Mindscapes And Altered Realities Of The Ancient World

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Dance of the Shaman

Mindscapes And Altered Realities Of The Ancient World

From Australia to Alaska, and from South America to Europe, ancient cultures responded to their environments and developed particular belief systems to interpret reality. Although all of them inhabited the same globe and looked up at the same sky, there are technical differences in how ancient people interpreted their world, its place in the universe, and their place within it.

Ecuador Shaman entering an alternative reality ( Ammit/ Adobe Stock)

Ecuador Shaman entering an alternative reality ( Ammit/ Adobe Stock)

Reality can encapsulate endless interpretations, but stripping away all the flowery expletives, the word describes the state of things as they actually exist, or are, rather than an idealistic concept of how and why things should work the way they do. Over time reality has been described as levels of interaction and each perceived level involves a range of different things, with differing physical and non-physical properties. Naturally, for thousands of years, people regarded the soil as a conceptual base-line level of reality, with people at the next intermediate level, and the sky at the highest level. Western philosophers created abstract concepts about levels of reality and according to a 2010-article by John Perry, Levels of Reality, modern philosophers “depress the mysterious, leaving God and the angels aside from perceptions of reality”. However, ancient humans interacted with alternative phenomena via a range of spiritual tools and artifacts.


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