Shamanism and Possession

MICHAEL WINKELMAN
Arizona State University, United States

Shamanism and possession are central features of religious practices found in pre-
modern societies. They manifest substantial similarities across cultures, suggesting that
their basis involves something fundamental to human nature and consciousness. These
terms are applied to a wide range of ritual alterations of consciousness. The variation in
these practices has contributed to long-standing questions regarding the precise nature
of shamans and whether they are possessed by spirits. Cross-cultural studies reveal the
characteristic features of shamans and how their modifications of consciousness are
distinguished from the practices of possession that are typical of mediums.

The history of shamanism studies

For hundreds of years Western scholars have used “shaman” as a cross-cultural concept
to represent similar religious practices found in premodern societies worldwide
(Flaherty 1992). This modern use of “shaman” to designate religious practitioners
derived from Europeans’ contacts with indigenous cultures of Central Asia, where
there are widespread cognates of terms such as saman, khaman, and xaman. There are
also Indo-European cognates such as sramana in Pali and Sanskrit.
The initial documentation of these practices by people without preparation in
anthropology contributed to distortions, including negative characterizations of
shamanism pervading anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, and even laws. The
dramatic ritual contrasted with Westerners’ idealized rationality and contributed to
what was perceived as the irrationality of other cultures. But by the early twentieth
century there was a growing body of anthropological literature on shamanism.
Although the phenomenon of shamanism was initially perceived as foreign to Europe,
in time, evidence of shamanism was also found in Western antiquity. Contemporary
understandings recognize shamans as reflecting something fundamental to human
nature and consciousness, a significant feature of early human social evolution whose
roots are still manifested in ritual healing practices around the world today.

Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy

Worldwide similarities in ritual healing practices were disseminated by the renowned
scholar of comparative religion Mircea Eliade ([1951] 1964). Eliade characterized the
shamanic ritual as the most significant collective social activity of the societies where
shamanism was practiced. This ritual typically lasted all night with the entire local

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1651
2 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION

community singing and clapping to accompany the dancing and drumming shaman.
The shaman’s ritual typically involved a dialogue reflecting the struggles the shaman
enacted with the spirits and interactions with the animal powers that were summoned
to assist the shaman.
Among Eliade’s characterizations of the shaman was of someone who entered into
ecstatic states in order to interact with the spirits on behalf of the community; other
features included an initiatory dismemberment and a death and rebirth experience, the
acquisition of animal allies, and an alleged ability to transform into an animal, as well as
activities of prophecy and healing. Eliade further specified the shaman’s mastery of fire,
his function as a psychopomp in escorting souls to the land of the dead, his experiences
involving ascent to the heavens and descent into hell, his role in the recovery of souls,
and his powers of invoking spirits.
Assuming the role of the shaman involved several interrelated processes including
a calling from the spirits and an arduous period of training. Shamans were typically
male, although some might be females who were thought to have been selected by
the spirits of their ancestors who were shamans. The calling might be manifested
in signs at birth, in visitations by spirits as manifested in apparitions or other signs,
or in a period of illness caused by spirits. This illness could be resolved only by
engaging in the shamanic path to acquire a cure, making the shaman a wounded0
healer.
Key to the shaman’s development was a vision quest involving arduous fasting and
prayer, generally alone in the wilderness, which could last for weeks or even months,
while neophytes sought a vision to reveal their source of power. During this quest,
the initiate might endure extreme austerities involving self-torture, sleep deprivation,
and exposure to temperature extremes that produced alterations of consciousness.
Shamanic training focused on the development of a relationship with an animal
spirit that would impart power to the shaman. During initiation, initiates typically
experienced visions of their own death from attacks by animals in which they were torn
apart and devoured. These spirits eventually reassembled the neophyte, incorporating
themselves into the shaman’s body as personal powers.
Central to Eliade’s understanding of shamanism was ecstasy, a ritual alteration of
consciousness. This signature feature of shamanism was conceptualized as a magical
flight or soul journey that reflected the separation of the shaman’s perceptual capacities
from their physical body. Shamans entered ecstasy through drumming, singing,
chanting, dancing, and other agents or preparations, including psychoactive plants,
fasting, social isolation, and prohibitions on sexual activity. After hours of exhausting
dancing and drumming, the shaman would physically collapse or deliberately recline.
Covered with blankets and cared for by assistants who continued to drum and chant,
the shaman, while appearing to be unconscious, would enter a visionary state. Accom-
panied by animal allies, he would enter the spirit world for divination, communicating
with the dead, healing, recovering lost souls, obtaining protection from sorcerers, and
to determine the fate of missing group members, the location of lost objects, or where
to direct the hunters.
 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION 3

Shamanism as a cross-cultural phenomenon

While shamanism was central in comparative religious studies long before Eliade’s
seminal work, controversy remains regarding the empirical status of the concept, that
is, whether shamanism represents something real or is merely a mental construction
of academics or Westerners. Empirical research resolves this question by establishing
a cross-cultural distribution of remarkably similar spiritual healers that correspond to
Eliade’s conceptualizations of the shaman (Winkelman 1992).
This systematic ethnological (cross-cultural or holocultural) research empirically
identified different types of magico-religious practitioners and found a specific type in
foraging societies worldwide. This type (labeled a shaman by the investigator) was the
preeminent charismatic leader who led a nighttime community ritual. The shaman,
typically a male with a family lineage of shamanism, acquired the position through
a selection process involving the spirits and a special illness or initiatory crisis that
included a death and rebirth experience. During this period the shaman developed
special relations with animals as a source of power, including the ability to transform
himself into an animal.
Shamans’ professional activities focused on healing and divination. The ritual
involved many of the same initiatory practices used for altering consciousness. These
included preparation in isolation and fasting and a ritual involving chanting, singing,
drumming, and dancing. The use of psychedelic substances was widespread and
prominent but apparently not universal among shamans. The shaman experienced a
visionary soul journey but not normally possession. Ritual healing practices focused
on soul loss and soul recovery, as well as the removal of illness caused by spirits or
sorcerers and the intrusion of foreign objects or entities into the body of the patient.
Shamans were also believed to have the ability to be sorcerers, causing illness or death
to others, as well to fly, handle fire, and control the weather.

Shamanistic healers
This cross-cultural research (Winkelman 1992) helps clarify two different concepts
of shamanism in Eliade’s work that have contributed to confusion regarding the
distinguishing characteristics of shamans. Eliade’s most general characterization of
the shaman as someone who enters ecstasy is true of shamans, but all societies have
practitioners who ritually alter their consciousness so as to engage with the spirits for
healing and divination. These core features of the shaman—altering consciousness,
community rituals, spirit interactions, and healing—are cultural universals that are
found in every society. Shamans are distinguished from this broader phenomenon of
shamanistic healers by additional features such as death and rebirth experiences, soul
travel, animal familiars, the ability to transform into an animal, and practices of sorcery.
Shamans are a social universal, found worldwide in foraging societies as well as in
some slightly more complex semi-nomadic horticultural and pastoral societies. These
original shamans have disappeared and been replaced by other forms of shamanistic
healers such as mediums and mystics. Modern revivals of shamanism, such as the
Foundation for Shamanic Studies, started by the anthropologist Michael Harner, engage
4 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION

the core aspects of shamanism but publicly disavow central aspects of premodern
shamanism such as the ingestion of psychedelic drugs and practices of sorcery.
Although shamans of foraging societies were considerably different from modern
and postmodern healing practices that use ritual alterations of consciousness, the orig-
inal term has become popularized and been overextended to include many other kinds
of spiritual practitioners, leading to confusion. Differences between shamans and medi-
ums are often ignored because of their commonality as shamanistic healers who use
ritual modifications of consciousness to interact with spirits for the purposes of heal-
ing and divination. Ecological and social influences modified the original forms of
shamanism, producing other socially structured forms of healing with distinctive fea-
tures. These include the practices of mediums, who, while they are called shamans by
some researchers, actually differ significantly from shamans, as exemplified by posses-
sion and other characteristics.

Mediums
Mediums are another type of religious practitioner identified cross-culturally that is
typified by experiences of possession (Winkelman 1992; see also Lewis [1971] 2003;
Sered 1994). Mediums are typically female and are found in complex societies with agri-
cultural subsistence and hierarchical political integration. These women-dominated
religions emphasize possession in selection, development, professional activities, and
concepts of illness causation. Possession is defined by Bourguignon (1973) as the
individual’s personality and will being taken over by a spirit and experienced as beyond
their personal control. The selection of a person to be a medium typically begins with
a spontaneous possession experience that occurs during late adolescence and is seen
as a call to the profession of a medium. These spontaneous possession episodes are
treated in rituals directed by older mediums. Possession episodes are then deliberately
induced through musical activities such as singing, chanting, drumming, and dancing
and sometimes through the use of alcohol or other drugs.
Mediums are of a lower social and economic status than the dominant religious
practitioners, the priests. Mediums engage in divination, healing, protection from the
spirits and from malevolent practitioners, agricultural rites, and the worship of collec-
tive deities. Their healing practices involve worship that makes offerings to the spirits
and exorcism. Mediums are generally believed to be exclusively moral in their super-
natural activities and to beseech the gods for protection against sorcerers, witches, and
evil spirits. They generally have more prestige than other women in society, reflecting
their close relationship with the powerful male spirit entities that they manifest through
possession episodes.
Sered’s (1994) cross-cultural case study illustrates how these forms of female-
dominated religions differ from those of shamans. These women occupy roles of
authority by virtue of their personality and their access to supernatural power, and
they support ideologies of gender inequality in their power relations with male spirits
that reflect prevalent societal notions of male dominance and female subordination.
Possession episodes nonetheless empower the women, who adopt the persona of
dominant males when their possessing spirits take over their bodies in order to
 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION 5

communicate with the community. Mediums are thought to communicate divine

demands that others are obliged to follow. These roles enable mediums to indirectly
exert important social influences, including control of their spouses, by attributing
responsibility for behaviors to the possessing spirits. The possessing spirits also provide
experiences that allow women to express socially prohibited roles and emotions.
The practices of mediums are focused on the needs of those in marginal economic
and social circumstances. These female-dominated religious practices assist women in
their responsibilities as mothers and focus on the domestic arena and familial concerns,
especially familial bonds and interpersonal and community relations that provide
nurturance. Mediums’ ritual practices are characterized by high levels of emotionality
and emphasize a dynamic that strengthens family and women’s concerns with their
role as mothers. Possession activities facilitate women’s role as nurturers, support their
responsibilities in childcare, and help to manage their emotional experiences.

Shamanistic and mediumistic alterations of consciousness

Soul flight is central to shamans’ alterations of consciousness and is experienced as

a separation of the consciousness from the physical body and its travel into spiritual
dimensions. The shaman’s ecstasy involves an experience in “which his soul is believed
to leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld [and] … differs
from a ‘possessed’ person, for example: the shaman controls his ‘spirits’ … without
thereby becoming their instrument” (Eliade [1951] 1964, 5, 6). Shamanic practitioners
also engage in a variety of other types of alteration of consciousness, including animal
transformation, whereby they experience their body in the form of an animal. In this
state, their personal bodily sensations are as if they were an animal in nature, feeling as
their own body the strange bones and facial structure of the animal, the leaves brushing
against the body, and the sounds and smells of the forest impinging on the senses.

Contemporary shamanic experiences

Contemporary initiatory ordeals of the Yanomano (Yanomami) of Venezuela illustrate

the kinds of relations that likely characterized the traditional shamanic identity; these
are manifested in the multiple spirit entities that are incorporated through the use
of psychotropic snuff powder (Jokic 2015). These initiatory experiences lead to the
destruction of the neophyte’s self by the hekura spirits, who in turn reconstitute the
neophyte with a multiplicity of hekura spirits that come to constitute aspects of the self.
This transformation of ego consciousness is engendered by epena or yopo (a snuff
based on the Virola species and other plants), which provides access to the spirit helpers
that become part of the shaman. The snuff, combined with prolonged chanting and the
calling of spirits, is thought to lead to a stretching of consciousness that produces a
rupture. This rupture allows for the entry into the shaman initiate of the spirits, which
become the shaman’s personal allies and power rather than possessing or controlling
the shaman.
6 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION

An initiatory death experience leads to this fragmentation of the ego and a loss of
boundary between the body and the external world, a separation of self from others
and the universe. Based on his own initiatory experiences, Jokic (2015) reports that, at
the experiential point of death, there is a temporary dissolution of self-consciousness, a
merger of the body with the macrocosm that produces a loss of the sense of one’s own
body as separate from the cosmos. The neophyte shaman remains conscious during
these experiences and, while unable to move his body at times, maintains a personal
awareness while completely separated from the sensations of the physical world.
These experiences provoke a transformation of the shaman’s ego-bound conscious-
ness and identity, opening the way for a rebirth or recreation of the initiate as a spirit
being. Among the spirits that are incorporated are his ancestors, including parents, who
come to the initiate and remain within the newly formed shaman. Once the initiate
has learned to call the spirits without the help of a master, the spirits remain perma-
nently within the new shaman’s body. In the Yanomano traditions, the anaconda spirit
is incorporated into the structural stratum of the neophyte’s body as a crown of light that
enables him to see distant places, as well as see within patients’ bodies, for diagnosis,
while a pair of toucan’s wings enable him to fly.

Soul flight as an out-of-body experience

Central aspects of shamanic experience are studied in modern psychology as an
out-of-body experience (OBE). The classic feature of an OBE involves sensing one’s
own body in a location distinctly different from personal subjectivity and the self, a
phenomenon associated with deliberate spiritual practices, near-death experiences, and
anomalous body and self experiences such as autoscopy. OBEs and similar body–self
dissociations reveal the underlying architecture of the human self by disassembling
what is normally united: the self experience, with the self and body in the same place as
one’s visual perspective (Metzinger 2005). An OBE experiences separate the self from
the body, with the visual field taking predominance over the somatic field.
The neural correlates and underlying causes of OBEs are revealed in studies showing
that people are capable of deliberately inducing these experiences (see Winkelman
2010). Some can induce such experiences voluntarily; for others they can be produced
by electrical brain stimulation, which presents conflicting feedback regarding sensory
stimulation and the body, and through mental and visual simulation of body positions.
Imaging studies reveal that it is interference with the normal integration of body-related
information in the temporoparietal junction that contributes to these anomalous body
and self experiences. Shamanic practices presumably induce this region through
the habituation of the temporoparietal through extensive drumming and dancing.
Interference in the temporoparietal junction connections with the prefrontal cortex
results in a functional disconnection between the lower brain systems and the frontal
cortex. This disconnection results in the disintegration of the normal unity of the self,
allowing the body and self-processing systems to function independently of actual
body input. Such disengagement of the visual field and its dominance over body
awareness allows for an illusory experience of travel independent of the physical body.
 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION 7

The OBE’s functional and phenomenological properties reveal a proto-concept of the

mind and a separation of its components that support ordinary awareness. The OBE self
model manifests features of a proto-concept of the mind that is the locus of the perceiv-
ing self and subjective experience. The self provides an integrated mental representation
of reality and capacities of intentionality, but it can also function independently of ref-
erence to the body. Metzinger notes that OBEs have adaptive features paralleling the
physical immobility that is found in the freezing responses and feigned deaths exhibited
by many animals to dissuade predators. Other adaptive functions include the preser-
vation of vital cognitive functions by the separation of cognitive capacities from the
physical-self model. When physical trauma cuts off somatosensory input, a separate
sense of self, manifested in the OBE, integrates higher cognitive functions such as atten-
tion, problem solutions, agency, volition, and other thought processes.
Evidence indicates that OBEs can provide veridical and accurate accounts of external
circumstances. During OBE intentional aspects of the person can explore possibilities
independent of the limitations of the physical body, allowing the higher cognitive
functions to provide a global model. These experiences also reduce anxiety regarding
physical trauma to the body via the assurances offered by the soul experience that pro-
vide a sense of personal continuity (of the soul) while facing a potentially mortal crisis.
Out-of-body experiences have no doubt contributed to the postulation of the exis-
tence of spirits, providing a paradigm for dualist perceptions of the soul as separate
from the physical body. OBE phenomena reflect neuropsychological structures that
are at the basis of the human experience of the self and spirits. While such conclu-
sions may be erroneous, the experiential impact of these perceptions has been central
to the creation of mythological systems and religious practices. These beliefs have effects
on behavior that may be adaptive, as exemplified in the altruistic tendencies of people
who have near-death experiences. OBE features are at the basis of a self-awareness and
self-modeling that reflects our ability to transcend the present moment and to project
consciousness into other times and places. This capacity for mental time travel primarily
functions to anticipate the future, reflecting selection for mental processing and deci-
sion making regarding anticipated behaviors and future events.

Possession

The shaman’s control of the spirits contrasts directly with the widespread concept of
possession as a state in which a spirit controls a person’s personality and behavior.
The possessed person is normally amnesiac for those experiences, in direct contrast to
the shaman’s memory for his soul flight. Bourguignon’s (1973) cross-cultural research
found significant societal predictors of possession in stratification, jurisdictional hierar-
chy, and agriculture. Controlled analyses indicated that political integration beyond the
local community was the only independently significant predictor of possession among
many intercorrelated social complexity variables (Winkelman 1992).
This characteristic political feature of possession may indirectly reflect the social
effects on women’s material and emotional wellbeing and their marginalization
and subordinated positions, which may cause dissociation, which in turn facilitates
8 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION

alterations of consciousness (see Bourguignon 1973; Lewis [1971] 2003; Winkelman

2010). These effects include periods of near-starvation and prolonged nutritional
deficiency, injuries from physical abuse, and psychological distress from oppression, all
of which lead to psychophysiological consequences that can contribute to possession
through dissociative tendencies. The predominance of women in possession religions
reflects a psychodynamic response of dissociation in the service of the self that is
generated by conditions of oppression and powerlessness. The alternative selves
manifested through possessing spirits allow for self-assertion, with the expression of a
powerful spirit as an effective tool for influencing others. Possession experiences reflect
an adaptation to the shamanistic potentials for altering consciousness. Possession
differs from shamanic experiences as a consequence of the distinctive features that
are produced by the oppressive physical, social, and economic influences affect the
individual’s physiology.

Psychophysiological perspectives on possession

Extreme behaviors and symptoms associated with many possession cases—trembling,
seizures, convulsions and uncontrolled movement of the body, glazed eyes, as well as
extreme changes in emotions, voice, behavior, and personality—have contributed to
interpretations of possession as medical pathologies such as hysteria, neurosis, disso-
ciation, multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder. The association
of possession with amnesia, a typical symptom of epilepsy, hysteria, and other disor-
ders, suggests that there may be biological contributions to this feature and the causes
of possession. But anthropologists generally contend that it is inappropriate to con-
sider behaviors as pathological if they are normative and culturally valued activities.
The focus of this entry is on possession within professional practices rather than its
manifestations as individual pathology.
Nonetheless, many medical conditions with symptoms similar to possession involve
a personality dissociated from the ego and with increased religiosity in behavior
and thoughts. The temporal-lobe personality syndrome (interictal personality) helps
explain a persistent association of pathologies with divine experiences (Schachter
2006) because it produces increased emotionality and philosophical and religious pre-
occupations. Temporal-lobe syndromes are associated with mystical, paranormal, and
religious experiences in normal populations as well, which suggests that these predispo-
sitions are used in selecting for mediums. Like epilepsy, these conditions may be useful
for mediums because they produce a reduced threshold for the alteration of conscious-
ness. Support for this biological predisposition is found in the association of societal
possession practices with their religious practitioners’ individual manifestations of the
characteristic features of temporal-lobe personality syndrome such as amnesia, tremors,
convulsions, and excessive, agitated, uncontrolled behavior (Winkelman 1992).
Behavioral similarities between possession and dissociative disorders may reflect
different manifestations of a common underlying capacity. Cultural differences in
interpretation and responses to the person can produce different manifestations of this
dissociative tendency. In contrast to cultures where possession is pathologized and the
 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION 9

dissociative experiences increase distress, dissociation can provide relief from distress
where spirit possession is accepted.
Dissociation reflects an evolved mechanism to escape extreme emotional stress in
interpersonal relations. Stressful parental relationships can disrupt the integration of
consciousness, resulting in a separate dissociated identity and stream of consciousness
(Seligman and Kirmayer 2008). Dissociation involves a selective suppression of mem-
ories and normal cognitive integration to reduce stress by keeping certain information
compartmentalized and out of consciousness. This reaction is adaptive in enabling the
person to continue to function by dissociating them from the stress they experienced
in relation to their parents. A distancing of self and identity produces an emotional
numbing, inhibiting the flight-or-fight response and providing opportunities for a more
adaptive consideration of options. Dissociative detachment of the psychological self
from the social self permits the social self to continue functioning, with the person-
alities of possession spirits facilitating adaptation to social circumstances through an
extreme identification with idealized social norms.

Postmodern manifestations of possession

Possession has continued to be important across the world in the postmodern era,
reflecting our evolved psychology and a proliferation of concepts regarding possession.
As with OBE experiences, the phenomena of spirit possession illustrate that the self
can be separated into a number of elements—a separation of awareness of mind,
body, agency, and self. There are various possession relationships of external spirits
to personal components of self and identity. Among Brazilian spiritists, views of
relations with spirits range from indirect influence to varying degrees of obsession
and influence on behavior and identity, to complete control of the person’s body by
inhabiting spirits. Possession experiences take a variety of forms and play roles in
psychological and social processes, as well in activities with cognitive, philosophical,
and even epistemological implications.
The predominant displacement concept of possession, involving spirit control
of the body and the spirit’s dominance of the personal sense of agency of the host,
may reflect our innate psychology and adaptive cognitive structures for processing
information about others’ minds. The psychological effects of dissociation caused by
social, psychological, and physical assaults on the individual may dispose them to view
their experience of possession as involving the displacement of their sense of agency
by an external force.
Amnesia continues to be an important issue in understanding the nature of pos-
session. Some question a causal association of possession with amnesia, pointing to
biases for such reports in the cultural expectations of amnesia. Amnesia is considered
evidence of divine incorporation in many religions, while those reporting memory
for the possession episode risk having the authenticity of their experience questioned.
In some cases where amnesia is preferred, experienced mediums may nonetheless
privately confide to others their conscious mediumship and may even consider it to be
a more advanced form of possession. In other mediumistic practices, the displacement
10 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION

descriptions of possession experiences offered by members contrast with the teachings

they receive about spirit incorporation that emphasize a conscious fusion with the spirit.
Buhrman (1997) found that, while most mediums professed amnesia in relation
to their communication during possession, others attested to experiences incon-
sistent with the strict definition of amnesia, for example, an inner experience and
stream-of-conscious awareness that the medium remembered afterwards. This inner
awareness included partial memories and spiritual travels while their bodies were com-
municating with the audience present in the physical world. Their dissociation from
the physical body, which involved loss of audition, speech, speaking, and sensation,
was simultaneous with a fully conscious internal experience of intuitions, emotional
reactions, and religious experiences. Nonetheless, other mediums, once they entered
into the mediumistic state, experienced no awareness of the external world or of their
own speech or bodies and no memory of the spirit communications that had taken
place through their bodies.
Using a comparative study with yogic meditation states, Buhrman (1997) concluded
that amnesiac meditation states described by yogis involved inner experiences indistin-
guishable from those reported by possessed mediums. The yogis manifested the entrain-
ment of alpha and theta waves, which slowed to a dominant delta pattern typical of sleep
but without other indications of sleep. Experiential reports indicated that they were not
sleeping and experienced no notable alterations of consciousness but that they lacked
any memory of the experience and felt a total lack of thoughts, body sensations, and
other external stimuli following the induction period. Like mediums, yogis may have
amnesiac experiences, during which there is an absence of sensory awareness, of the
physical sensation of body movement, and of memory of what transpired during their
special states, because they practice withdrawal of awareness from sensory processes
and perceptual objects.

Altered consciousness and human nature

Shamans, mediums, and other shamanistic healers such as mystics and yogis share
features in their engagement with ritual alterations of consciousness. These practices
are institutionalized in virtually all societies, reflecting a cultural universal derived
from human biology. The various forms of alteration of consciousness found around
the world often coalesce around common patterns expressed in OBE, possession, and
a variety of common meditative experiences of void, bliss, union with the cosmos, and
so on. The similarity in these forms across time and cultures points to their formative
structures in human biology.
Biogenetic structural models of the alteration of consciousness offer explanations
of these phenomena in terms of extreme activation and/or deactivation of the two
divisions of the autonomic nervous system and the serotonin, dopamine, and endo-
cannabinoid neural transmission systems (Winkelman 2010, 2014). Some mystical
experiences involving extreme relaxation reflect hyperactivation of the parasympathetic
nervous system, while experiences of ecstasy and boundless energy reflect the extreme
activation of the sympathetic nervous system. A variety of shamanistic practices
 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION 11

such as dancing, excessive drumming and singing, and fasting have direct effects on
neurotransmitter systems and specifically elicit slower alpha and theta brain waves.
These and other commonalities in ritual alterations of consciousness reflect a
biological response that Winkelman (2010) calls the integrative mode of conscious-
ness. This natural response of the brain, manifested in a predominance of alpha
and especially theta brain waves, is produced by a variety of agents and activities
that activate the serotonergic circuitry linking the emotional and behavioral levels
of the brain. Synchronous and coherent slow brain-wave discharges are elicited by
many agents and activities, including most classes of drugs, a variety of physiological
imbalances, and activities such as drumming, chanting, dancing, fasting, sensory
overload, and meditation. This activation of serotonergic circuits produces coherent
slow-wave discharges in the theta and alpha range that synchronize the frontal cortex
with brain waves originating in areas called the paleomammalian and reptilian brains.
These effects on the brain are typified by the action of psychedelic drugs that interrupt
control of the cortico-striato-thalamocortical loops that link the lower brain structures’
sensory gating systems with the receptor systems located in the frontal brain. The
interruption of these loops interferes with the sensory screening processes, permitting
a flood of information that overwhelms the frontal areas of the brain.
With the saturation of the serotonin system, its inhibition functions are released,
allowing for the manifestations of the dopamine system. Previc (2009) has characterized
shamanistic experiences as reflecting functions of the dopaminergic mind, exempli-
fied in our ability to engage in extrapersonal cognition. Dopamine functions to process
information regarding events distal in space and time from the physical body and activ-
ities of spatial and temporal abstraction involved in understanding causal relationships,
and in the pursuit of goal-directed responses. Previc attributes these human capacities
to an expansion of the dopamine system across evolution.
The qualities of these ancient brain strata help to explain the universality of shaman-
istic practices and the nature of these alterations of consciousness and their role in
healing. Shamanism reflects ancient human adaptations for social and psychological
integration and adjustments in the psychophysiological dynamics of consciousness.
These alterations of consciousness are central to healing practices that are found
worldwide today. These functions of shamanistic potentials have remained vibrant in
the modern world.
The dynamics of the alteration of consciousness changed with the emergence of polit-
ically integrated societies, leading to the emergence of priests and possession traditions.
These social changes also led to the demise of the original forms of shamanism: its
transformation into practices manifested in the mystical, meditative, and mediumistic
traditions and, finally, its demise as priesthoods demonized its survivals as witchcraft
and eradicated the shamanic remnants.

SEE ALSO: Addiction; Animism; Brain and Culture; Cognition; Cognition and
Emotion; Consciousness; Consciousness, Altered States of; Ethnomedicine; Evolu-
tionary Psychology; Global Mental Health; Hunter-Gatherer Cosmologies; Initiation;
Mind; Personhood, Self, and Individual; Pilgrimage; Placebo; Religion and Cognition;
Religion, Health, and Wellbeing; Ritual; Rock Art, Paleolithic and Hunter-Gatherer;
12 S HA MA NI SM A ND P OSSESSION

Sacred Ecology; Shintoism; Siberian Cosmologies; Spirit Possession; Totemism;

Voodoo/Vodou; Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Bourguignon, Erika, ed. 1973. Religion, Altered States of Consciousness and Social Change.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
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