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The Evolved Psychology of Psychedelic Set and Setting: Inferences Regarding the Roles of Shamanism and Entheogenic Ecopsychology

REVIEW

published: 23 February 2021

doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.619890

The Evolved Psychology of

Psychedelic Set and Setting:

Inferences Regarding the Roles

of Shamanism and Entheogenic

Ecopsychology

Michael James Winkelman *†

School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States

Edited by:

Matteo Politi,

University of Studies G. d’Annunzio

Chieti and Pescara, Italy

Reviewed by:

David Luke,

University of Greenwich,

United Kingdom

Attila Szabo,

University of Oslo, Norway

*Correspondence:

Michael James Winkelman

michaeljwinkelman@gmail.com

†Retired, Pirenópolis, Brazil

Specialty section:

This article was submitted to

Ethnopharmacology,

a section of the journal

Frontiers in Pharmacology

Received: 21 October 2020

Accepted: 14 January 2021

Published: 23 February 2021

Citation:

Winkelman MJ (2021) The Evolved

Psychology of Psychedelic Set and

Setting: Inferences Regarding the

Roles of Shamanism and

Entheogenic Ecopsychology.

Front. Pharmacol. 12:619890.

doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.619890

This review illustrates the relevance of shamanism and its evolution under effects of

psilocybin as a framework for identifying evolved aspects of psychedelic set and

setting. Effects of 5HT2 psychedelics on serotonin, stress adaptation, visual systems

and personality illustrate adaptive mechanisms through which psychedelics could have

enhanced hominin evolution as an environmental factor inﬂuencing selection for

features of our evolved psychology. Evolutionary psychology perspectives on ritual,

shamanism and psychedelics provides bases for inferences regarding psychedelics’

likely roles in hominin evolution as exogenous neurotransmitter sources through their

effects in selection for innate dispositions for psychedelic set and setting. Psychedelics

stimulate ancient brain structures and innate modular thought modules, especially self-

awareness, other awareness, “mind reading,” spatial and visual intelligences. The

integration of these innate modules are also core features of shamanism. Cross-cultural

research illustrates shamanism is an empirical phenomenon of foraging societies, with

its ancient basis in collective hominid displays, ritual alterations of consciousness, and

endogenous healing responses. Shamanic practices employed psychedelics and

manipulated extrapharmacological effects through stimulation of serotonin and

dopamine systems and augmenting processes of the reptilian and paleomammalian

brains. Differences between chimpanzee maximal displays and shamanic rituals reveal

a zone of proximal development in hominin evolution. The evolution of the mimetic

capacity for enactment, dance, music, and imitation provided central capacities

underlying shamanic performances. Other chimp-human differences in ritualized

behaviors are directly related to psychedelic effects and their integration of innate

modular thought processes. Psychedelics and other ritual alterations of consciousness

stimulate these and other innate responses such as soul ﬂight and death-and-rebirth

experiences. These ﬁndings provided bases for making inferences regarding

foundations of our evolved set, setting and psychology. Shamanic setting is

eminently communal with singing, drumming, dancing and dramatic displays. Innate

modular thought structures are prominent features of the set of shamanism,

exempliﬁed in animism, animal identities, perceptions of spirits, and psychological

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Evolved Psychology of Psychedelics

incorporation of spirit others. A shamanic-informed psychedelic therapy includes: a

preparatory set with practices such as sexual abstinence, fasting and dream

incubation; a set derived from innate modular cognitive capacities and their

integration expressed in a relational animistic worldview; a focus on internal imagery

manifesting a presentational intelligence; and spirit relations involving incorporation of

animals as personal powers. Psychedelic research and treatment can adopt this

shamanic biogenetic paradigm to optimize set, setting and ritual frameworks to

enhance psychedelic effects.

Keywords: extra-pharmacological effects, evolutionary psychology, innate modules, hominin evolution,

ecopsychology, shamanism, neurophenomenology, psilocybin

INTRODUCTION

Set normally refers to factors related to the person, idiosyncratic

personality dynamics, mood and expectations that inﬂuence

individual experience. Setting is concerned with the social

environment, including the broader cultural beliefs regarding

the substances and their effects, which contribute to the

experience. Set and setting have been considered personal and

social inﬂuences, respectively, and like ritual, are generally

considered to be relatively arbitrary, individual and cultural.

However, concepts of ritual, set and setting must include our

evolved dispositions that shape mood, personality, expectations

and experiences under the effects of psychedelics. Similarly,

setting features include not just cultural features, but also the

innate factors which contribute to certain kinds of experiences

through the neurophenomenological dynamics produced by

psychedelics (i.e., spirits, animal identities). This

neurophenomenological experiential dynamics is embodied in

the concept of entheogens, where these substances are

experienced as producing encounters with internal and

external spiritual entities.

There are features of optimal psychedelic ritual, set and setting

derived from of our evolved psychology. For example, most prefer

psychedelic sessions at night and would feel it strange to start a

ceremony at midday. Singing, drumming and dancing are

frequent aspects of psychedelic rituals, but not wrestling,

swimming or mountain climbing. Feeling compelled to sing a

song or heal is normal in psychedelic sessions but explaining a

mathematical solution or football strategy is not. Why?

The natural aspects of set and setting reﬂect an evolutionary

relationship between our evolved psychology and the effects of

psychedelics as exogenous analogues of neurotransmitters.

Consumption of mind-altering plants enhanced human

adaptations across evolution (Sullivan et al., 2008).

Evolutionary, ecological and ethology perspectives reveal a

multi-million-year relationship of humans with psilocybin-

containing fungi. Regionally speciﬁc psilocybin-containing

fungi are found in most ecozones (Guzmán et al., 1998),

indicating their presence as environmental inﬂuences that

affected hominin populations in all the major habitable

regions for millions of years. Deliberately seeking and

consuming plants for their bioactive properties is a hominid

trait attested to in wild chimpanzees’ consumption of dozens of

plants without nutritional value but with medicinal properties

(Krief et al., 2005; Forbey et al., 2009; Masi et al., 2012).

Chimpanzees’ intentional self-medication for diseases, wounds,

and bacterial infections indicates ancient hominins (uniquely

human ancestors) also practiced deliberate self-medication.

Given humans uniqueness in deliberate uses of psychoactive

plants, hominin evolution must have expanded these abilities,

and use of psychedelics is a clear example.

Psychedelics shaped human evolution as a signiﬁcant source

of serotonin analogues that enhanced active stress response

mechanisms. The 5 HT2 psychedelics (those that bind at the

serotonin receptors) stimulate 5-HT2AR, a serotonin receptor

characterized by enhanced plasticity that enables an active coping

strategy that addresses stress sources through changes in

perspective and behavior (Carhart-Harris and Nutt, 2017; also

see below), contributing to selection for qualities of human nature

and our evolved psychology. Use of psilocybin as exogenous

neurotransmitter analogues was eventually integrated within

collective rituals, which played an important role in

adaptations that facilitated individual and collective well-being.

This pre-modern use of psychedelics involved shamanism, a

cross-cultural pattern of ritual practices and beliefs that

reﬂects aspects of our evolved psychology (Winkelman, 2010a;

Winkelman, 2015a). Shamanism engaged activation of innate

cognitive processes and endogenous healing responses, which are

also effects of psychedelics.

The deep evolutionary roots of collective rituals reveal a

psychosocial dynamic that has characterized hominins for

millions of years (Winkelman, 2009; Winkelman, 2010a;

Winkelman, 2010b). The co-evolution of shamanism and

ritual ingestion of psilocybin-containing mushrooms shaped

our evolved psychology (Winkelman, 2013a), and

consequently the features that optimally access those set and

setting for entheogenic experience. Therefore, the principles of

shamanism provide important guidelines for optimizing the

modern applications of psychedelics to our evolved psychology.

But there is little recognition in pharmacology, psychiatry or

ethnopharmacology of the signiﬁcance of millions of years of

enabling relationships of psilocybin-containing mushrooms with

humans’ evolved psychology of ritual healing (but see

Winkelman, 2010a; Winkelman, 2013a; Winkelman, 2014;

Winkelman, 2019b). These relationships imply an evolved set

and setting, which is to say that humans acquired speciﬁc

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adaptations that affect an optimal set (psychological orientation)

and setting (social and cosmological context) for the effective

utilization of the natural properties of psychedelics. These

adaptations likely occurred because psychedelics enhanced

human social relations. These and other enhancements of

social and cognitive processes could have contributed to key

evolutionary developments involving cultural niches and shared

social beliefs, which mediate our adaptation to the environment

(also see section below “The cognitive niche”).

But little literature exists on the nature of the shamanic set and

setting that characterized most of humanity’s relationships with

psychedelic fungi (but see Winkelman, 2007; Metzner, 1998).

This shortcoming is addressed in this interdisciplinary review

synthesizing the author’s publications (Winkelman, 1990,

Winkelman, 1992, Winkelman, 2002; Winkelman, 2007;

Winkelman, 2009; Winkelman, 2010a; Winkelman, 2010b;

Winkelman, 2011; Winkelman, 2013a; Winkelman, 2013b;

Winkelman, 2014; Winkelman, 2015a; Winkelman, 2015b;

Winkelman, 2017a; Winkelman, 2017b; Winkelman, 2018;

Winkelman, 2019a; Winkelman, 2019b; Winkelman, 2019c;

Winkelman, 2019d; Winkelman, 2019e). These cross-cultural

studies of shamanism and evolutionary psychology are

integrated with recent ﬁndings from clinical and cognitive

neuroscience studies that identify adaptative effects of

psychedelics on cognition, personal well-being and social

relations. This neurologically based practice of shamanism

provides orientations for structuring contemporary psychedelic

therapy approaches to ritual, set and setting in ways consonant

with the psychological, social and cosmological dimensions of our

evolved ecopsychology.

PSYCHEDELICS IN EVOLUTION:

EXOGENOUS NEUROTRANSMITTER

SOURCES

There is a deep evolutionary relationship between humans and

plant drugs (Sullivan et al., 2008; Sullivan and Hagen, 2015).

There were diverse evolutionary inﬂuences of plant substances

from effects such as: enhanced vigilance and sensory and mental

acuity; increased pain management and endurance; enhanced

mating opportunities; and reduction of stress, defensiveness and

depression. Exogenous analogs of human neurotransmitters

found in plants effect many neurotransmitter systems,

including serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, norepinephrine

and dopamine (Passie et al., 2008; Hintzen and Passie, 2010;

Ray, 2010).

Human use of psilocybin and other psychedelics provided

exogenous analogues for neurotransmitters that are limited by

dietary intake. Our ancestors accrued ﬁtness beneﬁts through

utilization of exogenous sources of neurotransmitters, with

ancient environmental exposures to these exogenous sources

of neurotransmitters stimulating human evolution. Hominin

access to psychoactive fungi would have been regulated by the

highly seasonal dynamics of fungi growth (i.e., the presence of

bovines for coprophilous species, as well as rainfall and

temperature conditions). Nonetheless, exposure to these and

other botanical sources of neurotransmitter analogues was

sufﬁcient for hominins to undergo positive selection for

CYP2D6 (Cytochrome P450 2D6), a gene that encodes an

enzyme that facilitates metabolization of plant toxins (Sullivan

et al., 2008), reducing their toxicity and enhancing their

bioavailability. Hominins also underwent selection for genes

producing precursor molecules for several endogenous opioids

and neuropeptides (Rockman et al., 2005). The high afﬁnity of

CYP2D6 enzyme for plant alkaloids such as natural psychedelics

and other psychoactive drugs (Kennedy, 2014) indicates

signiﬁcant selection pressures were exerted on hominin

populations by environmental sources of secondary

metabolites that affected the evolution of the human nervous

system.

Substances with effects on serotonin are important in the

context of human evolution because “serotonin

neurotransmission enhances two distinct adaptive responses to

adversity, mediated in large part by its two most prevalent and

researched brain receptors: the 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors. . .

Active coping (i.e. actively addressing a source of stress) is

mediated by 5-HT2AR signaling and characterized by

enhanced plasticity (deﬁned as capacity for change). . . . [This]

5-HT2AR pathway is enhanced by 5-HT2AR-agonist

psychedelics” (Carhart-Harris and Nutt, 2017, p. 1091). This

differs from the brain’s default response to adversity, a passive

coping strategy involving toleration of sources of stress (mediated

by postsynaptic 5-HT1AR signaling); instead, psychedelics

stimulate an active coping strategy mediated by 5-HT2AR

signaling.

This evolution of the hominin serotonergic system involving

modiﬁcations of 5-HT2AR signaling enhanced the capacity to

actively address sources of stress through changes in perspectives

and behavior, rather than passive tolerance of stressors. The

ability of psilocybin to functionally modulate 5-HT2A receptor

signaling provides enhanced neuroplasticity, a ﬁtness enhancing

effect supporting an active coping strategy with heightened

ﬂexibility in both unlearning and learning, particularly

creating new models of adaptation.

How do psychedelics enhance the creation of new perspectives

and behavior and what is the basis of the new perspectives they

produce?

Serotonergic Regulation and Psychedelic

Deregulation

The role of serotonin in the inhibition of dopamine is central to

neurochemical balance in the brain, involving the right

hemisphere’s serotonergic and noradrenergic systems

inhibiting the dopamine system and the left hemisphere

(Previc, 2009). Serotonin is the primary neurotransmitter

system affected by psychedelics, especially through agonism of

5-HT2A receptors (Nichols, 2016). In addition to activation of

serotonin receptors, psilocybin and psilocin also stimulate

dopamine receptors (Ray, 2010). In addition to their

stimulatory effects, 5HT2 psychedelics also have blocking

(antagonist) effects at some serotonin receptors. Psychedelics

exbibit phasic effects, ﬁrst stimulating and enhancing

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serotonergic activity; secondly, saturating and locking out the

serotonin receptors; and thirdly, consequently releasing the

habitual serotonin repression of the dopaminergic system

(Passie et al., 2008; Hintzen and Passie, 2010).

Psychedelics lock into serotonin receptors but are resistant to

normal serotonin reuptake mechanisms that remove

neurotransmitters from the receptor to increase synaptic ﬁring

frequency. This psychedelic resistance causes habituation of

receptor ﬁring, and eventually reduces the regulatory role of

the serotonergic system because receptor sites become locked

out. The resulting loss of serotonin control results in a release of

the dopamine system normally repressed by serotonin, causing a

variety of visual experiences (hallucinations, dreams, psychosis)

and modifying control of major brain subsystems.

These psychedelic effects in altering consciousness are

illustrated by Vollenweider’s (2001) ﬁndings on the

mechanisms of action of psychedelics on the frontal-

subcortical circuits, a principal organizational network of the

brain uniting cortical areas with the brain stem region.

Psychedelic resistance to reuptake results in the impediment of

habitual serotonergic suppression of the ascending ﬂow of

information. These effects are typiﬁed by psychedelics’

interruption of cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical loops that

inhibit the lower brain structures’ sensory gating systems,

consequently releasing a ﬂood of information from ancient

brain processes normally inhibited by serotonin (Vollenweider

and Geyer, 2001). The psychedelics’ effects on the cortex are not

undifferentiated but involve a localized decrease in thalamus

information gating and increased bottom-up connectivity from

the thalamus to the posterior cingulate cortex and the ventral

striatum (Preller et al., 2019). Preller et al., (2019) conﬁrm this

CSTC model of psychedelic action in disintegration of normal

information processing within these loops, accompanied by

increases in effective connectivity in the CSTC pathways

involved in sensory and sensorimotor gating of information

transmitted to the cortex. These effects are mediated by 5HT2

increases in effective connectivity of the thalamus with the

posterior cingulate cortex.

This enhanced availability of information from ancient brain

areas normally repressed results in a ﬂood of information that

overwhelms the frontal cortex, altering experience of self, others,

and environment and promoting a focus on the internal world of

psychological projections. Psychedelics also stimulate the visual

system and limbic system areas that manage emotional

information and mediate personal relations and social bonding

as well as the range of innate brain modules. In addition to the

5HT2 psilocybin and psilocin effects on serotonin receptors, they

also have effects on dopamine receptors (Ray, 2010). Psilocybin

increases striatal dopamine concentrations (Vollenweider et al.,

1999), an area of the brain mediating rewards from social

interactions.

Innate Intelligences in Psychedelics and

Shamanism

The effects of the deregulation of these brain areas caused by

serotonin saturation and dopamine disinhibition have direct

effects on experience, manifested in the release of normally

unconscious sensory, personal and emotional dynamics. The

bottom-up brain dynamic induced by psychedelics liberates

aspects of the unconscious mind. Phenomenal evidence

indicates that the brain’s innate intelligences, modular

structures and cognitive operators are liberated by

psychedelics, with their integration producing supernatural

thought and experiences (Winkelman, 2017a; Winkelman, 2018).

Psychedelic stimulation of innate brain structures was

discovered a century ago in mescaline-induced visual

phenomena called entoptics. Subjective reports of mescaline-

induced experiences revealed recurring visual patterns, form

constants such as geometric shapes, lattice structures, tunnels,

funnels, and cones; and their super-imposition and integration

into larger complex ﬂowing patterns that typify psychedelic

experiences. The release of these and other innate cognitive

aspects by psychedelics make these cognitive structures part of

the intrinsic features of set and setting, a manifestation of the

structures of the human brain.

Evolutionary psychology proposes human cognitive evolution

involved acquisition of independent modular cognitive structures

providing specialized innate capacities for speciﬁc survival

functions, automatic processors operating unconsciously to

provide speciﬁc cognitive responses that affected adaptation in

the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (Barkow et al.,

1992; Carruthers and Chamberlain, 2000; Barkow et al., 2001).

These innate intelligences manifest in unconscious functions

operating through functionally specialized modular

adaptations. These innate intelligences or operators (d’Aquili

and Newberg, 1999; Ernandes, 2013) were acquired as ancient

adaptations affecting survival, such as detecting an agent,

recognizing animal species, inferring the thoughts of others,

and imitation and interpretation of behaviors. Gardner (1983,

2000) proposed ten innate human intelligences, biopsychosocial

potentials of humans manifested across cultures (see Table 1);

Winkelman (2017a, 2018, 2019d) has shown these are the basis

for psychedelic phenomenology, supernatural thought and

shamanism.

Entheogenic Experience as a Psychedelic

Neurophenomenology

Psychedelics produce animism, an entheogenic mind set where

the natural world is humanized and personalized with traits

(sentience, relationality) that derive from humans’ innate

social and cognitive intelligences (Winkelman, 2013a).

Psychedelic experiences exhibit phenomenological features

corresponding to Gardner’s innate intelligence (Winkelman,

2018). These social and cognitive modules are exempliﬁed in

contemporary entheogenic experiences of communication from

psychedelic beings reported as entities, gnomes, dwarfs, elves,

imps, goblins, “little people,” and human-like angels, spirits,

and gods.

Cognitive science explanations of religion (Pyysiäinen, 2009;

Boyer, 2017; Clements, 2017; Winkelman, 2019d) also propose

universal features of religious thought reﬂect the operation of

innate modular structures. Key features of spirits reﬂect the

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TABLE 1 | Gardner’s innate intelligences and supernatural concepts.

Innate intelligences

Bodily-kinesthetic (mimesis)

Intrapersonal—One’s own mind capacities

Interpersonal (social)—a “theory of mind”

Language/symbolism

Logical-mathematical

Musical

Spatial

Naturalist, animal classiﬁcation

Spiritual, noetic and transcendent experiences

Existential intelligence, cosmic explanations

Evolved Psychology of Psychedelics

Component of supernatural

experiences

Ritual enactment (imitative magic)

Spirits and souls

Spirit communication, divination

Unseen reality, divinatory meanings

Form constants (entopic phenomena)

Produce endorphin and opioid responses

Out-of-body experience

Animal identities and powers

Spirit beliefs, Animism

Mythology, pantheons

combined operation of innate operators for self awareness

(intrapersonal intelligence) and other representation

(interpersonal intelligence), a capacity for “mind-reading”

(inference of others’ thoughts) that are evolved mechanisms

for adaptation to the central factor affecting human

survival—actors in the social environment.

These combinations of innate cognitive capacities is how

supernatural experiences and beliefs contributed to new forms

of intelligence, creating symbols from the integration of

operations from distinct cognitive modules that normally

operate independently (Winkelman, 2002; Winkelman, 2010a;

Winkelman, 2019d). ASC have a functional effect in producing

such integrated synesthesia experiences and symbols

(Winkelman, 2002), with the combination and integration of

normally separate operational systems provoked by diverse ASC

(Winkelman, 2011). The combination of innate modular

functions in producing supernatural thought is exempliﬁed in

animism, where the natural world is attributed properties of

humans’ own self-awareness, cognition and emotions; and

conversely, in shamanic features of animal powers involving

linking of the naturalist (animal species) module with self

awareness and social identity.

Animism and Spirits as Innate Intelligences

Animism, a view that that nature involves sentient entities that

interact with humans, is fundamental to shamanism and

entheogenic perspectives. Animism reﬂects operations of

innate processing modules for “animacy detection,” for being

hyper-sensitive to the presence of an animate agent. The religious

presumption of an unseen agent, a hyperactive sensitivity and

automatic tendency to project an active agent responsible for the

cause of unexplained phenomena, reﬂects functions acquired for

detection of predators and prey. These tendencies were expanded

across human evolution because of survival beneﬁts of detecting

predators, and subsequently linked to other capacities to

understand the most important and dangerous animals in the

environment—other humans. Consequently, our animistic

thinking also emphasizes human-like mental, personal and

social qualities.

Spirit beliefs extend animism and agency detection with

Gardner’s intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences,

integrating capacities for self-awareness and mind-reading.

Intrapersonal intelligence provides a meta-cognitive operator

that uses its capacity for self-awareness and representing one’s

own mental states to model and infer the contents of others’

minds. The need for human cooperation requires knowledge of

their mental states, a “theory of mind” that infers others’

intentions (goals) and beliefs. Our tendency to attribute our

mind states, internal dispositions and purpose to spirit entities

reﬂects this adaptive tendency to infer the mental states of others

to predict and adapt to their behavior. Our evolved psychology

for modeling the cognitive and emotional world of others also

produces the imagined entities of the spirit world, extending

social adaptations (Weingarten and Chisholm, 2009; also see;

Rossano, 2006; Winkelman, 2007).

A fundamental human capacity for socialization involves

process for modeling self development based on

internalization of others’ roles. This process can be extended

to internalization of spirit others as personal models for

development. This process is also extended in the use of

natural symbols (animals) for representations of self and social

groups (totemism).

Animals as Innate Intelligence and Metaphor

Our naturalist (animal) intelligence provides for recognition and

classiﬁcation of animal species in similar systems found in

cultures worldwide that parallel the scientiﬁc Linnean

classiﬁcation system. Humans in different cultures parse the

natural world of animal species similarly through our innate

intelligence. This animal intelligence provided templates for

analogical reasoning, for creating meaning in animal

metaphors. This intuitive biology was subsequently extended

as a natural system for creating personal identity (animal

powers) and social identity (totemism).

A prominent feature of shamanism involves animal allies that

takes the social capacity to incorporate the models of the social

other—to internalize qualities of others into our self-

identity—and extends this capacity by using animals as

representations of self. The characteristics of animals are used

to structure individual psychodynamics and social behavior

modeled on the natural symbols of animals. A similar model

of identity is exempliﬁed in totemism, where an animal species

represents the identity of a group, as manifested in totemic

ancestor worship where group deities are represented by an

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animal species. The signiﬁcance of totemism as symbolic

cognition was illustrated in Levi-Strauss (1962) book

Totemism. Totemism involves a metaphoric relationship

between the natural history domains of animals and domain

of social groups, conceptualizing humans’ social organization

through analogical reasoning processes that attribute a homology

between animal species and human groups.

Visions as Innate Symbolism

Psychedelic disinhibition of the dopaminergic system through

reduction of serotonergic control results in ascendance of the

dopaminergic systems which produce a variety of visual

syndromes, typiﬁed by hallucinations and dreaming (Hobson,

2001). The information-rich visual experiences produced by

psychedelics reﬂect increased visual cortex activity from

activation of multiple serotonin (5-HT) receptors and

networks and increases in cortical excitability (Kometer et al.,

2015). Such visual images are also induced by hyperactivation of

dopamine receptors and the blockage of glutamate receptors

(Rolland et al., 2014), showing that they are an inherent

potential of human nature, rather than just a product of a

speciﬁc neurotransmitter effects.

Psychedelics increase blood ﬂow in the visual cerebral cortex

and expand functional connectivity in the primary visual cortex,

reﬂecting an enhanced activity in visual areas from increase in

contributions from other areas of the brain to the visual

processing centers (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016; Preller et al.,

2019). Psychedelics increase connectivity within brain regions

responsible for vision, producing a more uniﬁed brain, with

connections between disparate regions that normally lack

communication with each other. Psychedelics (LSD) enhance

primary processing functions (Kraehenmann et al., 2017)

involving effects on 5-HT2A and 5-HT1A receptors that

stimulate subcortical and limbic areas, increasing availability of

unconscious mental processes.

Presentational Symbolism: A Visual Epistemology

These forms of thought presented in psychedelic experiences

involve what Horváth et al., (2017) call visionary phantasy, a

polysemic and multimodal manifestation involving images,

affective responses, imagination, and signiﬁcant personal and

intellectual realizations. This visionary phantasy induced by

psychedelics is primarily visual, but also includes corporeal

and sensory experiences, affect, and diverse forms of ideation.

These experiences induced by psychedelic stimulation of innate

aspects of our visual system is also manifested in: dreaming,

fantasy and day-dreaming; hypnagogic and hypnopompic

imagery; out-of-body and near-death experiences;

hallucinations associated with toxic exposures, illness and

disease; and shamanic and mystical experiences.

Psychedelic-induced visionary phantasy reﬂects a latent

human cognitive capacity underlying all experience that

manifests through the visual system used for organizing

information in the external world. Carhart-Harris et al., (2016)

found LSD induced functional proﬁles and cerebral response are

similar to viewing the world with eyes open in normal waking

consciousness. Ayahuasca-induced visual effects in the primary

that visual centers involve activation of brain areas similar to

those produced with the eyes open (de Araujo et al., 2012).

These internally produced visual experiences evoked by

diverse conditions are symbols—presentational symbolism—an

ancient modality of cognition (see Winkelman, 2010a Chapter 3

for review). This visual cognition is a natural system that emerges

from unconscious brain processes, exempliﬁed in dreams, and

manifesting spontaneously and involuntarily with interference in

the habitual repressive regulation of the visual cortex. This

ancient mode of imaginal consciousness also appears in

dreams, which use this visual presentation for rehearsal,

integration of learning and problem solving. This capacity for

meaning provides knowing directly in a form that preceded

language-based consciousness. These visual dynamics underlie

the affective cognition system that functions constantly in our

daily life, presenting material from deep personal affective layers

of consciousness. This form of thought involves image schemas

derived from sensorimotor experience and learned structures that

represent our inner mental life and thought and relationships

with the external world (Winkelman, 2010a; Winkelman, 2015a).

Academia has recognized this intuitive mode of knowing for

centuries, but it is seldom studied because of difﬁculty in sharing

these internal experiences. This illusive capacity is reliably elicited

by psychedelics, which are unparalleled tools for examination of

the phenomenology and operation of this intrinsic system of the

human brain-mind and a source of unconscious cognitive

processes. This visual thinking capability involves the innate

intelligence of spatial-temporal reasoning, an ability to think

though visualizing patterns and performing mental

manipulations with them. The visual thinking provides the

working space for organizing constructs, assimilating

information and creating new ideas by synthesizing spatial

information. This capacity was central to human evolution.

The Cognitive Niche

A cognitive niche is how we adapt to diverse environments, a

uniquely human capacity involving reliance upon complex

cognitive systems of representation that mediate relations with

the natural world (Boyd et al., 2011; Whiten and Erdal, 2012;

Laland et al., 2016). This revolutionary change produced the

uniquely human ability to live within shared symbolic

representations encoded in cultural models of the world. The

cognitive niche is a social mind that derives from humans’ highly

cooperative communicative and symbol-making consciousness,

an information-rich, culturally constructed environment that

deﬁnes the niche, the culturally relevant aspects of the physical

environment (Odling-Smee et al., 2003). Traditional cultural

orientations mediated these relations with the natural world

through cognitive systems called myths and cosmologies.

The model of psychedelic instrumentalization derived from

the drug instrumentalization paradigm (Müller and Schumann,

2011) indicates hominins experienced selective advantages from

the contributions of psychedelics to enhancement of the

niche–construction processes and the socio-cognitive niche.

Psychedelic-induced 5HT2A active stress responses involving

modiﬁcation in perspectives and/or behavior (Carhart-Harris

and Nutt, 2017) would have affected niche construction

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through enhanced creativity and problem solving. 5-HT2A

receptor signaling played an important role in human

evolutionary and ontogenetic development through enhancing

plasticity and adaptability during extreme conditions (Carhart-

Harris and Nutt, 2017).

Early hominins evolved traits from selection pressures for

abilities to live in a cognitive niche, a virtual social reality, for

functioning and survival. Beginning with the incidental ingestion

of psychedelic fungi in an opportunistic diet, and eventually their

deliberate inclusion in rituals, our ancestors’ use of psilocybin

could have contributed to the evolution of our unique survival

mode by imposing a systematic bias on the selective environment

via the enhanced visual information processing and integration

induced by psychedelics. Psychedelic consumption thus could

have had signiﬁcant consequences on the selective forces that

drove hominin cognitive and behavioral evolution.

These adaptations involving construction of new models of the

environment were enhanced by psychedelic effects on visual

thinking and globally integrated cognition. The enhanced

availability of information is a central feature of psychedelic

effects, a result of increased global connectivity in the brain

that results from psychedelic interference with the integrity of

the Default Mode Network (DMN). Disabling the DMN results in

increased levels of functional connectivity between normally

disconnected brain networks (Roseman et al., 2014) and more

communication across the entire brain with very strong links and

topologically long-range functional connections and a wider

range of connectivity states (Tagliazucchi et al., 2014; Preller

et al., 2018). Psilocybin produces a new dynamic of coordinated

oscillations across brain regions (Kometer et al., 2015), with

overall phase synchronization coordinating EEG across diverse

brain areas and producing greater global neural integration

(Carhart-Harris et al., 2014).

Psychedelics consequently produce a higher level of brain

integration with a greater diversity of functional connectivity

networks. This enhanced modeling provided a meta-context for

possible further selection of related traits and competencies that

facilitated adaptation to the socio-cognitive niche. Individual

differences in enhanced cognitive processes provoked by

psychedelics provided variations in ﬁtness in ancient hominin

populations, variation upon which selection could act because

they contributed to enhanced ability to operate in a

cognitive niche.

SHAMANISM AS THE EVOLVED RITUAL

CONTEXT OF PSYCHEDELIC USE

Ancient hominin societies developed social institutions,

represented in the practices of shamanism, to manage the

therapeutic and other adaptive effects that can be obtained by

using psychedelics to integrate information in consciousness. The

deliberate, intentional self-administration of psychoactive

compounds that signiﬁcantly enhance mental functions and

access to unconscious material is typiﬁed in shamanic

practices, which exhibit hominins’ unique capacities for

constructing a cognitive niche through adaptively

instrumentalizing these mind-altering substances to produce

sociality-enhancing models of spirits.

Shamanism represents a cross-cultural concept derived from

recognition of a similar complex of spiritual healing practices in

pre-modern cultures around the world. Europeans ﬁrst developed

this concept from reports by explorers, traders, missionaries,

colonists, administrators and military personnel. Their

sensationalistic exaggerations and misunderstandings, ﬁltered

through Christian religious biases, were incorporated into the

literary and cultural life of elite Renaissance Europe during the

18th century as an understanding of the foreign “other” (Flaherty,

1992). These conceptualized shamanism as representing humans’

irrational nature where charisma and dramatical emotional

rituals dominated social life.

This European view of shamans as theatrical performers who

deceived their gullible community only began to shift as

professional understandings emerged with 19th and 20th

century anthropological studies. Studies on Siberian groups

already substantially changed by Russian colonization were

soon augmented with ethnographies that attested to a similar

cross-cultural phenomenon manifested in European, Asian,

Austronesian and American indigenous cultures. The modern

concept of the shaman, based on the term saman in the Tungusic

language, took this widespread Siberia cognate and applied it

cross-culturally to premodern spiritual healing practices.

The concept of shamanism began its scientiﬁc basis in Mircea

Eliade’s (1951/1964) Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,

where this comparative religion specialist described these

recurrent practices found across the globe. This contributed to

the 20th-century emergence of the shaman as a legitimate

comparative (etic) concept in academia and subsequently its

revitalization and popularization in Western society. Eliade

characterized the core of shamanism as “techniques of

ecstasy”—ritually-induced altered states of consciousness

(ASC)—used in community ritual interactions with the spirit

world for purposes of healing and divination. This nighttime

ceremony attended by all members of the local group was an

unparalleled social gathering, a “spectacle unequaled in the world

of daily experience” (Eliade, p. 511). This dramatic ritual

provoked powerful emotions as the shaman recounted battles

with spirits while excitedly beating drum, imitating animals,

singing, chanting, and dancing. Eventually the shaman

reclined or collapsed exhausted into a ecstatic state “a trance

during which his soul is believed to leave his body and ascend to

the sky or descend to the underworld” (Eliade, 1951; Eliade, 1964,

p. 5) to communicate with the spirits and obtain their

cooperation. This soul ﬂight was also experienced as the

personal transformation into an animal to use its powers. Soul

ﬂight and animal powers were key to the shaman’s activities,

which included healing, divination, clairvoyance, acquiring

information about group members, hunting, recovery of lost

souls, communication with spirits of the dead, escorting souls

of the dead, and protection against spirits and sorcerers.

Cross-Cultural Features of Shamanism

While some have questioned Eliade’s claims that shamanism was

cross-cultural because of his loose comparative methods, the

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broad patterns he noted are conﬁrmed by formal cross-cultural

studies (Winkelman, 1990; Winkelman, 1992; Winkelman,

2010a). Foraging societies worldwide have practitioners with

the central features Eliade attributed to shamans, including:

• Preeminent leader in the group’s ecological, political,

spiritual and healing activities;

• Performance of a communitywide nighttime ritual to

engage and enter the spirit world;

• Ritual preparations involving fasting and water deprivation,

sexual abstinence and austerities;

• Training and rituals involving alteration of consciousness

produced though extensive drumming, dancing, collective

chanting and singing, and often use of plant drugs;

• Experiences conceptualized as soul ﬂight, similar to modern

astral projection, out-of-body and near-death experiences,

in which the shaman travels into the spirit world;

• Ritual healing of soul loss, the extraction of intrusive objects,

and sorcery;

• Selection from encounters with spirits in visions, illness, and

dreams;

• Training involving prolonged solitude in the wilderness, a

vision quest for spirit allies that empowered the shaman;

• An initiatory experience of personal death, often involving

experiences of being attacked, killed, and devoured by

animals;

• A rebirth experience in which the animals reconstruct and

revive the initiate by incorporating their powers into the

initiate;

• Experience of a personal transformation into an animal; and

• Causing magical harm through intrusive darts and

soul theft.

This complex of ritual activities and beliefs found worldwide

in foraging societies establishes shamanism as an empirical reality

of the premodern world, not something created by the Western

imagination. The cross-cultural distribution of the shamanic

features reﬂects a cultural universal: all societies have ritual

practices involving alterations of consciousness for spirit

communication, divination and healing, what Winkelman

(1990) called shamanistic healers. These cultural universals of

ritual ASC, spirit engagement, divination and healing reﬂect

intrinsic aspects of human nature involving innate

intelligences (Winkelman, 2019d).

Biogenetic Origins of Shamanism in

Hominid Displays

Biogenetic structural approaches reveal shamanism has roots in

hominid communal displays (Winkelman, 2009; Winkelman,

2010a; Winkelman, 2010b; Winkelman, 2015a; Winkelman,

2019c). Collective ritualized behaviors provided the most

signiﬁcant social institutions of hominids and early modern

human societies (Winkelman, 2002; Rossano, 2006; Rossano,

2007; Rossano, 2009; Winkelman, 2009; Rossano, 2011;

Rossano, 2015). This reﬂects the social importance of

collective ritualization in primates in general, and the

expansion of these capacities for communication and social

coordination during hominin evolution (Winkelman, 2015a).

Shamanic rituals have evolutionary roots in these collective

reuniﬁcation displays manifested in the chimpanzees’ maximal

display (Winkelman, 2009; Winkelman, 2010b).

These origins of human ritual are identiﬁed in these

comparative analyses revealing parallels of shamanism with

the chimpanzee maximal display. This reveals a generalized

hominid trait involving bipedal displays by the alpha male and

collective hand and foot drumming and chorusing by the group

(Lawick-Goodall, 1968; Lawick-Goodall, 1971; Goodall, 1986).

The maximal display extends the bipedal charge with beating on

logs and trunks, hurling rocks and branches, and leaping and

beating the ground, accompanied by screaming and hooting

which may escalate into a physical attack on group members

lacking submissive behaviors.

This maximal display is the basic mechanism for group

integration in chimpanzee society by producing an auditory

beacon to reunite the dispersed troop (De Waal, 1997). These

nightly performances integrate dispersed members, illustrating

how collective rituals enhance group integration and survival.

These common behaviors of great apes (Lawick-Goodall, 1968;

Geissmann, 2000) reﬂect ancient hominid dispositions for

overnight collective ritual displays with collective vocalizations.

These provided functions of group integration through

communicating group location, moderating emotional states,

and enhancing group cohesion (Geissmann, 2000; Merker, 2009).

This common dynamic of great apes indicates these behaviors

characterized our hominid ancestors and consequently, our

uniquely human ancestors, the hominins. These pre-

adaptations for hominin ritual include:

• nighttime group reuniﬁcation displays;

• aggressive alpha-male enactments (“dancing”);

• emotional group vocalizations (chorusing and singing) and

drumming; and

• individual and group emotional integration.

Synchronous group vocalizations are central to both hominid

displays and shamans’ rituals, an expressive system for

communicating emotional states and enhancing group

integration. Their functional adaptations include (Winkelman,

2010a): an auditory beacon facilitating group re-integration for

protection; intergroup boundary maintenance; a signal of social

hierarchy, reducing intragroup conﬂict and violence; an

intimidating costly display that deters predators; and a release

of tension producing group emotional synchrony.

Hominid Displays and Shamanic Ritual: The

Evolutionary Gap

The similarities between chimpanzee maximal displays and

shamanic rituals indicate a hominid biogenetic behavior

pattern which was a pre-adaptation for shamanism. This

involved collective nighttime group vocalizations and

drumming with vigorous attack displays by alpha males

(Winkelman, 2009; Winkelman, 2010a). The features of

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shamanism that emerged over hominin evolution are revealed by

the differences between this hominid baseline and shamanic

rituals. These differences, involve:

• evolution of capacities for extended drumming, dancing,

song and music;

• expansion of the ritual capacities for more prolonged

conspicuous displays;

• rituals of healing;

• beliefs regarding spirits, particularly animals as personal

powers and identity;

• prominent alterations of consciousness and their cognitive

properties;

• diagnosis and divination of information;

• mythic systems of explanation.

Dunbar (2017) proposed shamanic practices originated in

community bonding rituals which evolved as adaptations that

elicit endorphin responses to enhance social bonding. The

enhancement of bonding mechanisms in hominin evolution

extended the primarily dyadic relationships characteristic of

chimpanzees to bonding among all members of the group

characteristic of shamanic rituals. Music and synchronous

movement such as dancing provokes the release of

endogenous opioids and stimulates neurotransmitter systems

(dopamine, norepinephrine) (Launay et al., 2016; Tarr et al.,

2016). Communal singing elicits oxytocin production (Panksepp

and Trevarthen, 2009; Chanda and Levitin, 2013), a

neurohormone enhancing social bonding. Music, chanting and

rhythmic activities such as drumming, dancing and clapping elicit

endorphin responses that extended the group capacity for social

bonding (Dunbar, 2014). Shamanism exempliﬁes the human

capacity for group production of synchronized clapping and

dancing and harmonized song and music for prolonged

periods. These group enhancement technologies exploited an

innate operator that Gardner called a bodily-kinesthetic

intelligence involving mimesis that functions through the

operation of mirror neurons (see Garrels, 2005; Garrels, 2011;

Winkelman, 2015a for review in relationship to shamanism).

The Roles of Mimesis in Evolution

The capacities of music and dance depend on mimesis, an innate

modular intelligence and a central feature of hominin evolution

which emerged 1–2 million years ago (Donald, 1991). Mimesis is

a multimodal capacity that enables the body to entrain its

movements with external rhythms, such as exhibited in dance

and music. These capacities of mimesis derive from a

neurocognitive adaptation involving mirror neurons that

supports multiple expressive capacities—mime, gesture,

imitation, music, song, dance, and observational learning

(Donald, 2006; also see; Garrels, 2011). Donald shows how the

mimetic capacity to represent and communicate through

enactment provided the basis for an archaic level of culture

expressed through imitation, gestures, pantomime and

shamanism. Girard (1987) examined the extensive implications

of the capacities of mimesis which had primordial roles in the

foundations of culture, and eventually religion.

Mimetic processes are based in the activity of mirror neurons,

brain cells that are activated by performance of a speciﬁc

intentional and goal directed behavior, as well as when one

observes a conspeciﬁc engaging in that same speciﬁc

intentional movement (see Garrels, 2005; Garrels, 2011 for

reviews). Mirror neurons function as both motor and sensory

neurons, reﬂecting a common neural basis for both performance

and observation/understanding of behavior. This common basis

for action and perception creates a shared experience for actor

and observer through neurologically mediated responses of

mirror neurons. Mirror neurons mediate social behavior by

providing a basis for intuitive understandings of conspeciﬁcs,

especially though their goal-directed actions. This common

capacity for understanding perceptions of a behavior and

production of that behavior provides a system of shared

consciousness and meaning that was the foundations of

human personal and social consciousness long before the

development of spoken language. Mimetic expressions are

understood at intuitive and nonconscious levels, providing

fundamental interpersonal communication processes.

The Functions of Mimesis

Mimesis is an adaptation providing an innate capacity for

communication through the body, a pre-language expressive

system of early hominins involving the ability to intentionally

represent through imitation, gestures, pantomime and emotional

expressions (Donald, 1991; Donald, 2006). While mimesis

operates at pre-conscious levels of intention and awareness,

imitation extends mimesis in a more conscious and deliberate

copying of an act for social communication (Girard, 1987).

Mimesis has a threefold sequence and functions—imitation,

representation and construction—which provides the basis for

mediation between inner impressions and the experiences of the

exterior world, the bases for the construction of a perceived

external reality (Klein, 2003). This construction of the “inner

world” is a symbolic world based on behavior, the actions that

produce experiences, which are used for the symbolic

constructions of reality. The experiences of both internal and

external realities are based in memories of the impulses produced

by the body that generates information through movement. This

generativity of the body provides the instrument for the

expression of practical knowledge and beliefs as well as

cultural norms for conduct through actions.

Mimesis as Body Metaphor

The mimetic capacity to intentionally communicate through

behavior provides a medium for social sharing of internal

knowledge and experience. Mimesis produces symbols and

meaning through metaphors expressed through enactment, a

mapping of the actions of the body onto an imagined reality.

This analogy derived from the body’s movements and their

intrinsic meanings provides a general expressive medium for

communicating to others information about our inner states and

past experiences, as well as future plans. Mimesis is a conscious

production of meaning through use of behavior, gesture,

imitation and emotion for enactment; this mapping of body

actions onto an imagined context is a process of analogical

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transfer that exploits the body’s innate schemas which are the

template for all knowing (see Winkelman, 2010a). This lived body

provides the basis for our resonance with others, a sensorimotor

self with visceral responses that derives understandings of others

and the meanings expressed in mimesis through the operation of

the mirror neurons.

Mimetic Consciousness as Empathy

Donald suggested that mimesis, by focusing attention on the

body’s movements, produces a physical self-consciousness that

enhances awareness of self. Mimesis enhances personal and social

consciousness by providing a mechanism for sharing the

representations produced within our own brain and in other

brains. Girard (1987) proposed mimesis provides the ability to

perceive others as a “mimetic double,” an alter ego or double

inside oneself that stimulates self-reﬂection and consciousness.

This awareness made possible by mimesis and imitation provided

shared information that created a foundation for culture,

customs, rituals, communicative gestures, and learned skilled

behaviors and shared group consciousness and culture.

Imitation is the foundation of affective responses underlying

human relational motivations, social attachments and empathy

(Garrels, 2005). Mimesis provides the basis for empathy through

shared and reciprocal social experiences. Because of the common

neuronal pathways activated by engaging, observing and even

imagining a speciﬁc action, mimesis provides a basis for empathic

resonance with and understandings of others. Mimetic

mechanisms provide a direct means for communication of

internal mental states and the meaning of behavior, a

foundational basis for empathy by communicating the

meaning to actions. The meanings of our actions are

manifested in the intentions and goals exhibited in our

interactions with the physical and social world and in the

desires and beliefs they manifest. This combined mimetic

expression of inner and external realities, the body and the

social, provides the ability to acquire insight into others’

thoughts through the representations produced within the body.

The innate bases of mimesis and imitation enable their

operation from the ﬁrst days of infancy in the development of

affective relations with caretakers. Imitation is a fundamental

mechanism for the development of the individual’s mind and the

expression of complex representations, including theory of mind

(Garrels, 2011). Imitation and mirror neurons provide the basis

for the identity of self and others, with the identity experienced

through understanding the minds of others. Imitation continues

to play a fundamental role across life, functioning even through

adulthood as a basic organizing principle in human interpersonal

behavior (Garrels, 2005). This mimetic system is the basis of

emotional expression and the human capacity to interpret

complex social situations and attribute meaning to others’

behaviors.

Mimesis in Shamanic Evolution

Social primates develop a wide variety of ritualized behaviors to

enhance trust, promote harmony and intensify social bonds

among members of the group. Such group bonding

ritualizations found among other primates indicates they were

preadaptations expanded across human evolution. A signiﬁcant

effect of ritual is enabling an approximation of individuals, a

reduction of natural suspicion, defensiveness and hostility

(Rossano, 2009). Rossano characterizes the central rituals of

traditional societies as involving expression of dangerous

emotions that must be controlled, as well as the control of

others’ reactions (inhibiting a mimetic emotional response).

The highly emotional rituals demand considerable inhibitory

control for successful ritual participation, a suppression of pre-

potent emotional responses, especially anger and aggression. The

ability of our ancestors to inhibit aggression and defensiveness

allowed for ritual to expand feelings of trust and the formation of

long-term alliances that enhanced survival.

The adaptiveness of ritual lies in the creation of a sense of a

common group bond and identity that helps to overcome the

natural tendency toward ethnocentrism and maintenance of in-

group boundaries that excludes outsiders. Shamanic rituals

helped forge commonality through the mimetic enactments

and the ritual alteration of consciousness that produced a

sense of unity with others. Ritual behaviors were able to

enhance social integration because of their intrinsic ability to

inhibit innate aggressive tendencies and inhibit defensive

behaviors, thereby producing interpersonal conditions that

facilitate social bonding (Rossano, 2009). This inhibition

provides ﬁtness advantages, enhancing social bonding

mechanisms, increasing status and access to resources, and

providing psychophysiological beneﬁts from eliciting

endogenous healing responses.

Rituals and Costly Displays

The mimetic capacity greatly expanded the expressive capacities

of ritual, typiﬁed in costly, conspicuous or extravagant displays.

These displays are considered costly energetic activities that

appear to have individual costs but that enhance group

solidarity as hard to fake signals that provide credible and

reliable evidence of the individual’s ﬁtness and group

commitment (Wood, 2017). This concept of costly displays

illuminates how hominid behaviors exhibited in the maximal

displays expanded across hominin evolution through drumming,

singing, and dancing. Drumming is costly display that is a

widespread mammalian adaptation (Randall, 2001). Foot-

drumming both alerts members of one’s group and functions

as a mechanism for inter-species communication as a

manifestation of excessive ﬁtness, of heightened vigilance and

a readiness to act. The short bursts of drumming characteristic of

chimpanzees (a few seconds in length) and short bipedal charges

are dramatically expanded in shamanism in overnight drumming

and dancing which has a much more energy costly proﬁle,

illustrating that these abilities underwent signiﬁcant expansion

across hominin evolution.

The signiﬁcance of costly displays in cultural evolution is in

their ability to enhance success in competition between groups

through practices that contribute to stronger group commitments

that increase within-group cooperation. Shamanic ritual

performances demonstrate such commitment and excessive

ﬁtness in prolonged and extensive energy expenditures of

over-night drumming, dancing and singing that requires

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extensive exertion. Selection for the capacity to drum and dance

all night likely also reﬂects its ability to deter predators

(Winkelman, 2010a; Rossano, 2015).

The aversive experiences associated with shamanism

(initiations through induced pain, food and water deprivation,

exposure to temperature extremes, hours of dancing, drumming

and singing) require inhibition of normal impulses and visibly

demonstrate excessive ﬁtness and commitment. The ability to

endure these painful and exhausting rituals both signals social

commitment and elicits such commitment (Rossano, 2015).

Costly displays create a tendency in others to nonreﬂective

acceptance and coordinated expression of cooperative

tendencies (Shaver et al., 2017). These and other aspects of

shamanic ritual activities (i.e., ASC) also repress strategic

reasoning and second-guessing of prosocial intentions of

others while encouraging cooperation and positive regard in

social relations (Winkelman, 2010a). These dynamics which

reﬂect the activation of mimetic mechanisms also elicit

endogenous healing responses.

Ritual and Endogenous Healing Responses

Homologies between chimpanzee collective displays and

shamanic healing rituals indicate communal ritual was the

context within which hominins experienced selection for

enhanced capabilities related to endogenous healing responses

(Rossano, 2006; Rossano, 2007; Winkelman, 2009; Winkelman,

2010b). These pre-adaptations are manifested in chimpanzee

aggressive maximal displays and the complementary

submission, grooming and reconciliation behaviors that evoke

opioid responses.

Rossano (2009), Rossano (2011) proposes that ritual activities

provided a signiﬁcant aspect of the human selective environment

because participation in rituals provided enhanced health to those

capable of ritual immersion. Ritual was the context for the

selection of traits of hypnotizability, a genetic disposition that

was ﬁtness-enhancing, by engaging a suggestibility to health-

enhancing effects of ASC (McClenon, 2002) and other

endogenous healing responses (Winkelman, 2008 Chapters

9 & 10; Winkelman, 2010a Chapter 5). The dominance-

submission dynamics of ritual and attachment processes are

key to eliciting endogenous healing processes such as hypnotic

and placebo responses.

Humphrey (2002) characterized the placebo response as a

Darwinian adaptation for addressing threats to health, an

emergent property that provided adaptive endogenous healing

responses by exapting emotions such as hope that elicit positive

responses of the immune system. The most effective mechanism of

placebo elicitation is a powerful external authority that reﬂects high

status (age, prestige, and authority) and enhances conﬁdence. In

shamanic and other religious healing, the external authority and

power of the spirit world is an exaptation of the psychological

dynamics of these authority relations to elicit placebo mechanisms.

These healing responses include: endogenous opioid responses;

parasympathetic responses, evoking relaxation and counteracting

stress; enhanced psychoneuroimmunological responses; and

hypnotic susceptibility and placebo responses (Winkelman, 2010a).

Music as an Endogenous Healing Modality

Music is a modular intelligence and an aspect of mimesis that

provides healing mechanisms through its innate ability to affect

emotions (Crowe, 2004). Music engages an innate primate

biological function for expressing emotions through

vocalizations to enhance emotional harmony. Music also

induces physiological effects, producing relaxation and stress

reduction manifested in lowered blood pressure and cardiac

rate and can treat a wide range of health problems because it

elicits biologically determined emotional states (Crowe, 2004).

Music produces healing through release of repressed emotions,

increasing emotional awareness and elevating emotional

concerns for their transformation through ritual.

Music manifests emergent properties that communicate basic

emotions and transform them into expressions of complex

feelings through the coordination of biological, physical,

psychological, cognitive and social processes (Cross and

Morley, 2009). Consequently, music is a highly effective

mechanisms for coordination of emotions, experience and

interpersonal relations and contributes to emotional bonding

by enhancing coordination and emotional synchrony within

the group (Panksepp and Trevarthen, 2009).

This synchrony contributes to enhanced well-being through

effects on social emotional systems related to mammalian and

group bonding. The mimetic capacities of music and dancing

provided technologies that enhanced synchrony and group

formation, with coordinated rhythmically repeated motions

exempliﬁed in dance extending the mechanisms of social

cooperation. By providing a system of coordinated expression

of intentions in observable body actions, dance contributed

nonverbal communication mechanisms for the creation a

shared group consciousness. Mimetic engagements of

rhythmic dancing, clapping and chanting provide powerful

socialization effects, an engagement of the motor and

somatosensory systems in a way that produces powerful

affective linkages of the individual with the group and

development of social ties and group identity beyond the

biological family.

The Holistic Imperative

The dramatic displays of the shaman evoke two innate healing

principles or processes, the holistic imperative and shamanic

projection (Laughlin et al., 1992). The holistic imperative is an

innate drive toward health and wholeness, a growth in the

structures mediating consciousness, with ASC a

“manifestation of the structural drive toward differentiation

and reintegration of the neural systems mediating

consciousness” (p. 150). The holistic principle also evokes

shamanic projection (Laughlin et al., 1992), a form of

transference that leads one to unconscious acceptance of

control over one’s intentional processes by the shaman (or

another advanced adept). The activation of the holistic

imperative by ASC then leads one to internalize the

projection of a more advanced state manifested by the healer,

achieving a higher level of identity, consciousness and

integration.

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PSYCHEDELICS AND THE EVOLUTION OF

SHAMANISM

The parallels of chimpanzee displays and shamanic rituals reveal

a hominid core of collective ritual behaviors that was necessarily

the social context within which psychedelics were

institutionalized into ancient hominin cultures. Mimesis and

costly displays can explain some features of the chimpanzee-

shaman ritualization gap (i.e., expansion of the ritual capacities

for extended enactment, drumming, dancing, song and music).

But many features are not explained by mimesis such as beliefs

regarding spirits, animals as personal powers and identity,

alterations of consciousness, divination and mythic systems of

explanation.

A notable gap between hominid and shamanic ritual involves

ASC and spirit world experiences that are at the focus of

communal shamanic healing practices. Notably, all

three—communal relations, shamanic ASC and healing—are

stimulated by psychedelics, exempliﬁed in the concept of

entheogens. Cultures around the world have expressed beliefs

about the effects of psychedelics that are entheogenic—inherent

sources of stimulating internal spiritual experiences (Dobkin de

Ríos, 1984; Rätsch, 2005; Winkelman, 2010a). The empirical

ability of psychedelics to induce genuine mystical experiences

are attested to in double-blind clinical studies, meaning that we

have to accept that spiritual experiences occurred when people

ingested psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

Psychedelics produce experiences directly related to the

chimpanzee-shamanism gap (from Winkelman, 2010a):

• An entheogenic experience of entering a spiritual world;

• a visionary experience of the separation of one’s soul from

the body;

• a death-and-rebirth experience producing self-

transformation;

• healing, especially through ritual and singing;

• acquiring information through divination;

• an encounter with animal spirits and an experience of

transformation into an animal;

• a cosmological system involving an animated nature, animal

and plant spirits.

These differences between chimpanzee displays and shamanic

ritual indicate a zone of proximal development where

psychedelics could have acted as a selective force in

evolutionary developments leading to the emergence of

shamanism. Shamanic evolution may be explained in part by

psychedelics’ effects of stimulating our innate cognitive structures

(Winkelman, 2010a; Winkelman, 2013a; Winkelman, 2018) as

discussed above in the context of animism and animal powers.

The sociality enhancing effects of psychedelics indicate they

could have been key elements in selection for communal ritual

healing capacities though Baldwinian processes (where a

behavioral adaptation exerts inﬂuences for supportive

biological adaptations) (see Rossano, 2009; Rossano, 2011;

Rossano, 2015). Psychedelics enhance emotional empathy,

happiness, trust, and desire for closeness to others (Dolder

et al., 2016) and produce positive social-emotional moods and

states (Kometer et al., 2012; Preller and Vollenweider, 2016).

Overall psychedelic-induced changes in socially oriented

personality are manifested in increases in Extraversion,

Conscientiousness and Openness (Bouso et al., 2018; Erritzoe

et al., 2018).

This psychedelic enhancement of sociality suggests that they

exercised inﬂuences in selection for those same dispositions in

early hominins. The environmentally induced changes on brain

function exerted by psychedelics could have become genetically

heritable over time as a result of the selective pressure exerted by

their physical and psychological effects. The reproductive

advantages derived from instrumentalization of psychedelics

could have enabled selection for supportive traits that further

enhanced exploitation of psychedelic effects (i.e., sociality,

visionary experiences, placebo responses, niche construction).

Psychedelic healing was necessarily at ﬁrst incidental rather

than deliberate. This occurred through their effects in enhancing

serotonin mediated coping responses, diverse dopamine

mediated healing responses, as well as enhancing core aspects

of sociality. This treatment became deliberate as hominins

learned that psilocybin’s effects on emotions and social

relations could be enhanced through ritual in ways that

contributed to ﬁtness through their renowned ability to evoke

a variety of healing responses (see dos Santos et al., 2016; also see

Winkelman and Roberts (2007) and Winkelman and Sessa (2019)

for overview).

ASC: Psychointegration and the Integrative

Mode of Consciousness

Cultures worldwide have ASC institutionalized in healing rituals

(Winkelman, 1992). These ASC involve stimulation of the

dopamine system (see Winkelman, 2013a; Winkelman, 2017b

for review), especially through exhausting physical exertion of

drumming and dancing for hours which overwhelms

temperature-regulation mechanisms, resulting in the release of

endogenous opioids (Vaitl et al., 2005). Ritual preparations such

as fasting, sexual abstinence and painful ordeals contribute to

ASC and the exhaustive dancing and drumming stimulate

dopaminergic, serotonergic, endorphin and endocannabinoid

systems (Winkelman, 2017b). Features of shamanic activities

such as nighttime ceremonies, exposure to pain, emotional

manipulations that evoke fear, and song and dance stimulate

the endogenous opioid system (Prince, 1982; Winkelman, 2013b;

Winkelman, 2019e).

Diverse mechanisms for inducing ASC involve a common

biological basis in an integrative mode of consciousness

(Winkelman, 2010a; Winkelman, 2011). The integrative mode

of consciousness is characterized by ascending brain discharge

patterns producing integration across levels of the brain, an

entrainment of the frontal cortex by highly coherent and

synchronized slow-frequency brain wave waves emanating

from lower-brain structures. Many practices that typify

shamanism produce this overall brain dynamic (Mandell,

1980; Winkelman, 2010a), including: natural drug sources

(hallucinogens, amphetamines, stimulants, marijuana, opiates),

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long-distance running, hunger, thirst, sleep loss, auditory stimuli

such as drumming and chanting, sensory deprivation, dream

states, meditation, and a variety of psychophysiological

imbalances or sensitivities resulting from injury, trauma,

disease, or hereditarily transmitted nervous system conditions.

Mandel proposed these diverse activities result in loss of

serotonin inhibition of hippocampal cells, resulting in

increased hippocampal-septal slow-wave EEG activity (alpha,

delta and especially theta) that produces hypersynchronous

discharges across the hippocampal-septal-reticular-raphe

serotonergic circuit. This discharge propagates impulses from

the basal areas of the brain into the frontal cortex.

Diverse ASC deactivate central brain control networks—the

prefrontal cortex responsible for higher cognitive functions

(Dietrich, 2003); and the Default Mode Network (DMN)—

which is key to integration of information about self and

others (see Winkelman, 2017a for review). Diverse conditions

(i.e., endurance running, hypnosis, meditation, psychedelics,

dreaming) produce prefrontal cortex deregulation and loss of

higher cognitive functions (Dietrich, 2003). The DMN involves a

network of structural and functional connections that support

meta-cognitive processes activated during an inward focus of

attention and introspection and daydreaming. These

metacognitive processes are crucial to self-representation, self

consciousness, and reﬂective self-awareness and are activated

during mental time travel (projections into the personal past

or future) and autobiographical reﬂection (summarized from

Winkelman, 2017a). Psychedelics and other ASC cause

disintegration of normal DMN functions, compromising top-

down control and producing a ﬂuid brain dynamic with

enhanced activation of lower brain input into ascending

circuitry to the frontal cortex. This down-regulation permits

emergence of information from ancient brain functions.

Psychointegration

Winkelman (2010a), Winkelman, (2011) proposed diverse ASC

exhibit a common brainwave dynamic of “psychointegration”

involving synchronized slow wave brain discharges ascending

from lower brain structures and projecting into frontal regions of

the brain. Mandell (1980) proposed this neurobiological basis for

ASC and their experiential properties as a consequence of effects

of diverse agents and activities that activate hypersynchronous

discharges in the temporal-lobe limbic and mesolimbic

serotonergic pathways and impose brain wave synchronization

on the frontal cortex (see Winkelman, 2011; Winkelman, 2013b

for discussion). Shamanic practices produce this dynamic of ASC

through fasting, exhausting exercise (i.e., dancing and

drumming), dream incorporation, the inﬂuences of drumming

and chanting, and in many cases psychoactive substances.

These general features of psychointegration are typiﬁed by the

effects of psychedelics on the frontal-subcortical circuits

(Vollenweider, 2001) that link the thalamus of the brain stem

region with the frontal cortex areas. Psychedelic effects on these

cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical feedback loops releases lower

brain gating systems, enhancing the ﬂow of information to the

frontal areas (Vollenweider and Geyer, 2001). These global

dynamics of “psychointegration” enhance integration of

information from lower brain processes related to self,

emotions, memories, and attachments and integrating them

into neocortical areas (see Winkelman, 2010a for review).

Shamanic “Dream-Time”

Dreams are central to shamanic ASC, normal physiological

processes engaged by the overnight shamanic rituals.

Incorporation of dream processes into shamanic ASC was also

deliberately produced through dream incubation practices.

Because lucid dream experiences are stimulated by activity

prior to sleep, ritual drumming and singing likely enhanced

lucid dreaming and ASC (see Winkelman, 2010a for review).

Shamanism exapted an innate mammalian feature, using an

adaptation for learning by producing memory associations

during sleep and enhancing information consolidation.

Shamanic activities accessed these innate dream processes by

using ritual to blend waking consciousness (enhanced by extreme

excitation) with dream processes to bring unconscious material

into waking consciousness and manage unconscious personality

dynamics. Shamanic engagement with dreams used its capacities

for virtual scenario construction to engage processes for risk-free

consideration of possible options (Brereton, 2000). These visual

properties of dreaming typify shamanic ASC that engaged mental

images as psychobiological communication processes that

integrate unconscious, non-volitional, affective and psycho-

physiological information (see Winkelman, 2010a for

discussion). This integrates somatic, psychological and

cognitive levels through visual images and analogical

processes, producing forms of awareness that transcended the

embeddedness of bodily consciousness.

The Dopaminergic Dynamics of Shamanic ASC

Dopamine is central to shamanic ASC (Previc, 2006; Previc,

2009), activated by a variety of activities and the body’s own

endogenous opioids that produce: experiences of positive

emotions, euphoria and belongingness; bonding and afﬁliation;

and enhancing coping mechanisms, stress tolerance, and ability

to adapt. The ascendance of the dopaminergic and acetylcholine

systems produces the parasympathetic collapse that precipitates

dreaming, shamanic soul ﬂight and other visionary experiences

(Previc, 2006; Previc, 2009). Dopamine is implicated in a variety

of visionary experiences (Hobson, 2001; Previc, 2006; Rolland

et al., 2014).

Previc (2009) proposes that the role of the dopaminergic

system in human cognitive evolution involved facilitation of

goal-directed motivation and acquiring distant rewards that

require operations in extrapersonal space, a distant imagined

reality rather than in immediate personal space. This requires a

dopamine-initiated parasympathetic inhibition of extraneous

thoughts and sympathetic emotional responses. Dopaminergic-

induced effects extend cognitive capacities for exploring distant

regions of physical space as mechanisms for exploring the

intimate spaces of our mental capacities and personal

identities. “[D]opamine is especially well-suited to making

connection among stimuli and events and organizing them

into mental plans. . . and in “off-line” thinking and

strategizing, important components of abstract reasoning”

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(Previc, 2009: 30). Dopamine inﬂuences on extrapersonal

responses and context independent cognition are exempliﬁed

in “mental time travel,” the ability to experience and think about

things other than those in the here and now. “[D]opaminergic

activation results in the “triumph” of extrapersonal brain activity

over the body systems that anchor our self-concept and our body

orientation, as well as a triumph over the more “rational”

executive intelligence maintained in the lateral dopaminergic

systems” (Previc, 2009; 53). The shamanic personality exhibits

the features of highly dopaminergic minds—seeking connections

in unseen forces, above average intelligence, goal seeking,

conﬁdent in their abilities, intense unconstrained aggressive

drives, magical ideation about abilities to control others and

distant events, and delusions of grandiosity and invincibleness

(Previc, 2009).

Soul Journeys as Extrapersonal Cognition

Dopamine stimulation of extrapersonal functions are exempliﬁed

in shamanic soul ﬂight and out-of-body experiences which

exhibit context-independent consciousness perceived as distant

from the physical body (Previc, 2009). These processes are also

manifested in astral projection and near-death experiences (see

Winkelman (2010a) for discussion). The experience of separation

of the experiential self from the body is reported in spiritual

practices around the world, with the homologous features

indicating that it reﬂects innate psycho-physiological

structures. The soul journey engages a visual symbolic capacity

focused on self-reference (intrapersonal intelligence) which is

integrated with the innate social psychological capacity to take the

perspectives of others toward one’s self. The soul journey reﬂects

these capacities for self-awareness and other awareness displayed

in the visual symbolic and spatial modalities.

Metzinger (2009) analyzes the phenomenological properties of

these experiences as reﬂecting the separate operation of the innate

processes producing the proto-mind and self. This disarticulation

of the normal integrated functions of visual, corporeal and self

modules provides adaptive functional features producing the

separation of cognitive capacities from the physical self-

representation. Metzinger proposes these experiences reveal

the functional modularization of the brain under conditions of

stress that enables the brain’s information-processing systems to

redistribute cognitive functions, enabling higher cognitive

processes to continue in spite of physical incapacity.

This separation of cognitive functions produces experiences of

one’s self as a soul-like entity, a self-awareness and self-modeling

that moves beyond the primitive bodily processes and transcends

the present moment. This visionary aspect of the shaman’s ASC is

a complex synesthesia blending of corporeal and sensory

modalities to produce special forms of self-awareness based in

the capacity to take the perspectives of other toward one’s self.

The soul ﬂight reﬂects a natural symbol system, based on a

neurognostic model derived from the body, a neurological

basis for analogical thinking (Winkelman, 2010a).

Death and Rebirth as Self-Transformation

A core aspect of shamanic ASC and a psychiatric and entheogenic

phenomena is the death and rebirth experience (see Winkelman,

2010a for discussion). The shaman’s death and rebirth initiatory

crisis involves the breakdown of forms of identity, a natural

process of self-transformation that occurs as a response to

extreme stress that produces fragmentation of the ego. During

the period of selection and training, the shaman typically

undergoes an experience interpreted as their personal death,

which may occur spontaneously, or during a vision quest. In

either case, the death and rebirth crisis typically involve a

sequence of experiences in which animals attack, kill and

devour the initiate, and then subsequently reconstruct the

initiate, incorporating their qualities as the basis for

shamanic power.

The dismemberment experiences are auto symbolic images of

breakdown of psychological structures and sense of self, a

fragmentation that is followed by a reformulation of the self.

Thus the death and rebirth initiatory crisis involves changing the

customary programming of self, permitting a transformation of

self-reference and an engagement with a new self-development.

The death and rebirth phenomena are manifested cross-culturally

because they reﬂect such natural processes of self-transformation

that occur under conditions of overwhelming stress and the

fragmentation of the ego. Shamans are often driven to their

profession by a constant illness that requires they become new

kinds of people—healers—in order to overcome their own health

problems. Consequently, a “death” of their current identity (as a

“normal” but ill person) permits emergence of a new identity as a

healer. These reformulations of the self are guided by innate

drives toward integration derived from the psychointegration

produced by ASC. Holistic imperatives toward psychointegration

restructure the ego through integration of repressed and

dissociated cognitive structures, alleviating psychosomatic and

emotional problems through enhancing self-actualization.

DISCUSSION:

NEUROPHENOMENOLOGICAL

PERSPECTIVES ON THE SET AND SETTING

OF SHAMANISM AND PSYCHEDELIC

ECOPSYCHOLOGY

The cross-cultural characteristics of shamanic practices reveal

features indicative of our evolved psychology; practices that

incorporate these biological bases should enhance psychedelic

effects by optimizing set and setting. The homologies of

shamanism with key features with chimpanzee maximal

displays emphasize the features of the hominid baseline from

which shamanism emerged. Furthermore, many core features of

shamanism and its ritual set and setting are homologous with

typical psychedelic effects, indicating the need to consider

shamanic principles as important for structuring

contemporary psychedelic therapy.

Hominin Set and Setting: The Mimetic Suite

Features of shamanic setting have homologies with features

exhibited in the chimpanzee maximal display, indicating both

the hominid baseline and the deep evolutionary roots of

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FIGURE 1 | Mushroom Dancers. Relief of a painting in a rockshelter of

Tin TazariJt, Tassili, Algeria with dancing ﬁgures with a mushroom as a head

and a mushroom-like object in the right hand (from Samorini, 1992). Estimated

to be 7000-9000 years old. (Photo credit: Giorgio Samorini; used with

permission).

shamanism. These hominid features are: high energy nighttime

displays with group uniﬁcation; enactments of costly displays, the

precursors to dancing; dramatic emotional vocalizations

(chorusing and singing) by group members; collective hand

and foot drumming; and individual and group emotional

expression and integration. A signiﬁcant feature of hominid

ritual setting is the collective ritualization that integrates all

members of the local community.

Shamanism emerged through the exploitation of the mimetic

capacity through ritualized enactment, dancing, singing and vocal

imitation (Winkelman, 2010a). The shaman’s enactment of

relations with the spirits and journey to the spirit world exploits

the symbolic capacities of mimesis to enact in dramatic bodily

movements the struggles with the spirits, combined with emotional

expressions, including animal imitation. The overall affective

semantics is enhanced by shaman’s recounting of the

engagement with the spirits and the ASC induced in

participants by the rhythmic drumming, chanting and singing.

Mimesis and Habitus

The signiﬁcance of mimesis for psychological well-being is illustrated

in Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) concept of habitus, the ingrained

behavioral and social habits, emotional dispositions and habits of

perceiving and reacting derived from shared social experiences. The

habitus embodies the general cultural dispositions of the physical

body acquired through mimesis and involvement with others in

social life, especially during early socialization. Through mimesis and

internalization, individual learning experiences incorporate habitus

into body, shaping the biological, personal and social habits of the

person. While habitus has conscious dimensions, it is mostly

unconscious, ranging from bodily postures to linguistic and

mental habits creating perceptions and emotions. These

dispositions are largely acted out unconsciously, manifested in

basic assumptions, prejudices, attitudes, moral evaluations that

frame one’s habits and relationships with the world, especially

personal and cultural identities.

This habitus engrains at deep emotional levels not only adaptive

behaviors, but also those derived from stressed and pathological social

relations. This unconsciously acquired habitus is the basis of one’s

orientation to the environment, an embodiment that produces

consciousness within the subjectivity derived from the visceral

responses of the body. The activities of dance as well as mime

and enactment, are the expressions of this habitus. Dancing may

be an exceptional modality for both expressing and reprogramming

this mimetic-inscribed habitus (see Figure 1). The body-based

dynamic of this acquired disposition may be especially amenable

to body-based therapies, which should be considered as adjuncts to

shamanic and psychedelic therapies (see Razvi and Elfﬁnk, 2020).

Music

Music, a core feature of shamanic ritual, is part of the mimetic

capacity with numerous adaptive psychophysiological effects that

both produce psychological and social integration and elicit healing

responses. Hominins evolved music and other mimetic modalities

because they extended social bonding through the release of

endogenous opioids. Music is an innate intelligence that provides

a capacity for evoking a range of endogenous healing mechanisms,

addressing health problems through eliciting emotional states and

concerns and transforming them. The myriad of physiological and

therapeutic effects of music make it a natural adjunct for ritual

healing, especially psychedelic-induced healing states.

Dance

The core role of dance in shamanism and the therapeutic use of

dance in cultures around the world reﬂects its mimetic basis, as well

as the diverse mechanisms of action of dance on the body and

mind, including contributing to the altering consciousness

(Woods, 2009; Winkelman 2010a; Winkelman, 2017b). The role

of dance in psychedelic and shamanic set involves its expression of

the mimetic body’s socialization and innate impulses. Dance

engages our habitus, our reality at the bodily level, the center of

our consciousness and identity. This habitualization of behavior

acquired through mimesis, can be engaged as a process of active

construction through dance, a mimetic re-construction of habitus

through engagement of the body in action. Klein (2003) illustrates

that the social dimension has an essential role in mimetic learning,

a participatory experience involving behavioral relations with

others through which one acquires personal dispositions and

sensibilities of social behavior.

Woods proposes that dance exercises intrinsic therapeutic effects

derived from the elicitation of emotional reactions that facilitate

catharsis. ASC produced through dance facilitate experiences of

different aspects of the self in personal expressions that liberate

repressed emotions in nonverbal expressions of unconscious

dynamics. This expression is exempliﬁed in possession

phenomena where dance performances manifest participants’

dissociated and repressed desires that are expressed in behavior

and utterances attributed to possessing entities. The effects of dance

as exercise produces cycles of sympathetic stimulation followed by

relaxation (parasympathetic collapse phase), providing an intrinsic

ability to both provide energetic stimulation and revitalization, as

well as relief of tension and stress. Woods reviews evidence that

dances also engage processes similar to hypnotic induction and a

release of ego control, which allows for emergence of ancient body-

based expressive modalities that promote psychological integration

and self-actualization.

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Healing

Set effects of healing involve elicitation of endogenous healing

responses through placebo effects, hypnotic susceptibility and

psychointegration of unconscious material. Group ritual

dynamics with dramatic authoritative performances enhance

hypnotic and placebo responses. The conspicuous displays

typical of shamanism should play an important role in

conveying these dynamic performances that elicit conﬁdence

and contribute to well-being. The collective rituals typiﬁed in

contemporary raves parallel these collective dynamics of

shamanism (Winkelman, 2015b).

Innate Modular Thought as Set

Shamanic ASC and psychedelics produce a cognitive set by

stimulating innate thought processes, particularly intrapersonal

and interpersonal awareness and mimetic and musical

intelligences. Innate modular thought also structures setting in

naturalistic (animal) intelligences and spiritual and existential

intelligences that produce spirit experiences and cosmological

explanations. Hubbard (2002) characterized shamanic cognition

as involving extension of the attributes of human consciousness

to the natural world, imbuing it with elements of meaning and

intentionality derived from humans’ qualities. Since the

stimulation of our innate perceptual structures by psychedelics

elevates these ancient innate capacities for detection of agents, an

natural aspect of the psychological set for psychedelic experiences

is relations with incorporeal entities. This animistic cosmology of

shamanism is a neurotheology (Winkelman, 2004) that is

activated by psychedelics and other ASC, a natural world view

derived from a biologically structured mode of knowing that

expresses our innate animal, social and mental natures. The

shaman’s dynamic encounter with the spirit world engages the

elevation and integration of these normally unconscious

processes wherein occur the personal experiences that are the

basis of the shamanic healing.

Animism and Animals

Entheogenic (and shamanic) perspectives engage a natural

neuropsychological set structuring our relationship to nature,

especially in animals that have human-like qualities. Ritual

engages our reptilian brain’s behavioral communication

systems and our paleomammalian brain’s analogical reasoning

and emotional, social, and personal processes. The effects of

psychedelics in disabling higher-level integrative centers

(prefrontal cortex and DMN) and reduction of serotonergic

inhibitory control results in ascendence of these reptilian and

paleomammalian brain activities (Winkelman, 2010a;

Winkelman, 2017a). The normally repressed sensory, personal

and emotional dynamics are transmitted by the ascending

networks into the frontal brain and conscious awareness,

providing information from the behavioral and emotional

functions MacLean (1973, 1990) calls “protomentation” and

“emotiomentation,” This information drives the

psychointegration exempliﬁed in the effects of psychedelics, a

powerful bottom-up brain dynamic informed by the ancient

primary processing capacities that produce experiences of self

in terms of animals. This is why the use of animal spirits as

symbolic systems for self-representation is inherent to shamanic

and psychedelic set and setting. They are an intrinsic

neurophenomenological ecopsychology in which the qualities

of animal species provide natural templates for differentiation

of personal identity and incorporation of external models into

self-development. Shamanic practices also interpret these animal

forms as messages that provide important information as visions.

Spirits as Others

Pre-modern psychedelic experience was entheogenic—an experience

of spiritual beings activated by the plant and within the self. This

encounter with an active social agent exempliﬁes functions of innate

modular cognitive intelligences and cognitive operations that are at

the core of shamanism. The animistic worldview reﬂects an enhanced

sociality with a natural world imbued with human qualities.

Shamanic relations embody the entheogenic perspective that

external entities can enter the person and manifest as spiritual

powers, as well as become guides and allies. Shamanism

incorporated the inﬂuences from these spirits as fundamental to

self, producing an ecopsychology based in perceptions of nature as

personal, intelligent, spiritual and human-like. Shamanism and

entheogenic encounters emphasize a set involving the

incorporation of others’ as self, reﬂecting an extension of the

social mind’s inference system beyond normal limitations because

spirits are presumed to have fuller access to strategic information.

ASC as Shamanic Set and Setting

Shamanic ASC have both personal and collective dimensions,

emphasizing their role as both set and setting. The shamanic set

for ritual involved various methods of inducing ASC, beginning

with preliminary fasting or dieting, sexual abstinence and sleep

deprivation, conditions that produce biological and

psychophysiological changes (Winkelman, 2013b). These produce

ASC and provide extrapharmacological inﬂuences that prime and

augment effects of psychedelics. This shamanic ritual setting also

produced powerful psychophysiological effects through drumming,

singing and dancing, which enhanced operation of the endogenous

opioid system and neuromodulatory transmitter system functions

(Winkelman, 2017b). Consequently, non-pharmacological ASC

induction is a fundamental principle of shamanic setting.

Various ASC result in breakdown in higher cognitive

processes and self-structures, exempliﬁed in the disintegration

of functions of the prefrontal cortex and Default Mode Network,

and in the phenomena of soul ﬂight and the death-and-rebirth

archetype, a signiﬁcant set for psychedelic personal

transformation. Some shamanic dynamics such as death-and-

rebirth and soul ﬂight reﬂect disarticulation of neurognostic

systems. This breakdown of the normal unity of innate

modules supporting consciousness produces new forms of

consciousness. ASC manifests our innate animistic and social

psychology involving the integration of innate thought modules

(Winkelman, 2002; Winkelman, 2019d). Shamanic ASC produce

a worldview of interconnectedness, reﬂecting increased global

connectivity dynamics that elevate the reptilian behavioral brain

and paleomammalian (limbic) emotional brain functions.

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Dreams and Active Imagination

Shamanic practices include dream incubation as a set preparation

prior to rituals and during performance of overnight rituals during

normal dream cycles, enhancing the integration of normally

unconscious processes into consciousness. Dreams provide a

natural extrapharmacological inﬂuence for shamanic and

psychedelic experiences, an enhanced capacity for accessing and

integrating information from the unconscious, especially in visual

forms. These normal physiological processes are integrated into

conscious awareness by the enhanced features of consciousness

produced by ritual (general arousal). The innate processes of

dreaming involving enhanced learning and memory integration

makes these features important adjuncts for an enhanced capacity

to integrate unconscious material into waking consciousness. This

integration facilitates the resolution of trauma and conﬂicts and

provides new possibilities in the processes of virtual scenario

construction created by the dream functions.

The phantasy imagery present in dreams and produced by

psychedelics has a direct relationship to the processes of “active

imagination” proposed by Carl Jung (1961). Jung proposed the

meditation technique of active imagination as a tool for

enhancing access to the unconscious mind and integrating its

contents into consciousness. By focusing on material from

dreams and the resultant narrative of produced by interpretation,

active imagination provides a process for integrating unconscious

material into conscious and the ego’s reality. Key tools for creating

this access are dreams, as well as active fantasy and imagination that

provide access to the contents of unconscious while at the same time

maintaining conscious awareness in order to allow for an integration

of unconscious dynamics so that these normally hidden dynamics

can be addressed. Psychedelics notably do both.

The process of active imagination focuses on the images that

emerge from the unconscious mind, exempliﬁed in dreams and

other processes such as fantasy that manifest material from

subconscious and unconscious processes. By allowing for an

emergence of unconscious material with focused consciousness

and attention, the active imagination techniques produce

psychological integration of the fragmented self and

dissociated functions, identities and complexes. A focus on

this material, particularly interpretation of the images through

the narrative exploration of their meanings, enhances their

integration with ego awareness. This parallels the post-session

integration activities typical of contemporary psychedelic

retreats. These processes not only produce personal integration

but also open the potential for the integration of material from the

collective unconscious (Jung, 1961).

Soul Flight Experiences

The ASCs of shamanism and psychedelics give rise to experiential

properties of a spiritual self, embodied in a soul ﬂight, astral body

or similar concept of the self apart from the physical body. This

epitome of the entheogenic experience, an experience of an in-

dwelling spiritual entity, takes various forms in shamanism,

including the death-and-rebirth experience involving the

disintegration of physical identity as a prelude to natural

processes of rebirth and self-transformation.

Death and Rebirth

An initiatory experience of death, typiﬁed in shamanic traditions

as being killed, and devoured by animals, has many

manifestations, an archetype of self-disintegration. This

disintegrative dynamic undoubtedly underlies the frequent

reports of psychedelic users that they are going to die.

Shamanic traditions emphasized facing death rather than

running, overcoming one’s fears in confronting experiences

that could lead to rebirth as a more powerful person.

Shamanic Setting as Communal

The set and setting of shamanic practice are spiritual and collective,

with the expectation of a transformative healing encounter through

intimate contact with spirit powers. Shamanic healing is communal,

attended by all in the local group. The shamanic setting extends the

social dynamic of ritual, incorporating non-physical social entities in

the cognitive orientation of animism and relationality with the

powers of nature, animals and the Universe. A setting in nature was

typical for many shamanic activities, and an intimate contact with

nature was part of most pre-modern settings. Even modern

psychedelic users occasionally experience animal contact during

their sessions (Luke, 2019). The social setting for shamanic

psychedelic use was of two major different formats: a reclusive

retreat in nature for shamanic training that may last for weeks to

months; and two communal forms. One communal form involved

consumption by the local group for an overnight ritual; and the

other involving consumption only by the shaman in a communal

ritual to enhance diagnostic and healing powers (Winkelman, 2007).

Visions and Divination

Shamanic ASC engage the visual system, a key source of shamanic

and psychedelic information. A deliberate internal engagement

with the visionary images enhances consciousness by accessing

intensiﬁed visual information and the novel forms of knowledge

created by interregional and global brain connectedness. As is the

case with supernatural agents, psychedelics and other vision

producing processes expand human abilities at scenario

building, producing thoughts independent of actual

circumstances or perceived limitations. The imagestic scenarios

typify unconscious manifestations and the operation of

decoupled cognition, with innate inference systems and

intelligences operating independent of normal environmental

input. Rock and Krippner (2011) characterized shamanic

visionary experiences as processes for deciphering images to

acquire novel information to enhance group survival by an

increased ability to predict future circumstances. Shamans

developed ritual processes to produce and integrate these

spontaneous images acquired from unconscious processes.

This enhanced information connectivity underlies the

shamanic use of ASC for divination—access to novel, innate

and unconscious knowledge. Seeking such information for

personal integration would be a natural setting of shamanism.

Metaphysical Intelligence

The adaptive niche construction capacity depended on many

evolved brain structures. Two crucial innate intelligences that

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Evolved Psychology of Psychedelics

Gardner added to the original eight in his update (2000) were:

Spiritual intelligence, a desire to engage spiritual, noetic and

transcendent experiences; and Existential (or metaphysical)

intelligence, concerned with cosmic issues, the meaning of life

and death and manifested in mythology and pantheons.

Boyer (2017) proposes that these inevitable human

tendencies to construct imagined worlds populated with

human-like entities is the consequence of our over-developed

social intelligence which evolved because of the importance of

knowing what other members of our group are thinking and

intending to do. Metaphysical intelligence contributes to

scenario construction and adaptations for complex social

interactions, providing a medium for anticipating possible

future responses as a preparation for actually performing them.

The so-called ﬁctions of spiritual and existential intelligence serve a

functional role in human cognition and social relations, providing

simulations for honing social skills and manifested in various forms

of human imagination such as daydreaming, active imagination,

fantasies and dreams. The ability of psychedelics to stimulate this

existential intelligence described by Gardner is renown, manifested

in entheogenic cultures’ beliefs regarding the role of these

entheogenic deities in the foundation of culture, mythology,

agriculture and cosmology.

One powerful quality of psychedelic experiences is the certainty

of one’s beliefs that may result. This reﬂects a modular intelligence,

an “existential (or ontological) operator [which] gives a sense of

reality to beliefs, regardless of whether they are non-contradictory or

contradictory, or counterintuitive, according to neocortical

operators” (Ernandes, 2013, p. 33). This limbic emotional

operator is fundamental to the strong feelings regarding

fundamental truths, whether from scientiﬁc, mystical or

psychedelic experiences. As MacLean noted: (1973, p. 123): “It

seems that the ancient limbic system provides the ingredients for

the strong affective feeling or conviction that we attach to our beliefs,

regardless of whether they are true or false!" Consequently, an

appropriate psychedelic set should consider a healthy dose of

skepticism regarding the certainty of experiences that result.

CONCLUSION

This transdisciplinary synthesis incorporating insights from

anthropology, evolutionary psychology, psychopharmacology,

and the clinical sciences and the neurosciences of psychedelics

provides an enhanced understanding of the biological bases of

shamanic psychedelic practices. Understanding these bases

provides insights into our evolved psychology and how to

incorporate these features into post-modern best practices

approaches to the set and setting for enhancing therapeutic

utilization of psychedelics. These can help guide the

application of traditional ethnomedicinal wisdom in the

interest of psychedelic-mediated improvements in the mental

health of post-modern populations.

The recent clinical research on the objective effects of

psychedelics provides an empirical basis to make inferences

regarding the likely effects of an environmental

factor—psychedelic mushrooms—in shaping selection for core

features of hominin psychology, sociality and cognition.

Psychedelics have deep evolutionary roots with our

ecopsychology through action on our nervous system,

particularly serotonin and dopamine. Their effects enhance

stress responses in producing active modes of adaptation

through changing stressor or our responses to them, as well as

enhancing environmental and personal awareness and sensitivity

to social rituals and their roles in emotional regulation and

healing.

Humanity’s evolved psychology involves enhanced capacities

that could have resulted from stimulation with these exogenous

neurotransmitter analogues and knowledge of these

biopsychosocial bases can an optimize psychedelic effects. These

biocultural adaptations are manifested in the cross-cultural

patterns of shamanistic ritual preparations and ceremonial

activities that incorporate a distilled wisdom regarding set and

setting features that help enhance the efﬁcacy of the therapeutic

experiences by a grounding in an orientation to innate intelligences

and their integration and interaction.

The principal interpretative framework provided by this

multidisciplinary approach to shamanic and psychedelic set and

setting is neurophenomenological (Laughlin et al., 1992), where

effects on neurological systems produce speciﬁc forms of

experience. This is reﬂected in the innate brain structures

stimulated by psychedelics and other ritualized ASC that create

the phenomenological experiences of the shamanic cosmology.

This phenomenology reﬂects pharmacological effects on systemic

brain functioning that produce a speciﬁc type of information,

exempliﬁed in visual imagery and the activation of innate modular

intelligences. These neurognostic elements and their

neurophenomenological dynamics provide the overall context of

meaning-making that is an innate set and setting structuring

psychedelic experiences and personal psychodynamics.

This neurognostic approach to adapting the structuring of

psychedelic experience to our evolved psychology also

accommodates principal aspects of pre-modern indigenous

practices for optimal utilization of psychedelics. The scientiﬁc

application of this traditional knowledge is supported by this

interdisciplinary synthesis that reveals the biogenetic origins of

shamanic ritual activities that prepare the mind-set of users.

These involve extrapharmacological effects of ritual practices

that enhance the dynamics of psychedelics.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The author conﬁrms being the sole contributor of this work and

has approved it for publication.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank José Manuel Rodríguez Arce for contributing to ideas

expressed here regarding the cognitive niche and Luis Eduardo

Luna for suggestions for organizing the material.

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Evolved Psychology of Psychedelics

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Conﬂict of Interest: The author declares that the research was conducted in the

absence of any commercial or ﬁnancial relationships that could be construed as a

potential conﬂict of interest.

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February 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 619890