The Jaguar Within

The Jaguar Within
Author: Rebecca R. Stone
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2012-09-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292749503


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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.


The Jaguar Within
Language: en
Pages: 244
Authors: Rebecca R. Stone
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-09-21 - Publisher: University of Texas Press

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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 shamani
Under the Jaguar Sun
Language: en
Pages: 100
Authors: Italo Calvino
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 1988 - Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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One of Italy's greatest and most popular writers offers three witty, fantastical stories, each dominated by one of three senses--taste, hearing, or smell.
Jaguar in the Body, Butterfly in the Heart
Language: en
Pages: 292
Authors: Ya'Acov Khan
Categories: Body, Mind & Spirit
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-06-06 - Publisher: Hay House, Inc

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‘Shaman’, meaning ‘intermediary between spirit and the natural world’, has become a much overused word in the West. It’s not a job title one can give
Defending the Land of the Jaguar
Language: en
Pages: 343
Authors: Lane Simonian
Categories: Nature
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-07-05 - Publisher: University of Texas Press

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Mexican conservationists have sometimes observed that it is difficult to find a country less interested in the conservation of its natural resources than is Mex
Jaguar
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Alan Rabinowitz
Categories: Nature
Type: BOOK - Published: 2000-02-02 - Publisher: Island Press

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In 1983, zoologist Alan Rabinowitz ventured into the rain forest of Belize, determined to study the little-known jaguar in its natural habitat and to establish