Drumbeats Beat Themselves Through Me: Interorality in Practice

Abstract

In this paper I track and explore the layered and intersecting elements, practices, and culturally-specific traditions that coalesced within a single flash of coherent ritual within my personal practice. This project is framed by a number of analytics: the Filipino psychological concept of ‘fishing;’ Afro-Caribbean analytics of ‘interorality,’ ‘copresence,’ and ‘co-penetration;’ and the concept and lived reality of historical unresolved grief. Given the number of intersecting practices and traditions engaged in this paper, and the embodied nature of the practices and experiences, this paper is necessarily comparative and engages an anthropology of the senses. ‘Multiple’, ‘intersecting,’ and ‘liminal’ are plumb lines that run throughout. First, I trace the spiritual challenges of multiple heritages, as well as the frustrations and confusions of an evolving practice in traditions ‘not my own.’ Second, I inquire into the relationships between humans and other-than-human beings – ancestors, deities, and spirits – within Amazonian Indigenous traditions and Hindu traditions. Third, I turn to the emergence of contemporary shamanisms and the question of how one might relate in better ways. Throughout the paper, I emphasize the autonomy and power of spirits and copresences and the permeability of seemingly solid boundaries, especially the boundaries of the body. I also explore some of the ways that spirits and copresences within Amazonian Indigenous traditions and Hindu traditions are understood to move between forms, selves, and bodies, such as through breath, voice, and smoke. Throughout the paper, I trace the contours of my own evolving personal practice, and the emergence of my practice of holistic healthcare and ancestral medicine with others.