“Erik Davis (1999: 173), for example, conceptualises premodern shamans as ‘the social and ecological psychiatrists of their societies’. He aligns shamanic magic with both ‘empirical science’ and ‘virtual theatre’, arguing that the shaman used ‘language, costumes, gestures, song, and stagecraft’ in order to apply ‘techne to the social imagination, actively tweaking the images, desires, and stories that partly structure the collective psyche’”
