PART FIVE

The Observers Take Part

Historian of religions Mircea Eliade declared in his classic work on shamanism: “Narcotics are only a vulgar substitute for ‘pure’ trance. . . . [T]he use of intoxicants (alcohol, tobacco, etc.) is a recent innovation and points to a decadence in shamanic technique. Narcotic intoxication is called on to provide an imitation of a state that the shaman is no longer capable of attaining otherwise.” Scholars debated this point for decades. Many saw a personal bias in Eliade’s use of the term decadence. They also criticized him for lumping all inebriants under the term narcotics and for failing to recognize the central role of hallucinogens in many forms of shamanism. Anthropologist Peter Furst said that Eliade told him in the last years of his life that he had “discarded his view of the use of hallucinogenic plants as ‘degeneration’ of the shamanic techniques of ecstasy.”

Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski developed the method of “participant observation” in the 1910’s, but it was not until decades later that anthropologists and ethnographers began using this method to study shamans by actively participating in their sessions.

However, academic observers did not hurry to participate in shamanic ordeals such as extended fasts in nature. It seems they preferred to try the more direct route of the hallucinogenic plants used by certain shamans, particularly in Central and South America. Eating acrid mushrooms or drinking a bitter brew did not require too much self-sacrifice. But the reports they wrote deal mostly with observing oneself among shamans, rather than observing shamans. It does not suffice to take plant hallucinogens to understand shamans.

Nevertheless, western observers who participated in shamanic sessions involving hallucinogenic plants found that they could have experiences similar to those described by shamans. Gordon Wasson experienced flying out of his body. Barbara Myerhoff saw the axis mundi. Michael Harner felt he was dying and learned about life from giant reptilian creatures.

This led observers to take shamans more seriously.