Shamanism: Spiritual Healing In The Rave Subculture Analysis

The essay that I chose was Technoshamanism: Spiritual healing in the rave subculture. This essay was about how raves can be a spiritual experience to certain people. I thought that his article was very interesting as I am an anthropology student. I thought it was nice that he brought in other anthropologists that are experts in Shamanism to help him with this essay. The basic idea of this essay is that the main reason that people go to raves is because, these people that go to these raves believes that they have some sort of spiritual experience. I thought it was interesting how one man was recorded saying that when he went to a rave he became a puma and then an eagle. Much like the author was saying it is as if they are trying to emulate ancient tribal cultures like the Bushmen in Africa. The DJ acts as a Shaman, while the music acts as the drum beats that are used in rituals with the Bushmen in Africa. While, a lot of the spiritual encounters take place at Raves, are helped along with the drug called ecstasy, taking said drug is completely optional, and is not needed for a spiritual encounter to happen. Another thing about this essay that I thought was interesting
Raves is one of the ways that youth can indeed have their own spaces to express themselves. It was interesting to read about how raves can immolate tribal cultures through the music, drugs, and dance. I believe that this tells us a lot about American culture today. American culture today I have noticed is always looking back to the past in order to gain inspiration about how to make our country better. While this article was written back in the 90’s, I notice even today that young people take influence from the past in their subculture. A lot of video games for example like Assassin’s Creed III takes place in the American Revolution. A few years ago I myself wore feathers in my hair as it was part of a trend at the