Details

Subject(s)

• Indian art—Costa Rica [Browse]
• Indian art—Andes Region [Browse]
• Indigenous peoples of Central America—Costa Rica—Rites and ceremonies [Browse]
• Indigenous peoples of South America—Andes Region—Rites and ceremonies [Browse]
• Shamanism—Costa Rica [Browse]
• Shamanism—Andes Region [Browse]
• Shamanism in art [Browse]
• Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience—Costa Rica [Browse]
• Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience—Andes Region [Browse]
• Indigenous Studies [Browse]

Series

• Linda Schele series in Maya and pre-Columbian studies. [More in this series]
• The Linda Schele series in Maya and Pre-Columbian studies

Summary note

Shamanism-the practice of entering a trance state to experience visions of a reality beyond the ordinary and to gain esoteric knowledge-has been an important part of life for indigenous societies throughout the Americas from prehistoric times until the present. Much has been written about shamanism in both scholarly and popular literature, but few authors have linked it to another significant visual realm-art. In this pioneering study, Rebecca R. Stone considers how deep familiarity with, and profound respect for, the extra-ordinary visionary experiences of shamanism profoundly affected the artistic output of indigenous cultures in Central and South America before the European invasions of the sixteenth century. Using ethnographic accounts of shamanic trance experiences, Stone defines a core set of trance vision characteristics, including enhanced senses, ego dissolution, bodily distortions, flying, spinning and undulating sensations, synaesthesia, and physical transformation from the human self into animal and other states of being. Stone then traces these visionary characteristics in ancient artworks from Costa Rica and Peru. She makes a convincing case that these works, especially those of the Moche, depict shamans in a trance state or else convey the perceptual experience of visions by creating deliberately chaotic and distorted conglomerations of partial, inverted, and incoherent images.

Notes

Two columns to the page.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Language note

English

Contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 General Recurrent Themes in the Phenomenology of Visions
• Chapter 2 The Common Perceptual Phenomena and Stages of the Visionary Experience
• Chapter 3 Visions and Shamanizing: The Intermediary Role, Anomalousness, Control, and Balance
• Chapter 4 Embodying the Shaman in Trance: Embracing Creative Ambiguity
• Chapter 5 Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Costa Rican Art I: At the Human End and the Balance Point of the Flux Continuum
• Chapter 6 Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Costa Rican Art II: Toward the Animal End and Beyond the Flux Continuum
• Chapter 7 Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Central Andean Art I: Toward the Human End and the Balance Point of the Flux Continuum
• Chapter 8 Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Central Andean Art II: Toward the Animal End and Beyond the Flux Continuum
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

Show 13 more Contents items

ISBN

0-292-73487-5

OCLC

• 741751632
• 932313937
• 1450098334

Doi

• 10.7560/726260

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