The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby

Author:Jeremy Narby
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK, my approach has consisted of translating the shamanism of ayahuasqueros to make it understandable to a Western audience. I believe it is in the interest of Amazonia’s indigenous people that their knowledge be understood in Western terms, because the world is currently governed by Western values and institutions. For instance, it was not until Western countries realized that it was in their own interest to protect tropical forests that it became possible to find the funds to demarcate the territories of the indigenous people living there. Prior to that, most territorial claims, formulated in terms of the indigenous people’s own interests, led to nothing.

My conclusion can be accused of reductionism, as I end up presenting in mainly biological terms practices that simultaneously combine music, cosmology, hallucinations, medicine, botany, and psychology, among others.2 My interpretation, focusing on molecular biology, certainly distorts shamanism’s multidimensionality, but it at least attempts to bring together a number of compartmentalized disciplines, from mythology to neurology through anthropology and botany. I do not mean that shamanism is equivalent to molecular biology, but that for us fragmented Westerners, molecular biology is the most fruitful approach to the holistic reality of shamanism, which has become so unfamiliar to us.

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