ABSTRACT Contemporary practices of tapping into the wisdom of ancestral trees are described through three entangled recent events lived within the context of Bantu practices in Cameroon. In the three instances, the steered or chance encounters with high potency trees were serendipitous telling moments which brought something new to the horizon. We explore how a transfer of vitality from trees to humans can enhance chances of vital enchantment or healing. Ultimately, we are interested in very real ways in which trees partake in human lives and largely surpass their reduction to objects or bioresources. We argue chaos theory and vegetal thinking provide ways to understand how these practices unfold. In this context and approach, plants are chaosmological and breathing mediums, and fieldwork is something done in the air in which we are suspended, open to the creation of novel bifurcating or textured paths that stem from a breath of chaos.
This paper examines the intimate relationship of affection, consumption, and ritual practice between humanity and mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe, focusing mainly on the Americas and Brazil. To this end, it uses reflections that present the American continent as a macroregion historically marked by transits, connections, and exchanges since pre‐Columbian times, and where there is significant access and also endemicity of the aforementioned fungal species with which human beings have carried out and carry out practices of mycophagy, mycophilia, and/or mycolatry. Bringing information that allows us to understand the historical importance of the psilocybe mushroom in the cultures of this continent and its growing presence in relations with humanity in Brazil, this article proposes to broaden the lens in a perspective that considers ritual, oracular, therapeutic, philosophical, scientific, aesthetic, and recreational experiences as ways of ritualizing and expressing affection with this species of the Fungi Kingdom, many of them inspired by Amerindian practices. Thus, this article considers and reflects on the importance of psilocybin culture in Brazil, concluding with observations regarding the cosmopolitical implications of the use of these mushrooms for various purposes in the country.
This study investigates the experiences of adult survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) and their relationship with domestic spaces through an ethnographic and philosophical lens. Survivors often perceive their homes as haunted sites, where traumatic memories persist and shape their present experiences. Drawing on hauntology and The Uncanny, the research explores how these spaces, once associated with trauma, are navigated and transformed by survivors through personalized rituals and storytelling. The ethnographic process allowed participants to verbalize their trauma, engage in purification practices, and reframe their narratives, offering insights into the spatial habituation of trauma. By integrating Ricoeur's concept of narrative time (1983) and Halbwachs' idea of collective memory (1950, 1992), the study highlights the transformative potential of shared narrative for both the individual survivors' recovery and the promotion of a shared awareness, in order to foster safer spaces both at the individual and collective level.
Death is the prerequisite of life, life the prerequisite of death, just like chaos and order, light and shadow, joy and despair, love and grief, are each other's premises. When life breaks into pieces, despair may ensue, but darkness offers possibilities to tap into the light. The use of experiential somatic practices and creative expressions can reach deep and help illuminate conscious and unconscious processes, shedding light onto deeply rooted beliefs, emotions, and longings. This paper argues for the potential of exploring experiential somatic and creative work and expressions using arts-based research methods, facilitating the exploration of the complexities of experiential intra- and inter-subjective embodied spaces and processes in healing. Through an auto-ethnographic and a/r/tographic approach, the current exploration delves into the meaning of experiential somatic work and creative expressions, combined with witnessing, for dealing with challenging life events. It tentatively explores the potential of such work to bring hope where there is despair and life where there is death, which can be befriended. Such work can help move through suppression and closedness towards expansion and openness, promoting the appreciation of every breath and what it means to be in a physical body, with its human messiness and divine perfection. This paper shows that innovative research approaches can provide insight into complex experiential dimensions of somatic and creative work in supporting wellbeing.
How should we theorize Sufi ethics when the practice of zikr (remembrance) that leads to spiritual enlightenment (tazkiyya) might also bring one to the brink of majzubiyat (madness)? What forms of regulation or restraint are imagined or enacted by practitioners to prevent spiritual boundlessness from perverting into its underside of paralysis (faalij)? Drawing on three ethnographic scenes among practitioners of the Naqshbandia Awaisia Sufi order in Pakistan, I examine zikr as a practice that cultivates states of divine awareness and consciousness while simultaneously exposing practitioners to the risk of ethical and experiential breakdown. I show how the disciplinary techniques meant to refine the nafs (base soul) are also feared to interrupt the embodied, relational, and ethical capacities through which practitioners sustain presence in social and moral life. This tension unsettles an ethical horizon of "perfectibility", understood as cumulative refinement through discipline, and instead foregrounds a creative and at times transgressive labor of modulating devotional intensity so that movement toward God does not pervert into estrangement from both God and the world. I argue that through this labor ethical life comes to be organized by the improvisational and oscillatory temporality of protective interruptions that attend to the vicissitudes of the nafs, rather than by the temporality of habituation and incremental refinement.
Addiction recovery is frequently interpreted through biomedical or punitive frameworks that overlook its cultural, ritual, and pedagogical dimensions. This article offers a theoretical and interpretive analysis of peer-led, meeting-based recovery communities in North America, particularly those organized around mutual-aid traditions such as Alcoholics Anonymous and related social-model practices. It argues that these settings function as ritual pedagogies, patterned systems of learning and moral practice through which participants reconstruct identity over time. Drawing on anthropological theories of ritual and liminality alongside perspectives from adult learning, recovery meetings are examined as environments of recurring liminality rather than singular rites of passage. While the familiar narrative sequence of what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now parallels classic tripartite models, recovery does not reliably culminate in stable incorporation. Instead, participants often move through cycles of instability, relapse and return. Within this framework, testimony, understood as structured first-person narrative sharing, functions as a central practice; sponsorship operates through relational mentorship; and shared texts and meeting formats serve as portable curricula that stabilize participation across time and space. These processes are sustained through a structural ethics of care that enables repeated reentry and ongoing transformation.
As the state of Florida continues to foster its reputation as a conservative political bastion, questions arise about women's experiences in the state-especially in spiritual, religious, and consciousness contexts. Drawing from both feminist anthropology and the anthropology of consciousness frameworks, "Mediumship in the Free State of Florida" discusses women's experiences in the practice of mediumship. This paper examines how the mediumship experience is interpreted by feminist perspectives, if women's mediumship experiences and work differ from men's, and discusses factors in central Florida that influence the work and experience of female mediums. These issues were addressed in surveys and interviews with mediums throughout Florida, and several areas of interest to the feminist study of consciousness were revealed. This paper discusses how Florida is beneficial to mediums and how mediumship highlights key feminist themes in religious and spiritual experiences for women.
If we are to accept the data from the field of parapsychology that telepathically a person, particularly unconsciously, may communicate with another person and that psychokinesis exists, we are confronted with the possibility that a person may aggressively hurt another through psychic means. This possibility has been anathema in the field of parapsychology, despite the fact that some parapsychologists have suggested it, and despite the fact that it may explain the resistance to accepting parapsychological data in the scientific community. Anthropologists are more than familiar with this idea as it is so often an intrinsic part of indigenous psychology and yet anthropologists too have been reluctant to accept that there may be a kernel of truth to the belief that one person can through psychological rather than physical means administer a "whammy" on another. The author explores this concept, noting how often the idea is associated with oral aggression in indigenous culture and how this too may reveal why we are so reluctant to entertain the concept.
Modern research has suggested that almost all human behavior occurs with an interaction between conscious and unconscious processes. However, the exact degree and specifics of that association are still a matter of debate. This article draws attention to an additional domain of consciousness related to that particular conversation that might be beneficial in resolving some of the disagreements that exist. Salient implications can be derived from examining cases of observed somatic continuance, referring to perceived out-of-body experiences in which the dissociated, consciously aware ego has the impression of watching as an observer while the physical body simultaneously continues to seemingly function on its own in amazing ways. A discussion concerning such cases suggests that the unconscious might be powerful enough to function in normalcy without conscious input in the moment. That conscious awareness has the sufficient power to alter and control some aspects of unconscious causation of behavior when not dissociated, and that the unconscious can take over control of human behavior during threats to life or social standing that are associated with various forms of dissociation. These insights can have important ramifications for consciousness studies while possibly helping us better understand the relevance of the unconscious in regard to human behavior.
This article attempts to complicate the mythology of a compound in a state of becoming. I will trace lightly its origins as a cultural disruptor and how I am implicated in this imperative. Introducing you to 3-MMC will require multiple modes of storytelling and taking of liberties, drawing on literature reviews, practice-based research, prose, patent documents, hearsay and Facebook posts. Connecting dots from powder to plant and back, I will describe how I am situated as a provider of substance-assisted therapies, within the chaotic landscape of the "Psychedelic Renaissance," where a methodology has emerged through ongoing co-research partnerships, exploring the therapeutic possibilities of this molecule. What follows is a prismatic telling of the story of the cathinone 3-MMC (methylmethcathinone). I offer some pieces of the story that are known to me, and some that exist formally. There is always more to the story, of course, and much sandwiched between the lines.
In Toronto, raves arise across large nightclubs, DIY venues and outdoors, despite changing regulations that have further arranged and narrowed their possibility in the past 4 years. Following a rave in Toronto, this work explores ways that potentialities and affects emerge in a single night, through my entry of taking part in dancing and tearing down materials. In recent anthropological works on raves, authors tend to highlight altered states and how transformative experiences are intentionally prepared. Yet there is space to discuss surprises and improvization throughout a night, questioning intention and transformation as a given. Informed by a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework, I suggest that raves can create affects in indeterminate ways while still attending to excess or incoherency. In this vein, I conceptualize affects in relation to chaos: as intensities in indeterminate becomings, capable of taking on their own rhythms and cutting across bodies and sensations. Drawing from journal notes of the rave, I write through points of gaps, awkwardness, and incoherencies that follow along stories of coming together and coming undone in broader rhythms. Tactile and sonorous experiences of attaching cables or swaying my neck to metallic snares come up against moments I acknowledge are ineffable, or that I cannot be attentive to. A sound may resonate with a rise in intensity, or be unnoticed, or change entirely in timbre. In exploring indeterminacy, I recall moments of catching a breath in the crowd, or when the dancefloor and music seem to exhale passingly into step or chaotic stupor. Through my positioning in equipment disassembly and dancing in a night, this work hopes to offer an unsettling approach.
In the hospital, the transition from fighting for life to preparing for death involves not only a shift in medical repertoires but also a profound transformation in temporal experience. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Canadian intensive care unit, this article examines how the tempo of care, its rhythms, urgencies, and pauses shapes consciousness at the threshold of death. I follow Suzanne, a patient whose cardiac arrhythmia brought her care team to an urgent crossroads, where the frantic pace of acute care collapsed into the slower movements of palliative preparation. Building on previous work identifying the legal, curing, and care repertoires guiding end-of-life decisions, I argue that tempo functions as a fourth dimension modulating how these repertoires are deployed and experienced. When urgency drops, time becomes palpable: thickening around bodies, words, and gestures revealing dying as not merely a biological event but a choreographed, intersubjective accomplishment collectively sensed, negotiated, and enacted.
This account explores how circumstances verging on the other-worldly alter human perception and consciousness in a fieldwork situation. The case study involves an archaeological field survey team stranded for a time on a remote Lapland mountain. By applying the method of weirding, drawing inspiration from the narrative force of weird fiction, we examine how the team interacted with their decrepit shelter-a cabin teeming with fungal life amidst the terrestrial alien entity of the mountain. The experimental paper applies reflexive, autoethnographic writing in conceptualizing the experience of the unusual circumstances, considering what such otherworldly episodes can reveal about human engagement with the unfamiliar.
This paper examines the intimate relationship of affection, consumption, and ritual practice between humanity and mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe, focusing mainly on the Americas and Brazil. To this end, it uses reflections that present the American continent as a macroregion historically marked by transits, connections, and exchanges since pre-Columbian times, and where there is significant access and also endemicity of the aforementioned fungal species with which human beings have carried out and carry out practices of mycophagy, mycophilia, and/or mycolatry. Bringing information that allows us to understand the historical importance of the psilocybe mushroom in the cultures of this continent and its growing presence in relations with humanity in Brazil, this article proposes to broaden the lens in a perspective that considers ritual, oracular, therapeutic, philosophical, scientific, aesthetic, and recreational experiences as ways of ritualizing and expressing affection with this species of the Fungi Kingdom, many of them inspired by Amerindian practices. Thus, this article considers and reflects on the importance of psilocybin culture in Brazil, concluding with observations regarding the cosmopolitical implications of the use of these mushrooms for various purposes in the country.
Based on ethnographic research, this paper describes select views and experiences of a Sufi schoolteacher pressured at work into silence about her interpretation of Islam. At Tafs & imacr;r Islamic Academy (TIA), unity was broadly construed as achieved through conformity to mainstream Sunni belief and practice. Salihah, one of its teachers and a practicing Sufi, portrayed unity as an all-encompassing quality of Allah, realizable not through the elimination of external diversity but via annihilation of ego. Her pantheism-inflected interpretation of tawhid (God's oneness), positing God as "the only one that exists," was especially deviant. I frame her mystical beliefs as ideational artifacts that helped tacitly facilitate an altered state of consciousness within the classroom, transforming a potentially fruitless interpersonal conflict into an opportunity for spiritual growth. This supports the more general claim that Salihah was not entirely hindered by silence from practicing her faith at Tafs & imacr;r, and may have benefited from it.
The article argues that current discussions on epistemic injustice, centered around the distinction between testimonial and hermeneutic types of injustice, cannot adequately deal with the injustice done to Indigenous epistemology. This happens primarily because of the significant difference in the way phenomena like self, mind, and knowledge are understood in Indigenous life. After discussing the salient features of Indigenous life, the article points out how the understanding of self, mind, and knowledge is interdependent in both Indigenous and Modern ways. Indigenous epistemology is primarily a matter of knowing and oriented towards a process rather than knowledge as a product. Treating knowing rather than knowledge as the basic epistemological category is not something that the Modern consciousness can do easily, given its tendency to find identity and satisfaction in the accumulation of knowledge. Thus, the article attempts to bring out the formidable difficulty in doing justice to the Indigenous ways of knowing by drawing attention to the need to employ a radically different kind of attention and embrace a reality different from the usual one.
This article questions the moral and causal certainties attributed to the clinical assumptions of the breath of chaos. Instead of seeing chaos as an exceptional intruder that causes problems in health, I suggest that chaos underlines the changing conditions of health and it's an intrinsic part of breathing and everyday life. I discuss the five-finger breathing as a therapeutic technique to cope with the shortness of breath in panic attacks. I propose that the practice makes chaos an ineluctable prompt that evokes therapeutic anchoring, which helps with the navigation of life. Moving away from the clinical assessments, I adopt the approach of participant experience to present a medical anthropological analysis of the effectiveness of five-finger breathing as practised in a mental health recovery group in Southeast England.
That night that he agreed to our suggestion that we accompany him outside, for the whole night or until the overflow has passed, M seemed to be in direct contact with all the layers of astronomy, inhabiting all temporalities simultaneously. Outside, lying/sitting on the picnic table, in the pitch-black darkness of the night in the woods, under a few stars, he explained to us why we are still, always, in the Big Bang. He made noises of speed, gestured with his arms; his face was tender and laughing. He wanted us to understand; he used all his senses, smoking cigarette after cigarette.The picnic table we're sitting on was made in a "mental health" day center by the same people who made the bench that I sometimes hang around, inscribed: "Diff & eacute;rant des autres", which translate as "Differant from the others." I don't believe, though I'm not certain, that the person who wrote it did so with reference to Derridean diff & eacute;rance. But that's the idea that immediately struck me, like a door opening onto the possibilities that haunt the bench, those who made it, those who will sit on it, those who will ignore it, those who do ignore it. This sentence on a bench, which makes an unintentional reference to philosophy, suddenly reveals: power relations, diffractions, gaps, injustices, poetry, beauty, and the unalterable impossibility of sameness.Taking the form of a fragmented narrative, this article proposes an investigation into the atmospheres surrounding lived experiences with people who are said to "live with mental health disorders", proceeding through literary-terrestrial back-and-forths between their breath and the rigidity of our capacity to receive them.
Psychedelic research has opened unexpected avenues for advocacy. This paper explores the intersection of advocacy and an ethnographic study on psychedelic integration in the Southeast United States. Mental health professionals aim to make information about the safe use of psychedelics more accessible, even in a legal climate where these substances are illegal and enforcement has historically targeted people of color. This case study examines the challenges of proposing a panel on psychedelic medicine for a university symposium on substance use and social justice. The panel sought to discuss how clinicians and scientists could collaborate with communities to use psychedelic therapies to address addiction and its underlying causes, such as racial trauma, in equitable and community-centered ways. However, resistance from organizers-due to concerns about the legal status of psychedelics and limited clinical trial data-highlighted the complexities of advocating for such discussions in academic settings. This paper explores how people from diverse communities "stand in the gap" together to challenge structural power imbalances and shift paradigms around these critical issues. It underscores the significance of knowledge politics in university spaces and the risk of tokenism in community-engaged research, calling for more inclusive, courageous, and equitable approaches to these conversations.
With disinformation rising at alarming rates, we are experiencing a crisis of truth. Our commodified culture, political establishment, and media industries generate and disseminate false information in myriad ways, creating a world where it is difficult to ascertain what is actually real. Interestingly, many of us desire and are delighted by deception when it occurs as theatrical magic. In this paper, we examine various deception techniques used by tricksters in the realm of disinformation and magical entertainment. While many similarities exist, we note the manner and context of deception techniques-and the symbolic meanings they create-provide a clear contrast between the way deception is operationalized. To that end, we argue that a thorough understanding of deceptive practices can improve our digital literacy as well as enhance our ability to enjoy moments of enchantment and wonder.
