Title The jaguar within : shamanic trance in ancient Central and South American art / Rebecca R. Stone

Published Austin : University of Texas Press, ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 229 pages) : illustrations Series The Linda Schele series in Maya and Pre-Columbian studies Linda Schele series in Maya and pre-Columbian studies. 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 ContinuumChapter 8. Shamanic Embodiment in Ancient Central Andean Art II: Toward the Animal End and Beyond the Flux Continuum; Conclusion; Notes; Works Cited; Index Summary An important new way of viewing the prehistoric art of the Americas, The Jaguar Within demonstrates that understanding a work of art's connection with shamanic trance can lead to an appreciation of it as an extremely creative solution to the inherent challenge of giving material form to nonmaterial realities and states of being. 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 Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject Indian art -- Costa Rica Indian art -- Andes Region Indians of Central America -- Costa Rica -- Rites and ceremonies Indians of South America -- Andes Region -- Rites and ceremonies Shamanism -- Costa Rica Shamanism -- Andes Region Shamanism in art. Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience -- Costa Rica Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience -- Andes Region ART -- History -- Prehistoric & Primitive. SOCIAL SCIENCE / General Shamanism in art Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience Indian art Indians of Central America -- Rites and ceremonies Indians of South America -- Rites and ceremonies Shamanism Archeologische vondsten. Sjamanisme. Andes Region Costa Rica Andes-landen. Costa Rica. Form Electronic book LC no. 2011002613 ISBN 9780292734876 0292734875

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