BUREAU OF LOST CULTURE – What is a Shaman? (31/01/2026)
In the 1960s and 70s, the word Shaman had become a countercultural signal — shorthand for altered states, forbidden secrets and magical knowledge
Shamans appeared in underground books, on psychedelic record sleeves, in communes and consciousness-raising circles. Writers like Carlos Castaneda blurred the line between ethnography and spiritual fiction. The shaman became a figure of resistance: anti-technocratic, anti-authoritarian, closer to nature, closer to truth.
But as shamanism was absorbed into Western counterculture, it was also lifted out of its original cultures and turned into a new age archetype. The messy realities of land, lineage, obligation and survival were often replaced with visions, journeys and personal transformation.
Our guest is Max Carocci, an anthropologist whose book, Shamans: The Visual Culture, traces how shamans have been photographed, filmed, exhibited and mythologised — from early ethnographic archives to the psychedelic imagination and beyond – how museum displays and countercultural iconography helped turn the shaman into a symbolic figure — part spiritual rebel, part screen for Western longing — while real shamans continued to live under pressure from colonialism, repression and cultural loss.
