Observations placeholder
Reichel-Dolmatoff - South American sex magic
Identifier
000285
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Although the Desana Indians in South America are better known for their use of drugs, there is also a considerable reliance on sex based techniques as well. One gets the impression at times that drugs are a route of last resort for those who are unable to go the sex route.
For a society that is generally very open, there is a strange use of coded language when referring to anything to do with sex, but it seems that the coding is to endow the sex act with the degree of mysticism and solemnity it deserves – to elevate it from simply a search for personal pleasure into a ‘holy’ experience.
The Desana use the word to ‘drown’ to describe the sensations experienced during sexual intercourse – drowning, sinking into a coma [the little death] confounding oneself and being ‘saturated’ are all alternative ways of describing the feelings of making love.
In the following hilariously academic description, we have an anthropologist who obviously has no idea what making love means, attempting to describe the effects…..
Laugh! My God I nearly cried. His poor wife [yes he did have one].
A description of the experience
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff – The Shaman and the Jaguar
During coitus, the shaman drowns and sees visions; the act is described as a state of intoxication (niarore) of drunkenness, a state of rapture in which anxiety and bliss combine and transport the male into another dimension of physical and spiritual consciousness … to the Tukano, this close association between sex and hallucinatory trance is quite natural….