The Rhizome and the Great Goddess: New Frontiers in the Study of Shamanism, Cosmos and Environment

In indigenous cultures and religions, all metamorphic experiences, the encounters with animal, plants or spirits, and therianthropic dreams, which form a sort of trait d’union between the human dimension and what can be defined as a kind of shamanic eco-cosmology, are perhaps the highest point of the expression of the imaginaries. This seems plausible particularly because indigenous narratives reveal epistemological realities, specific ontologies and concrete experiences of life lived in worlds that until recently were the least ‘contaminated’ on the planet. These experiences, which first ethnographers defined as nothing more than hallucinatory images or projections of a fervent mental imagination, are today understood as the essential structure of indigenous perspectives on the cosmos and certainly as foundational aspects of both an internal/spiritual and external/empirical knowledge of a culture and of a way of being. This article explores these topics according to the theoretical approach of shamanic studies and partnership studies by adducing some case studies related to the culture of indigenous communities in South Asia.