grasp how they construct meaning and how the belief system is constructed.

So, as for Shamanism in Italy, it is articulated in two main branches in two main ways. The first one is Trans-Cultural. Trans-cultural means that it is not linked to one specific culture or one tradition; it’s not linked to being initiated into a specific tradition. It is based more on techniques and is meant to be trans-cultural. So once you know the techniques, whether you are in Italy or the UK or Switzerland, wherever you are, you are supposed to get the same results, whatever your background is because it is all focused on trans-cultural techniques.

So, a definition that I would give of trans-cultural Shamanism is:
“A set of techniques (not linked to a tradition or a culture) linked to a world view that aims at accessing a ‘non-ordinary reality’ or a ‘shamanic state of consciousness’ to gain power, healing, and knowledge.”
Indigenous Shamanism is a form of Shamanism linked to the land, a specific territory, a specific culture, a specific lore, and a family lineage. It is linked to tradition, the land, and a specific culture. So, it is not like anybody could just extrapolate and utilise the technique out of that specific context. So, they tend to be very context-specific.

I would define Indigenous Shamanism as, and here the definition is more towards Shamanism, in a way, but how Indigenous Shamanism can be defined:
“A set of Signs and Gestures linked to the Italian folk magic tradition, an initiatory process (often within the family) and local lore aimed at gaining power, healing and knowledge through the connections with the Saints and the Trinity.”

I was about to say ‘with the spirits,’ but I don’t want to misrepresent how practitioners talk about their practice. However, I shall say that many indigenous Italian Shamans talk about their practice and connection with the Saints as spirits; sometimes, quite often, they also use this specific term. So, that is also interesting to notice.

There are a few main types of trans-cultural Shamanism in Italy. The most popular is Core Shamanism, which Michael Harner founded in the 1970s; in the United States, I would say it is the pinnacle of trans-cultural Shamanism, focusing on the technique. It is based on the idea that all the different forms of Shamanism underlie the same core and principles. And so by extrapolating this principle and the techniques linked to them, you can have techniques that everybody can implement in their practice, regardless of their specific background or where they live.

Then we have Castaneda-inspired groups or inspired traditions which are linked to the works and the novels of Carlos Castaneda, and these tend to be often linked also to the use of psychotropic drugs but not necessarily – especially in the 70s and the 80s that seemed to be the case. Nowadays, Castaneda seems to be an entry point for those who are interested in Shamanism because his novels are quite popular and they are also very accessible – you can find them, I’d say, in every bookstore. And so, for people interested in this form of spirituality and Shamanism, it is extremely likely that they might have read Castaneda, and that was their entry point into the further practice of Shamanism.

Then we have other Indigenous Reinterpretations of Shamanisms. So, for instance, you have Andean forms of Shamanism, Siberian Shamanism, and other Peruvian and South American Shamanism that tend to be incorporated, integrated, and, in a way, translated – culturally translated to the Italian territory on the Italian peninsula. And people would practice, for instance, certain rituals in one of these traditions. But, in some cases, they might also think they are being very accurate in doing the same thing. But as a researcher, I have to note that it is a very different context, even when the claim is that the practice is the same.

Then, we have Psychologising forms of Shamanism. There are a few traditions. This is not as popular as Core Shamanism. I’d say that, among the ones I am covering here, it is the least popular. Still, I’d say that even though purely psychological Shamanism groups are not as popular, I would say that psychologising is present across the different forms of trans-cultural Shamanism. There is a strong link to, at least, the perception of what psychology entails. Even the idea of ‘soul retrieval’ is very linked to overcoming traumatic events because it is based on the idea that you need to retrieve your soul, a part of your soul that has been lost during a traumatic event. Hence, you are not whole any more, and you need to retrieve those parts to be whole again. This psychologising, within Shamanism, may also be linked to a certain search for scientific validation, which is also found to be quite evident across different forms of trans-cultural Shamanism. In Core Shamanism, the tradition of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, committee members tend to have high education degrees. Most of them have PhDs, and they are often academics or former academics. And so, there might be a search for scientific validation.

Now moving on to the indigenous form of Italian Shamanism, the Tradition of Segnature. The Tradition of Segnature is the name I used to systematise different forms of folk magic that can be found across the Italian regions. Segnature, which is plural, means signs and gestures, and these are magical symbols drawn by hand and used for specific purposes. For example, healing is used to ward off evil and cause and remove pain. The term Segnatori or Segnatrici, plural and female, refers to the performers of these gestures who have been initiated within this tradition. And I adopt this label to systematise the different varieties of this practice across the country.

In literature, before my PhD, the term was mainly used about the region Emilia Romagna, but I am extending its use both because it is the most representative. After all, none of the other regions have a term for the practice or gestures, and the community is extending this term. Thanks to social media and Facebook groups and people sharing their practices online, people from all different regions are now using this term not just in the Emilia Romagna but even people from other regions are now using acknowledging and understanding each other through finding a standard label.

When it comes to the performers of the Segnature, every region has its name for these vernacular healers who are vernacular witches, and that changes, but the practice itself, the signs and gestures, have that specific name in Emilia Romagna. Thanks to social media, the community is slowly acknowledging this term transregionally. So, I am also adopting that term, and I find it very useful in understanding this phenomenon.

So, in every region, incantations and prayers are usually performed in the local dialect. That is also an interesting aspect that highlights how local-specific and linked this tradition is to the territory and specific family. Traditionally the Segnature, these signs and gestures, are used for healing herpes, falls, sprains, loss of objects, and alteration of the weather. Traditionally, every healer has one or more powers, which vary; it usually depends on the bloodline, especially when they belong to the old tradition of vernacular healers. They tend to stick to the powers passed down from their grandmother or a person in their family. For each town, traditionally, there is only one healer, and I was able to identify two different strands in the vernacular healing tradition in Italy.

One is what I call the old generation, which is not necessarily linked to their age but is more linked to how open they are about sharing their practice and even to some sort of eclecticism. So, in the older generations, we find dwellers of the countryside, and they tend to stick to the traditional approach; they don’t want to share their practice, they are very reserved, and they are closed, in a way, towards sharing and mixing their practice.

Whereas the new generations of Segnature, of these vernacular healers, tend to be residents of cities, and they tend to expand the field of action of Segnature because they share their practice with other people and this occurs, also on social media and they use newer forms of syncretisms. For instance, now you also have Segnature for new problems, if you have to overcome the anxiety when you have to give a talk or give an exam – the new generation develops, based on the traditional Segnature, they will develop new ones to address these more contemporary concerns.

This vernacular healing tradition in Italy is one that I identified and labelled in my PhD as the indigenous Shamanism of Italy, and I won’t go too deep into why that is the case. To briefly try to convey why that was the case, I first argue with other scholars that a distinction should be made between indigenous religion and indigenous people because indigenous people are a political category. Indigenous religion is… disentangling the two allows us to understand better what an indigenous religion is, regardless of the political connotations that are attached to indigenous people and are not linked, necessarily, to their religion.

The indigenous religions we find, for instance, focus on ancestors, kinship relations, and oral transmission of knowledge, and they tend to be linked and contingent to the land. This is, of course, the case for the vernacular healing traditions and folk witchcraft in Italy. At least the strand that I talk about and systematise as the tradition of Segnature and that I argue is the indigenous Italian Shamanism.

Now let’s move on. Now that we have set the stage with what we are talking about in terms of Shamanism, we have these two strands; indigenous and trans-cultural Shamanism. Now we can talk about the altered states of consciousness and we will see that there is a difference between trans-cultural Shamanism that we saw is very focused on techniques rather than on tradition, on the area, the specific geographical area, and the culture. And then we have the indigenous tradition which is more focused on the family lineage and initiation and tradition and the connection to the land.

So in trans-cultural Shamanism in terms of altered states of consciousness, they appear to be linked to a dichotomised, that’s a very difficult term to say, dichotomised worldview. So the view of the world, the understanding of the world is, in a way, dualistic I may venture to say. So you have, for instance, in Castaneda and all those interested in Shamanism, thanks to Castaneda, we have the idea of ordinary and non-ordinary reality. So you have this, kind of, dualistic or this dual view of the world of reality. You can navigate it in an ordinary way or in a non-ordinary way. And then you have that, with Michael Harner, the focus tends to be more on consciousness. So Michael Harner and Core Shamanism don’t really talk about the idea of ordinary and non-ordinary reality but rather ordinary versus the shamanic state of consciousness. So here you don’t really have the idea of these two separate states of reality. There is, in fact, a book by Carlos Castaneda called “The Separate Reality.” So you don’t have the idea of these two different realities, you have the idea of two separate states of consciousness. One of which allows you to navigate the world and engage with Shamanism, with shamanic practices.

In trans-cultural Shamanism, especially in Core Shamanism, you don’t have the use of psychotropic drugs. There is the belief that you can access those altered states, those shamanic states of consciousness, using the monotonous sound of drums and rattles. So, just by hearing the music, a certain beat and a certain speed, you can enter those states of shamanic consciousness. Also, in some cases, being part of a group and in a specific setting can aid in achieving that shamanic state of consciousness. But it is common to think that drums and rattles can help you enter that state where you can do the most important and most practised technique in trans-cultural Shamanism, the shamanic journey. The shamanic journey is how trans-cultural practitioners enter this non-ordinary reality or the shamanic state of consciousness – depending on whether we want to use the Castaneda terminology or the one by Michael Harner.

So you have the shamanic journey; it’s entering the non-ordinary reality or the shamanic state of consciousness and not only entering that state but also navigating that state in a way that allows you to gain knowledge, power, and healing from that practice. So what happens with a shamanic journey is that you can travel to three different worlds. And you have the lower, middle, and upper worlds. They usually think that the lower world is the best place to encounter your spirit guide, and also for healing purposes, which is very commonly travelled; it is a very common destination for shamanic journeys when you seek healing or encounter your spiritual guide. In comparison, the middle world is most linked to our more ordinary world. It is our world on a spiritual level. So, for instance, if a practitioner is experiencing trouble in their relationship, they might travel to the middle world to encounter the spirit of their relationship. So they would have a conversation with it and try and understand, even through the use of symbolism, not necessarily a straight answer, to try and understand how they can improve their relationship.

Then, the upper world is the one where the higher spirits reside. This is where angelic figures, for instance, in my fieldwork, I have undertaken a few workshops by the Foundation of Shamanic Studies, and it was very surprising to me that a lot of people would encounter Jesus, for instance, in the upper world and some other people would encounter Isis or the angel Gabriel. So it was very varied, but the common idea is that in the upper world, you go to try and answer the deeper, more significant questions in life. About where are you headed? What’s the ultimate goal in a specific situation? Or the meaning or the purpose of your life? Higher questions, in a way.

When it comes to the indigenous form of Shamanism, these altered states of consciousness are intertwined with the mundane state of consciousness. So you don’t have a very stark separation between the dimension of the practice and the dimension of the mundane, yet it is there, in a way. So, to create a magical dimension, I will show you an example of a practice in indigenous Italian Shamanism. But it tends to utilise mundane settings and tools, nothing particularly linked to dedicated ritualism. So, it is very embedded in the mundane. And to create a magical dimension that somehow overrides the mundane framework. The disease itself needs to step into the myth. There is a way of mythologising, especially for those who primarily perform healing. There is a way of mythologising the disease, the illnesses. For instance, the shingles are called Saint Anthony’s fire or soul retrieval, the practice of soul retrieval is called the Herb of Fear, and you have all of these terms. All of the ways they talk about this illness and how it can be cured is mythopoetic – it is, in a way, stepping into the realm of myth while remaining very linked and intertwined with the mundane world.

Magical practices, as I referenced here on my slides, magical practices are not extraordinary for those belonging to the cultural system that generates them. They are often not even considered magic at all. And that is often the case for some of the vernacular witches in Italy, especially those of the old generation. Because of the negative connotation, they wouldn’t like to be associated with witches. The new generation tends to be keener on using this identifier because they also tend to syncretise their practice more with Paganism than Catholicism, which the old generation used to do and still does.

So this is an example of a Malocchio Ritual. So, a ritual to remove the evil eye, and this is a photo that I took in my fieldwork with Celeste. Celeste is a 28-year-old woman. She is a pagan whom her Catholic grandmother initiated. So she is an example of what happens in Italy, it’s not always the case, but I have found lots of cases like this because the vernacular healing tradition in Italy tends to be considered, in some cases, as superstitious practice, so it is most common that people, who also have a personal interest in witchcraft or Paganism or both, to have this Segnature passed down from family members, often from the grandmother. So, it is not a unique case. It is an example of what happens in Italy. Quite often, the new generation tends to syncretise this practice with Paganism.

So here you have this ritual with oil and water to diagnose and remove the Evil Eye. This is found across Italy, but it is very typical of the Campania region, the region I am from and the one I am in now. I am now back in Naples. So this is a very common thing you would find here in this Italian region. So the idea is that they would drop the oil into the water, and if the oil separates, it means that you have the Evil Eye. If the oil remains separated from the water, it does not melt into the water, which means you do not have the Evil Eye. So that is interesting. As Celeste also explained to me, she said Well, obviously, the most natural thing for oil is to remain separated from the water, so if it melts within the water, then it means there is something out of the ordinary going on, so that is a sign of Malocchio.

In some cases, you will also find that the oil is supposed to make a specific shape – it is supposed to turn into the shape of an eye. And in cases where they diagnose the Malocchio, the Evil eye, then they would practice the Segnature, which are the specific gestures accompanied by words that are not pronounced outwards; the words are pronounced inwards and are usually in the local dialect, and they are secret, they cannot be shared. So they would use these gestures on the water and oil matted in the water to remove the Evil Eye. So, as you can see, this is very mundane. You don’t have a circle casting, wear white robes, or a dagger; you don’t have any of those things you find in ceremonial practices or any other form of magic.

It is very embedded in the mundane, yet when rituals are performed, it is still a stepping into a different state. That kind of made me wonder: Is trance the best way to describe these practices? So, is it really trance that you find in Shamanism? This also applies to trans-cultural forms of Shamanism, although I have to admit that it was the indigenous form that prompted me to investigate this further. I wondered: is it really a trance state, or is it an interconnected state? So, the idea of trance being a core element in Shamanism comes from Mircea Eliade and his portrayal of the Shaman as this mystical figure who is the master of the techniques of ecstasy. But there is a French anthropologist, Roberte Hamayon, who highlighted in her study whether trance and ecstasy are appropriate concepts in the study of Shamanism for two main reasons. The first one is that they lack descriptive accuracy, and also because;

“Shamanistic societies do not make use of terms homologous to ‘trance’ nor do they refer to a change of state of consciousness as if the mere concept was irrelevant to them.”

Roberte Hamayon

That is something that I can attest to regarding a specific form of indigenous Shamanism, which is Mapuche Shamanism from Argentina and Chile. I have conducted fieldwork there as well, and they also don’t use this trance concept. So, it is not an altered state but more a connected state. It is a state where you enter into contact with the spirit world, and by this contact, you are able to effect some sort of change and mostly to acquire knowledge, power and healing. So, it is a way of creating a bridge that allows a conversation and exchange. It sounds more like a state of being connected rather than a state of being altered in a specific way.

There is one tradition that is particularly interesting for our talk today, and that is called Biotransenergetica. Biotransenergetica is a technique created by Pier Luigi Lattuada, which combines Transpersonal Psychology, perennial philosophy and Shamanism. Perennial philosophy is the idea that has been very common across different esoteric practices from the 19th century onwards; perennialism is the idea that there is a core underlying truth that you can find across different religions, philosophies and traditions, and the idea is that we articulate a core truth in different ways. Still, once you remove all of those elements and cultural elements, you can find that there is one underlying truth that is present across history and different traditions, whether religious or philosophical and whatnot. Lattuada, interestingly, is a registered psychotherapist and psychologist whose first experiences with Shamanism occurred in Brazil in 1982. Then he kept going to Brazil for about 20 years for a few months a year for 20 years. From his definition, Biotransenergetica is an integral form of psychotherapy that, as Lattuada explained, works on multiple levels, including the different states of consciousness. It aims at not only healing psychological conditions but also the evolution of the patient. It is a form of transpersonal or integral psychology. That’s how he explains it, and interestingly, he was also able to get it recognised as a specialisation in Italy by the Ministry of University Education, which is very rare because rules in Italy are very strict when it comes to universities. What is recognised as a school of specialisation or even a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree tends to be very standardised. It was quite an achievement that he was able to get it recognised.

A question that I asked Pier Luigi Lattuada during an interview was; does the psychologist enter into a trance state when they are in a dialogue with their patient? And the answer he gave me was;

“If by a trance you mean listening to yourself, to the fields around you and the other person, then yes, the BTE psychologist goes into a trance state. It is about capturing the essence of all things. If you are listening to a tree instead of thinking of what you have to do, you enter as state of trance or presence of unity. The same happens if you listen to your patients. Trance is expanding your consciousness and connecting yourself to the other person. In tantric Buddhism is rigpa, in Japan is satori. All traditions have this kind of state.”

Pier Luigi Lattuada

When he said all traditions have this kind of state you can see the perennialism right there. Also, the way he explained the trance state is, in a way, a connected state rather than entering a different state of consciousness or entering a different reality.

So, the absence of alterity between the magical and the mundane may be analysed by looking at Ernesto De Martino’s investigation of magic and its role in the Italian society of the 20th century. Ernesto De Martino is, I think, the most famous anthropologist in Italy, and he particularly studied folk magic in the 20th century, especially in the South. He was also trying to understand why magic survives and how magic is still being practised. And magic, for De Martino, is not a feature of a pre-rational era, as James G. Frazer depicted it in the “Golden Bough.” In the 19th century and early 20th century, you have the idea that different magical practices were part of a prior stage in history. An evolutionary model was applied and became popular, thanks to Charles Darwin. Still, it was also applied, not only to our biology but also to cultural development, and so that meant that everything that comes before is necessarily worse. So that history goes from worse to better. And so everything people used to believe is necessarily worse than what people believe now. And so there is this idea of cultural primitivism linked to everything of the past and belonging to the past. After the Enlightenment and secularisation, magic appeared, at least, perhaps, at the time, as something that was, in a way, surpassed by a different way of understanding and articulating reality.

But what De Martino says is, no, magic is not linked to a pre-rational era; magic goes beyond this definition; it has a different purpose, and for Martino, magic represents a way to solve the ‘crisis of presence.’ Which is, in Italian, la crisi della presenza. So, this crisis occurs when a weakened subject-object dichotomy threatens the individual’s agency. Consequently, the subject goes from being acting to being acted upon, from intentional to ‘intentioned’ acting. So, the person is not the agent anymore but rather a world’s echo. It is a very poetic definition that De Martino gives in “Il Mondo Magico,” which is, perhaps, one of his most popular books. It is also translated into English as “The Magical World.”

What he is saying here seems to be linked to the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Benedetto Croce. But here, what he’s saying is that magic is a way of reaffirming your presence in the world. There are instances in people’s lives, he would say, that threaten your perception of being an actual agent. So, when you are living in a situation where you lose control of what is occurring in your life or are not necessarily a victim of circumstances, you don’t really have power over your situation. That weakens your agency or your perception of being an agent, and when your perception of being an agent is weakened, then it means that you, in a way, dissolve into the world the subject-object separation dissolves in a way because if you cannot act freely and with a certain degree of agency over your surrounding world then you are just a world’s echo and for De Martino,, magic solves that crisis of presence because it empowers people and it empowers those who practice magic and allows for people to… it’s not just about being powerful or manipulating the world; it is also about the very subjectivity, the very sense of subjectivity, and that’s why I also talked about the idea of the self in the description of the talk. It is about the self, so magic for De Martino allows you to perceive yourself again as a self, not as a world’s echo, not as something purely dissolved into the stream of events you are not enacting part of.

So, it’s quite interesting and I think that it gives us a theoretical tool to, perhaps, understand, in a different way or with a different perspective, certain shamanistic practices. Which I would argue to be magical practices, in a way, but also they are very specific, they are not just magical practices, they are specific forms of magical practices – the shamanistic ones. And yet you do find that sense of reaffirming and re-framing the self, thanks to those very practices. So what we find in indigenous Shamanism, for instance, the vernacular witchcraft tradition, that I mentioned earlier, is that the practices are very mundane. As we said, you don’t have separate tools or dedicated robes or specific settings and yet there is a way of redefining the self by practising those techniques and engaging with that way of solving a specific problem. So, for instance, I mentioned the ritual of the Malocchio, the Malocchio ritual to remove the Evil Eye but what I didn’t say is that people in the Campania region, they don’t just think that you might have the Evil Eye because somebody is envying you. They also think that so that if somebody envies for any reason they might sort of send you even… it’s not necessarily something they do on purpose but just by envying you, it’s like they would sort of project these Evil Eye energies towards you and that can have negative consequences, such as a few very unlucky events, a chain of unlucky events or a constant headache. These are very common signs that people associate, that practitioners associate with having the Molocchio, the Evil Eye. And by resolving these kinds of issues, by using that specific ritual they think in a way, they call upon certain entities which it may be the Trinity or it may be a specific Saint, it depends, obviously, on the specific Segnature and the specific gesture.

But when they perform their practice they enter into contact with the spirit world and there is this conversation going on, this state of connectedness that equally defines or redefines or frames the self in that situation and in their very lives in the chain of events that they are part of in a very specific way. And what I argue here is that that specific way is an interconnected way that allows practitioners to affirm more of their self in the world but also that allows them to both affirm their self and connect to what goes beyond itself by keeping certain boundaries. To acknowledge and keep those boundaries while at the same time engaging with something that goes beyond the self.

So the question here is; is it an altered state of consciousness or an altered sense of self? And how do shamanic practices redefine the self?
So here I’m interested in knowing what you think, of course. Still, I’d say that what a proposed answer, on my part, is that I think that it is an altered state of self. It is a state of self where the practitioner establishes a connection that goes beyond themselves, and at the same time, they find and frame their place in the world, in the world meaning their society, even in relation to the other people that they interact with.

And as for the second question, how do shamanic practices redefine the self? I would say that, based on my fieldwork and the data that I collected and what I was able to gather so far, shamanistic practices redefine the self in that they allow practitioners, and that has been recorded by few informants, that allow practitioners to acknowledge the presence of something that goes beyond them; so it plays a role into having, into acquiring a sense of wholeness, they usually report. And so they enter, they can engage with something that goes beyond themselves, but even by doing, by being in a state of connectedness, they also become. They feel they are more integrated; in a way, they feel more whole. I don’t know how else to put it, but it is a connection that is not just entering the spirit realm but is also acquiring, and reacquiring a sense of self that allows people to navigate in a more connected way and have a feeling of being more integral in their self even when they connect with the surrounding and with the events outside of the shamanistic practice.

So this is it for today’s video. I hope you liked it. Do let me know in the comments section what you thought of it. What are your thoughts on whether you have any questions or even suggestions for a future video?

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Bye for now.

REFERENCES

Cox, J. L. (2007) From Primitive to Indigenous: The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

De Martino, E. (2007) Il mondo magico: prolegomeni a una storia del magismo, Bollati Boringhieri.

Eliade, M. (1972) Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (trans. W. R. Trask), Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Ferrari, F.M. (2012) Ernesto De Martino on Religion: The Crisis and the Presence. Sheffield, Oakville, Routledge.

Hamayon, R. N. (2004) ‘Are “trance”, “ecstasy” and similar concepts appropriate in the study of shamanism?’, in Znamenski, A. A. (ed), Shamanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology, Routledge Curzon, pp. 243–260.

Lattuada, P. (2012) Biotransenergetica, ITI Edizioni.

Magliocco, S. (2006) ‘Italian American Stregheria and Wicca: Ethnic Ambivalence in American Neopaganism’, in Strmiska, M. (ed), Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, pp. 55–86.

Owen, S. (2016) ‘Druidry and the Definition of Indigenous Religion’, in Cox, J. L. (ed), Critical Reflections on Indigenous Religions, London, New York, Routledge, pp. 81–92.

Puca, A. (2018a) Scientism and Post-Truth. Two contradictory paradigms underlying contemporary shamanism? Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion (JBASR), 20, pp.83–99.

Puca, A. (2019) The Tradition of Segnature: Underground Indigenous Practices in Italy. The Journal of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions, (7), pp.104–123.

Puca, A. (2018b) “Witch” and “Shaman”: Discourse Analysis of the Use of Indigenizing Terms in Italy. International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 9 (2), pp.271–284.

First uploaded 23 Aug 2021