Tasting the Sweetness of Death: A timeless morality in dark shamanism?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-04-28

Kanaima shamans gain shamanic power by mutilating, killing, and, when the contents of the putrefying stomach of their victim taste sweet, using the dismembered body parts as talismans to access the spirits. A dark deed in the shadows of shamanic literature. Perhaps too often, shamanism is considered positive; the shaman gaining power from benevolent spirits to help and heal her community. The popularity of shamanic interpretation frequently rests on these tenants, influencing our views, but belying the reality of much traditional shamanic practice. What lens do we use when we identify similar practice emerging from the prehistoric mind-set? Are their ‘shamanic’ rituals full of light or is there a darkness we are missing? Can we be sure that the dead were always ‘honoured’ in the past and given due reverence by the living; people curating body parts as a means of keeping ‘ancestral’ influence close? Or, like the Kanaima, was the relationship darker, with the living manipulating the dead for their own means and ends; tasting the sweetness of death with a morality we would find hard to stomach, putrefying or not? 

Mike Williams (Brycheiniog Journal)