Abstract
This article offers an intercultural interpretation of the sense of the sacred in the practice of yage shamanism in Colombia. This practice is based on the ritual use of a plant medicine which for centuries has been the basis of the medical, spiritual and cultural systems of indigenous peoples of the Amazon piedmont in Colombia, Ecuador and Perú. Since the 1990s, this practice has expanded to urban areas of Colombia and other countries. After a short introduction, I develop my interpretation of yage shamanism in three stages: first, I explore some narratives of the origin of yage, showing how it is lived and understood as a source of knowledge and the foundational element of indigenous cultures. Second, I attempt a phenomenological analysis of yage shamanic experience, presenting it as a form of spiritual experience. Finally, I briefly address the issue of whether or not this form of experience is valid.
Highlights
More than twenty years ago I started a dialogue with some traditional indigenous healers from the Andean-Amazonian Piedmont of Colombia, which has been the tacit and permanent drive of my philosophical search up to the present
What does entering into dialogue mean? How is it possible to understand the other and, more importantly, to understand something with the other? What should be the results of this dialogical understanding and how should it be conducted? These are central questions for intercultural hermeneutics
I will attempt to apply the philosophical principles of intercultural hermeneutics into an interpretation of the ways in which the sense of the sacred is experienced and understood in traditional Amazon medicine
Summary
More than twenty years ago I started a dialogue with some traditional indigenous healers from the Andean-Amazonian Piedmont of Colombia, which has been the tacit and permanent drive of my philosophical search up to the present. I am going to refer to a particular configuration of yage practice that has emerged since the 1990s in Colombia, when indigenous Taitas started to visit urban areas and people from the cities started to visit indigenous communities, searching for their medicine This configuration is itself an intercultural reconstruction of previous shamanic traditions, which, has implied the reinterpretation of the practice and the incorporation of different elements and notions coming from the religious and cultural elements available in a growing “globalized” society.. Our dialogue has taken place in different places, including his current home in Guarne and many different locations to which I have had the fortune to accompany him
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