Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The sophisticated Indus valley culture flourished for over 700 years before inexplicably abandoning their cities to return to ways more pastoral, even in the face of great regional climatic changes. Many scholars have made attempts to account for this abandonment, citing varying factors, yet these people were some of the most adaptable communities of their time and seemingly the least susceptible to collapse. Thus the effects that the transposition of earlier shamanistic beliefs and practices had on the latter cultural cosmography could go some way to explaining this reversion to the pastoral lifestyle. Hence a framework will be outlined for the presence of shamanism and folk magic within the culture of the earliest known people in the region, those of Mehrgarh, Balochistan. Connections explored between their shamanistic relationship with nature, the spirits that occupied the higher realms in these regions and perception of time and space. Giving an overview of some uses of folk magic and shamanism within this context allows for the elucidation of advantages these practices would have afforded them, hence diminished, during their oppidan existence. The continuum this talk promotes is one that begins with exploration of folk magic and the presence of shamanistic practices to attain alternate states of consciousness. The decline of culture through global meteorological and botanical changes and how a newly developed methodology to access higher plains of consciousness became a catalyst for the reversion, from their more materialistically-complex societies in favour of reconnecting with folk magic, shamanism and Nature herself.