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This epilogue looks at the growing popularity of the shamanism idiom and the correlation with the emergence of neo-shamanism to anti-modern sentiments in Western intellectual culture. Since the 1960s, Western academics and spiritual seekers have increasingly questioned the modes of thinking associated with the Enlightenment and, more broadly, with the Western tradition in general. More often than not, this tradition is viewed as devoid of spiritual and ecological values. In some respects, the present rise of anti-modernism in the West is a reminder of the Romanticism movement in Europe in the early 19th century, the first reaction to the advances of the Enlightenment. In fact, much of anti-modernism in current humanities and many ideas popular in nature spiritualities can be traced to Romantic writers and philosophers. Like their intellectual predecessors, modern Western seekers and many academics crusade against materialistic science and lament the emptiness of modern Western life, looking to non-European traditions and to European antiquity for spiritual feedback. This line of thought that is critical of modernity has been visibly present in Western tradition since the age of the Enlightenment.

This chapter describes the first gathering of each pilgrimage group and explores the way in which the trip forms part of the pilgrims’ quest for the feminine. The most important meta-empirical beings related to the pilgrimage are Mary Magdalene, the Goddess and Mother Earth. Drawing on the writings of Marina Warner, the pilgrims conceptualize Mary Magdalene as a model for female empowerment both complementary and opposed to the Virgin Mary. Neo-shamanism has deeply influenced these pilgrims’ theories and practices, in particular two so-called indigenous traditions from Mexico (the Concheros) and the Andes of Peru.

This chapter examines the ways that contemporary curanderos as well as neo-shamans have endeavored to continue to “import” knowledge from Mesoamerica and South America. It shows that contemporary curanderos, in an act of cultural memory and reclamation, reconfigure their healing tradition as one that is largely indigenous rather than the result of colonial contact and oppression. It also considers new directions in curanderismo by focusing on the University of New Mexico's course on curanderismo and the growing role of neo-shamanism in contemporary Mexican American metaphysical healing. The chapter suggests that contemporary curanderismo combines an overt return to an imagined indigenous Mesoamerican and South American past with attempts to incorporate with other common alternative healing traditions such as ayurveda, Reiki, and massage therapies.

Traditionally used by various ethnic groups and peasants in the region of Putumayo-Caqueta, Colombia, yage remained confined for decades to rural and urban folk sectors. However, since the early nineties, ritual consumption of yage has had a profuse dissemination among middle and elite social sectors in cities across the country. Increasingly, intellectuals and artists are inviting taitas (indigenous shamans) to perform yage ceremonies in the city. Offered as “traditional indigenous medicine,” yage consumption has been institutionalized around new taitas who combine practices of indigenous traditions with new ritual forms. More recently, urbanization of yage has led to the formation of clusters of neoyageceros around these new taitas. Best known as malocas, these groups have institutionalized ritual consumption of yage, offering numerous kinds of therapeutic and spiritual services. This chapter analyzes and contrasts two new taitas and their malocas in the city of Pasto, in southern Colombia.