The Mapuche Machi’s Spirit Journey Traditions

Record summary

Mapuche machi are ritual specialists whose healing practices involve drumming, chanting, spirit relations and altered states; colonial and later ethnographic descriptions discuss journeys, possession-like experiences and communication with the spirit world. This lead is useful for comparing culturally framed healing trance and bodily agency without reducing it to a generic “shamanism.” Historical documentation is uneven and often mediated by missionaries or ethnographers. Contemporary practice should not be assumed identical to early accounts, and supernatural efficacy remains a matter of belief and interpretation.