Dialogue between traditional indigenous knowledge and analytical psychology: a sketch for a re-enchantment of the world

 

 

Rafael Reis de Lima

Poet, Musician, graduated in Business Administration and Psychology from the Federal University of Bahia and Specialist in Analytical Theory of Carl Gustav Jung from IHAC-UFBA. e-mail: rafael-rl10@hotmail.com

 

 

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ABSTRACT

This work aims to establish a dialogue between the indigenous worldview and analytical psychology to understand how this interlocution can contribute to "re-enchant" the world. The study assumes that despite the evident material and technological progress, the structures of the western model based unilaterally on reason prove to be bankrupt and sterile in responding to the demands of contemporary man. To achieve the proposed objective and within the panorama of exploratory research, a bibliographic review was used to enable further deepening. As a result, it presents the approach of analytical psychology to two aspects of the indigenous cosmovision: the notion of Good Living in an integrative look at the soul of the world and the symbolic experience present in myths, rites, and dreams. ■

Keywords: indigenous knowledge, analytical psychology, disenchantment of the world, good living, symbolic experience.

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Introduction

Jungian postulates have consistently shown the influence of the rationalist model in man's distance from his soul reality, and how much this distance hinders the contact and expression of unconscious content. In Man and His Symbols, for example, Jung (2008) states that "our lives are now dominated by a goddess, Reason, which is our greatest and most tragic illusion" (p.128). Strengthening his criticism, Jung (2008) also recalls an episode in which a rabbi was asked why no one else saw God today, when in the past he appeared to people so often, and the rabbi's answer shed light on the perception that there were no longer people capable of bending low enough.

This work aims to establish a dialogue between the cosmovision of indigenous peoples and analytical theory to understand how this interlocution can contribute to what the researcher calls the re-enchantment of the world.

To this end, the researcher understands the crisis of contemporaneity based on the notion of disenchantment in the world (WEBER, 1982) and on the criticism of the rationalist model (HUSSERL, 2002) to, then, align the Jungian theoretical framework with the contributions of traditional indigenous knowledge in the perspective that "civilized man, regardless of his high degree of consciousness, remains an archaic man in the deepest layers of his psyche" (JUNG, 2013a, §105).

The interlocution proposed by the present study is justified insofar as it is possible to perceive a movement of approximation and rescue of ancestral and traditional knowledge within a decolonial perspective of knowledge and in favor of opening to other epistemologies, given the works of Viveiros de Castro (2002), Kopenawa and Albert (2015), Krenak (2019) and Oliveira (2020).

To reach the objective of this study, exploratory research was carried out, of a qualitative nature and based on the precepts of the literature review. The research was guided by the question: "how can the dialogue between traditional indigenous knowledge and analytical psychology contribute to the re-enchantment of the world?".

Exploratory research aims to provide the researcher with greater knowledge about the proposed problem. The methodological procedure of the bibliographic review is developed based on material already prepared, consisting mainly of books and scientific articles (GIL, 2002). However, it is noteworthy that the bibliographic review "is not the mere repetition of what has already been said or written on a certain subject, but provides the examination of a theme under a new focus or approach, reaching innovative conclusions" (MARCONI, LAKATOS, 2003, p.183).

 

Disenchantment of the world and the contemporary crisis

The expression "disenchantment of the world" is one of the most striking expressions in the writing of Max Weber (1982), an important German thinker who, with this expression, designated the very long period of rationalization through which passed Western religiosity and the process through which existence and nature became subject to techno-scientific domain and scrutiny. According to Cardoso (2014), the concept of "disenchantment of the world" proposed by Weber (1982) refers to a desacralized world, in which nature is stripped of its symbolic potential:

It mainly means, therefore, that there are no incalculable mysterious forces, but that we can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means the world has been disenchanted. We no longer need to resort to magical means to dominate or implore spirits, as did the savage, for whom these mysterious powers existed. The technical means and calculations perform the service (p.165).

Another important perspective that contributes to the analysis of contemporaneity, mainly because it brings to light the crisis of the scientific model and its implication in the subjective experience, is the one advocated by Husserl (2002) in The crisis of european humanity and philosophy. For him, the scientific model presents a vision of the world in which quantification, objectivism, formalization and technification predominate. Such a conception is opposed to the "world of life", which, according to Husserl (2002, p. 34) is the "world of immediate subjective experiences, endowed in itself with meaning and purpose".

Husserl (2002) points out that the scientific model, in its attempt to reach certain criteria, distances the subject from the "world of life", from that source where the experience takes place in a burning and pulsating way.

In line with the postulations of Weber (1982) and Husserl (2002), Jung (2008), when reinforcing his civilizational critique, emphasizes that:

Modern man does not understand how much his rationalism (which destroyed his ability to react to numinous ideas and symbols) left him at the mercy of the psychic "underworld". He freed himself from "superstitions" (or at least he thinks he did), but in the process he lost his spiritual values on a positively alarming scale. Its moral and spiritual traditions have disintegrated and so it now pays a high price in terms of universal disorientation and dissociation (p.118).

Jung and ancestral wisdom

In the book Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung, 2016a) tells of his journey through different places on Earth, reflecting on the encounter with different peoples and different knowledges. About the pueblo Indians of New Mexico, for example, Jung (2016a) points out:

I understood, then, on which "dignity" rested, the serene certainty of the isolated individual: he was a child of the Sun, his life had a cosmological meaning [...] Knowledge does not enrich us; on the contrary, it distances us more and more from the mythical world, in which, in the past, we had the right to citizenship (p.306).

On a trip to North Africa, Jung (2016a, p. 297) brings the important realization that the emotional nature of these peoples "exerts a powerful, suggestive effect on these historical layers in us, which we have just overcome or that, at least, we believe we have overcome it". In this sense, it is understandable how much the intuitive and emotional faculties, so strong and present in traditional peoples, are indispensable for a less one-sided experience of the psyche (WHITMONT, 1969).

Linked to this vision, Jung (2016b) reinforces, in Symbols of Transformation that just as our body in many organs still retains the remnants of ancient functions and states, so our spirit, which seems to have surpassed all primitive instincts, still bears the marks of development by that passed and repeats the archaic at least in dreams and fantasy. To Jung (2008):

Man feels isolated in the cosmos because, no longer involved with nature, he has lost his "unconscious emotional identification" with natural phenomena [...]. His contact with nature ended, and so did the deep emotional energy that this symbolic connection fed. (p.120)

It is precisely the psyche's ability to manifest itself symbolically that distinguishes the two types of thinking highlighted by Jung (2016b): directed thinking and fantasy thinking. The symbol, according to Jung (2015), is always a product of a highly complex nature, as it is composed of data from all psychic functions. Furthermore, the symbol is neither rational nor irrational in nature and has a side that speaks to reason and another inaccessible to reason. It reaches dimensions that rational knowledge cannot reach, or, as Jung points out, "through fantasy-thought, directed thought is linked with the oldest layers of the human spirit (JUNG, 2016b, §39).

For Jung (2015, §906), a symbol can be considered as "any psychic product that has for some time been the best possible expression of a hitherto unknown or only relatively known fact". In other words, the symbol is the eternal mediator between what is and what is not accessible to reason and as such, it participates and exists in an experiential form, being impossible to have its meaning exhausted or determined, making it possible to establish multiple relationships and analogies (SERBENA, 2010).

In this way, re-enchanting the world requires an opening to indigenous wisdom that can welcome a perception, a sensitivity and a way of being full of symbolic experiences, since:

The numinous, the mysterious and the irrational has always been "offered" to us, but "recognized" only by a few. If the number of these few shrinks more and more, this is due to the fact that we seem to have lost the means by which, it is true, we "offer" the divine, but we do not "unveil" it. Each age has given the mystery its own suitable garment; but our era has not yet found an appropriate envelope for the numinous (JACOBI, 2017, p.103).

 

Indigenous traditional knowledge

Anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro stated in a conference entitled The model and the example: two ways to change the world, that "traditional knowledge, such as that produced and disseminated by indigenous peoples or by peasants, are examples of sensitivity and how to live in peace with the world in this century" (MARCOS, 2017). Or, as the message brought by the subtitle of the book by the Ecuadorian thinker Alberto Acosta (2016) clearly shows: Good Living - an opportunity to imagine other worlds.

Good Living is a concept that comes from the Amerindian cosmology and way of life, but which is present in different cultures and, according to Acosta (2016, p.15), refers to "life on a small scale, sustainable and balanced, as means necessary to guarantee a dignified life for all and the very survival of the human species and the planet".

Good Living, which can be understood as sumak kawsay (kíchwa), suma qamaña (aymara) or nhandereko (guarani), presents itself as an opportunity to collectively build a new way of life and is extremely in tune with other worldviews in which it seeks to establish balanced relationships, in harmony with nature and with the community, such as the African philosophy of ubuntu (I am because we are), thus evidencing the archetypal aspect of the community value of human experience. As Acosta (2016, p. 24) points out, "the indigenous people are neither pre-modern nor backward. Its values, experiences and practices synthesize a lively civilization that has demonstrated its capacity to face colonial modernity".

In this way, Good Living is a concept that brings together practices, values, and experiences from the community matrix of peoples who live in harmony with nature. It should be noted that nature, for indigenous peoples, transcends the notion of the natural or physical world and approaches what Krenak (2019, p. 10) emphasizes: "I don't understand where there is anything that is not nature. Everything is nature. The cosmos is nature. All I can think about is nature."

In addition to the intimate relationship with nature, indigenous peoples are moved by the poetry of myths - words that enchant and give direction, provoke, and evoke the events of early times, when only it, the Word, existed (MUNDURUKU, 2004). According to Viveiros de Castro (2002, p.355) "the myth speaks of a state of being where bodies and names, souls and actions, the self and the other interpenetrate, immersed in the same pre-subjective and pre-objective medium".

In the dimension of rites, the researcher highlights the Guarani way of ritualizing the naming process, which is the central core of the psychic meaning of being Guarani. The naming process, called Nemongaraí, takes place in the first year of life and is one of the main rituals of this people. It refers to an initial principle of individuation, in which finding a name is a way of ritualizing the meaning of a Guarani existence through a path of connection with the divine (OLIVEIRA, 2020).

Furthermore, indigenous peoples attach great importance to dreams, and they are always attentive to their messages and the possibility of interpreting them. Indigenous peoples have, with the unconscious, a live and very present contact in all aspects of their lives. The dream, particularly the shamanic dream induced by the consumption of hallucinogens, is the royal path of knowledge of the invisible foundations of the world, both for the Yanomami and for many other Amerindian peoples, or, as Jung pointed out (2013b, §674) "dreams were man's original orientation in the great darkness". In a constant criticism of the white man, Kopenawa and Albert (2015) show that:

When they sleep, they only see in the dream what surrounds them during the day. They don't really know how to dream, because the spirits don't take their image during their sleep [...]. Their sleep is bad and their dream is slow to come. And when it finally does, it never goes far and ends too quickly. There is no doubt that they have many antennas and radios in their cities, but these are just for listening to themselves (p.460).

Therefore, such reflections are in line with the position of Krenak (2019, p. 9) when he states that "if people do not have deep bonds with their ancestral memory, with the references that support an identity, they will go crazy in this crazy world we share."

 

Indigenous Good Living and the connection to the soul of the world

Indigenous peoples, despite belonging to so many ethnic groups with different languages, myths and rites, share the same cosmological foundation which is the notion of a souled world, where human beings, non-human beings and invisible entities (as the enchanted ones) form an indivisible and integrated whole (OLIVEIRA, 2020), a notion that resembles the concept of anima mundi, which, according to Jung (2014a, § 921), refers to the "world soul, a kind of unique life that fills all things, penetrates all things, connects and holds all things together, making the whole world machine one".

For our Xingu indigenous brothers, the world is populated by many species of beings, not only from the animal and plant kingdom, but also minerals, water, air and the Earth itself, which have their own spirit and intelligence - or ajayu, in Aymara (ACOSTA, 2016, p.15).

Deepening the instigations on Good Living, Acosta (2016) highlights that such an understanding is affirmed in the balance and harmony between beings. In harmony between the individual and himself, between the individual and society, and between society and the planet. Only from these three harmonies, emphasizes Acosta (2016, p. 15) "we will be able to establish a deep connection and interdependence with the nature of which we are a part".

Therefore, it is noted that the indigenous feeling of rootedness, belonging and identity is closely linked to the relationship with nature, with the Mother Earth, which, as stated by Krenak (2019, p.22) "in some cultures it continues to be recognized as our mother and provider in broad senses, not only in the dimension of subsistence and the maintenance of our lives, but also in the transcendent dimension that gives meaning to our existence".

Jung devoted considerable attention to investigations into psychic development and demonstrated in several passages of his work that the adaptation to the environment and the progress of scientific and technological knowledge required the hardening of the analytical-rational state of consciousness, and therefore, an estrangement in relation to the magical dimension of mythical thinking, so present in the original peoples. For him, analytical psychology offers new possibilities for thinking about the human being, in addition to being:

A reaction against an exaggerated rationalization of consciousness that, in the preoccupation of producing guided processes, isolates itself from nature and, thus, deprives man of his natural history and transposes him to a rationally limited present [...] This limitation generates in the individual the feeling that he is a random and meaningless creature, and this feeling prevents us from living life with the intensity it requires in order to be lived to its fullest [...] The quality of eternity, which is so characteristic of the life of the primitive, lacking entirely in our lives. We live protected by our rationalist walls against the eternity of nature (JUNG, 2012, §739).

The vision that separates the individual from the collective, the visible reality from the invisible world, which dissociates spirit, soul, and matter, is not part of the indigenous cosmogony or the analytical psychology. Thus, "when we accept this point of view we have to assume that life is really a continuum and destined to be as it is, that is, a whole interlacement in which things live with or through each other" (JUNG, 1976, §180)

Without the experience of meaning in this continuum, the individual becomes isolated and does not perceive the natural self-regulating principle, present in the intrinsic interrelationship of existence (LYRIO, 2020). Consequently, it relates to the external world in a unilateral way, impoverished by the emptiness caused by the lack of communication with the energies of the unconscious where "we feel as if we were loose in a cosmos empty of meaning" (KRENAK, 2019, p. 22).

The name krenak consists of two terms: one is the first particle, kre, which means head, the other, nak, means earth. Krenak is the heritage we receive from our ancestors, from our memories of origin, which identifies us as the "head of the earth", as a humanity that cannot conceive of itself without this connection, without this deep communion with the earth (KRENAK, 2019, p. 24).

By launching a critique of urban subjects who are disconnected from nature, Kopenawa and Albert (2015, p.468) show how this distance blunts the creative forces of the psyche and evidences the original indigenous experience of mythic-affective connection with the natural world and with life saying that "I think you should dream of the land, because it has a heart and breathes".

In the close connection between the physical and the psychic, Jung (2013a) observed that there is a pattern of psychoid animic functioning, that is, there is a reciprocal interweaving between matter and psyche, consequently synchronistic, which integrates all phenomena. This relationship between psyche and matter, manifested in an unknown but experiential connection, Jung called the psychoid archetype. From the Yanomami perspective, this psychophysical unit is not conceptual, but projected in everyday life, in the elements of nature (LYRIO, 2020).

Considering that "the soul of the world is a natural force, responsible for all the phenomena of life and the psyche" (JUNG, 2012, §393), it is understood to be necessary for today's society:

Develop an inclusive and even generous look, in which to bring back the anima mundi to human beings' relationships with themselves and the cosmos. That reflects the image of the Indigenous mirror, that is, the look at the whole, in which the alterity has guaranteed its place of belonging. So that the symbols, the everyday, the basic nature to live in all forms of life, are the reflection of the Self. So that at last, love for the world develops in its widest and most inclusive manifestation (LYRIO, 2020, p. 145).

 

Myths, rites, and dreams: the strength of the symbolic experience

The re-enchantment of the world necessarily involves valuing indigenous well-being as a way of updating the notion of a souled world, highlighting the intertwining between matter and psyche, and fostering the urgent debate on the environmental issues of our time. In addition, indigenous knowledge brings the strength of the symbolic experience present in their myths, rites and dreams and evidences the symbolizing capacity of the psyche, that is, the mediating quality of the symbol and the opening of consciousness to the perception of the psychoid, to the perception of something that, sometimes, is not possible to formulate with precision due to the lack of categories that extrapolate those that the current rationality accepts (GAMBINI, 2020).

Myths are understood as psychic phenomena that reveal the very nature of the psyche and "result from the incoercible tendency of the unconscious to project internal occurrences, which unfold within it, onto the phenomena of the external world, translating them into images" (SILVEIRA, 2007, p. 114).

The myth in tribal societies constitutes a predominant mode of cosmovision (ELIADE, 1963) which, in addition to helping man to overcome his own limits and conditioning, encourages him to rise to where the greatest are. To Oliveira (2020):

This mythological look gives us back the soul life, the symbols contained in the myths bring the energy that flows in and out of each one. The marriage of both mental models of reason and emotion, logos and myths brings us closer to the totality and consequently to the psychic health that results from the union of polarities (p. 122).

However, there seems to be general agreement on the loss of the protection of previously accepted mythical structures. We suffer an unprecedented impoverishment of symbols (CAMPBELL, 2001) at a time when heart and soul are increasingly threatened with atrophy (WHITMONT, 1969).

In this sense, it is understandable Jung's concern with showing that "intuition, emotion and the ability to perceive and create through symbols are basic modes of human functioning" (WHITMONT, 1969, p. 17).

Our current motivating ideas are not myths but ideologies, lacking in transcendental significance. I think this loss of awareness of the myth is the most devastating humanity could suffer. For, as I have stated, the awareness of the myth is the bond that unites men to one another and to the unfathomable Mystery from which humanity arose; and without whose reference the radical meaning of things ends (WHEELWRIGHT, 1962 apud CAMPBELL, 2001, p.113).

As a myth, "The falling sky", for example, which prophetically warns the Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa imbued with his spiritual vision of the world, concerns the predatory aspect of the civilizational machine that leaves its trail of violence and destruction wherever it goes, and this way, when the forest succumbs to devastation and the last shaman dies, the sky will fall on them all. As Kopenawa and Albert (2015, p. 492) warn, "without shamans the forest is fragile and cannot stand alone [...] and the sky will be covered with dark clouds and there will be no more day. It will rain without stopping. A hurricane wind will start blowing without ever stopping."

This myth supports a cosmological vision of which Davi Kopenawa is the spokesperson and points out how the sustainability of life on earth is strongly interconnected with the preservation of the forest and the life of its original inhabitants. Jung (2013a, §575) also indicated that "the fear of planetary destruction could save us from the worst, but this threat will continue to hover like a sinister cloud over our existence, if we do not find a bridge capable of overcoming the psychic split and world policy".

This is what the xapiri tell us when their images speak to us during dream times. They don't lie. They are brave warriors, who never alert us for nothing [...] The xapiri are already announcing all this to us, although the whites think they are lies [...] What whites call the future, for us, is a sky protected from the fumes of the xawara epidemics and firmly tied above us (KOPENAWA; ALBERT, 2015, p. 494).

The perspectives of Jung (2013a) and of Kopenawa and Albert (2015) are consistent in showing the predatory, consumerist and materialist attitude of contemporary man and signal that if humanity does not have a more generous look at nature, if there is not a construction of a "bridge" (symbolic, mythological, and poetic in itself) with the unconscious energies and soul of the world, humanity will be doomed to destruction.

Oliveira (2020) understands shamanism in the Guarani cosmovision as a paradigm of the individuation process, which is a central aspect of Jungian psychology. Thus, about the symbolic experience within the scope of ritualizations, the Nemongaraí, a Guarani naming ritual that organizes the approximation between matter and spirit, stands out.

The shamanism perceived in the Guarani cosmovision is an education and formation of a deep encounter with a singularity that is constituted of a whole, of a spiritual and ancestral field. Each Guarani needs to find their spirit, that is, their name, every day, in their own body and movement (p. 236).

The word is the spirit (nhe'e), a word dreamed of and intuited by the karaí and embodied in the birth of the child. In the ritual, the karaí, representing the figure of the shaman, is the catalyzing element of this communication between the deities and the families, in the sense that he hears the name and informs the parents, who, in turn, trust this mediation (OLIVEIRA, 2020):

[...] the formation of the person begins more strongly at that moment in which the parents, the community and the child himself become aware of this name. The responsibility is passed on to the parents, who must take care of and observe how each child will move with their nhe'é. And the journey, with each step taken, is to constitute a condition of understanding and communication with the meaning of what the name evokes in the body of each Guarani, in the sense of receiving spiritual ancestry in oneself (p. 235).

Despite the extreme confidence that the community has in the karaí, it is important to emphasize the possibility (rare, by the way) of changing their name.

There are situations, already described by a kunhãkaraí, in which her granddaughter was sick, already being treated by Western-minded doctors and the cure was not taking place. She stated that she wanted to change her name, as she was being called by a name that did not belong to her, that did not speak of her soul, and the community accepted. And, little by little, the girl recovered her health (MENEZES, 2019 apud OLIVEIRA, 2020, p.236).

Such a view demonstrates the sickening potential of not following the "dreamed name", of not obeying and paying attention to the call and the internal power that cries out for fulfillment. This Guarani ritual is an invitation to meet who we are, which is the memory of our own name; an invitation so that each one can find the nhe'e, the proper name, the "dreamed name".

This force that drives someone to follow their own path with determination and will, Jung (2014b) calls designation. It compels the individual to emancipate himself from the gregarious mass and acts as if it were a law of God, which it is not possible to evade.

He must obey his own law, as if a demon were breathing new and strange paths into him. Whoever has an appointment listens to the voice of his inner self, he is appointed. Therefore, the legend attributes to this person a personal devil, who advises him and whose duties he must carry out (§300).

It is noticed that there is a link between shamanism and psychotherapy, since the shaman and the analyst amplify the function of the myth in their respective crafts. In the Jungian method this process appears clearly in the dynamics of opposites, in the transcendent function of the Self and in the archetype of the coniunctio. The analyst, like the shaman, must have this ability to move between conscious and unconscious, between the concrete and the symbolic (OLIVEIRA, 2020). This bridging process opens the way for content that has either been repressed or has been out of consciousness. The word soul (nhe'e) can also meet the subject in a modern therapeutic setting.

As already mentioned, dreams are also configured as an experience of high symbolic potential. As noted by Kopenawa and Albert (2015, p. 465), "we Yanomami, when we want to know things, make an effort to see them in a dream. This is our way of gaining knowledge. It was, therefore, following this custom that I too learned to see". Indigenous knowledge understands the dream not only as a dream experience, but as a discipline related to the formation, the cosmovision, the tradition of different peoples who have in the dream a path of learning, self-knowledge about life, and the application of this knowledge in their interaction with the world and with other people (KRENAK, 2019).

It is frequent, among native peoples, to establish the difference between "big dreams", in contrast to "small dreams". These relate to personal themes and minor daily problems, while only the "big dreams" present archetypal themes and should be shared, as they concern everyone in the tribe, village or community (OLIVEIRA, 2020, p. 48).

It is interesting to note the resonance between the indigenous perspective and the Jungian postulations about dreams. Jung (2013c, §317) points out that it is "very likely that our dream soul has a similar wealth of contents and forms of life or, who knows, much superior to those of conscious life whose nature is essentially concentration, limitation and exclusion". In other words, Jung credits the dream as this place of pure potency, richness of contents and forms of life far superior to those of conscious life. And Krenak (2019, p. 32) says that the dream place represents "another place that we can inhabit beyond this hard land [...] a transcendent experience in which the human cocoon implodes, opening up to other views of unbounded life".

There are those who understand the oneiric dimension as a renunciation of the practical meaning of life, but as Krenak points out, "we can also find those who would see no meaning in life if they were not informed by dreams, in which they can seek songs, healing, inspiration and even the resolution of practical issues" (KRENAK, 2019, p. 25). According to Jung (2013c):

Dreams can express implacable truths, philosophical sentences, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, and even telepathic visions, irrational experiences, and God knows what else. We cannot help but remember that we spend almost half of our life in a more or less unconscious state. The specific way in which the unconscious communicates with the consciousness is the dream (§317).

It is noted, due to what was exposed, that the symbolic experience is essential for contemporary man, as symbols, myths, and rites "always point beyond themselves, to that transcendent and immanent force" (OLIVEIRA, 2020, p. 47). In other words, symbols have life, they act and reach dimensions that rational knowledge cannot reach (SILVEIRA, 2007).

If our era has not yet found an appropriate envelope for the numinous, indigenous knowledge offers us possible ways to rescue and value the emotional and intuitive dimension so indispensable for a less one-sided experience of the psyche.

Such understanding is consistent with Jung's emphasis on the fact that the criterion of a life is the relationship with the unlimited and that "if we understand and feel that already in this life we are related to the infinite, desires and attitudes change. Finally, we only value what is essential and if we don't access it, life is wasted" (JUNG, 2016a, p. 387). This is, then, the invitation and the challenge: that the unlimited becomes increasingly present and favors a greater approximation with the totality through the union of the polarities between the already frayed reason and the insurgent emotion, between the predominance of logos and the vital rescue of mythos.

 

Final considerations

The aim of this work was to establish a dialogue between traditional indigenous knowledge with the Jungian theoretical field to find clues that could answer the question of how this knowledge can contribute to re-enchant the world, understanding with this expression, the metaphorical rescue of the spell and magic of life.

The methodological procedure of the bibliographic review allowed for the expected deepening of concepts and thematic articulations and resulted in an analysis built in light of two main guiding axes: the connection with the soul of the world through indigenous Good Living and the symbolic experience lived in myths, rites and dreams.

The research showed that the indigenous feeling of rootedness, belonging and identity is closely linked to the relationship with nature and that indigenous peoples maintain a deep level of connection with the psyche, mediated by experiences of high archetypal content.

It is noteworthy that this work does not propose a return to a pre-civilization period, nor to the stage of the natural man from the Rousseaunean perspective, but to understand how the cosmovision of traditional indigenous peoples can help contemporary man to seek greater integration with his own soul and with the soul of the world. To this end, the researcher believes that the rescue of indigenous wisdom is essential, in line with what Lyrio (2020) points out about the need to let oneself be touched by the experience of this symbolic thinking, to introduce otherness into consciousness and welcome into the indigenous radical heart (OLIVEIRA, 2020).

Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that the study mapped other aspects that, due to the limit of the scope of the work, cannot be incorporated, but whose research potential deserves to be considered as an element of future research, especially the aspects concerning indigenous care and health practices (in alternative to the biomedical model) and the entire field of artistic expressions present in indigenous painting, singing, and dancing.

Thus, this study joins the small and growing group of publications in the field of analytical psychology - mainly the one organized by Oliveira (2020) -concerned with bringing, in addition to a critique of the civilizing process, the communion of different perspectives and cosmovisions, in favor of broadening the pluriparadigmatic field that focuses on contemporary and emerging issues. ■

 

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Received: 02/16/2022
Revised: 06/12/2022