Some Announcements

• The Spring 2008 meeting of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness will take place at the Yale Divinity School from March 19-23, 2008. The theme of the conference, which is being co-sponsored by the Yale Divinity School's Initiative in Religion, Science, and Technology, will be Consciousness and Spirit. You can take a look at the conference program here. There will be scores of presentations; among the many that might be of interest to readers of this blog are Evgenia Fotiou, Transcendental experiences with ayahuasca among western users; Stanley Krippner and Adam Rock, Realism and the shaman’s cosmos; Maria Glowacka, Potentiality or 'spirit': an ethno-linguistic interpretation of Hopi ontology; and Malte Chr. Lyneborg, Philosophy of perception, sacred places, and spirit worlds.


• The Fourth Annual Conference on Shamanism and Shamanic Practice, sponsored by the Society for Shamanic Practitioners, will be held in Sante Fe, New Mexico, on May 15-18, 2008. Among the preconference workshops will be two of special interest — Enrique Flores, Herlinda Fernandez, Jose Luis Stevens, and Lena Stevens, Healing traditions of the Shipibo, followed by a presentation of a documentary film by Anna Stevens, Woven songs of the Amazon. Additional presentations that might be of interest include Carol Proudfoot-Edgar, Tom Cowan, and Cecile Carson, Shamanism without borders; Stanley Krippner and Sidian Morning Star, Shamanic ecology; and David Cumes, Shamans and the dream time.


• The very first issue of The Journal of Shamanic Practice: Exploring Traditional and Contemporary Shamanism has been published. The issue contains an editorial by Barbara Tedlock, a guest editorial by Jeanne Achterberg, essays and articles by such experts as Dennis Tedlock and Hank Wesselman, and Marilyn Walker's outstanding interview with Anai, a Tsaatan shaman of the Mongolian taiga. The journal is free to members of the Society for Shamanic Practitioners.

And here are two important events taking place this summer in Iquitos, Peru.

• Convergence 2008, to be held in Iquitos on July 10 through July 18, 2008, is intended to be an ayahuasca shamanism seminar, retreat, and visionary gathering — as the organizers put it, a little bit of Bioneers, a little bit of Burning Man. The Convergence will offer dialogues, lectures, indigenous art workshops, traditional indigenous and leading-edge music, visionary art exhibitions, and ayahuasca ceremonies. Among the presenters will be artist Pablo Amaringo, Shipibo shamans Guillermo Arévalo and Maria Valera, visionary artist Eric Avondo, anthropologist Jeremy Narby, and many others.


• The Fourth Amazonian Shamanism Conference will be held in Iquitos on July 19 through July 27, 2008. The conference will be opened by Dennis Mckenna, and presenters will include artist Pablo Amaringo, filmmaker and director Jan Kounen, visionary artists Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffman, author Howard Charing, sound healer Richard Grossman, journalist Peter Gorman, and many others. There will be approximately fifteen indigenous and mestizo shamans giving presentations and offering evening ceremonies.