Michael Carmichael

 

 Michael Carmichael is a historian and author.  He received his B. A. degree from the University of North Carolina, and he has conducted post-graduate research in the history of science at many Universities and research institutions.  He studied anthropology with Weston La Barre of Duke University, ethnobotany with R. Gordon Wasson of the Harvard Botanical Museum, and he studied psychoanalysis privately in Princeton.  Working with La Barre and Wasson, he accepted their assignment to investigate the impact of psychoactive shamanism in the major occidental sources, and in 1985, he moved to Oxford in order to access major archives of unpublished manuscripts relevant to the origins of science. 

He read the alchemical manuscripts of Isaac Newton deposited in Cambridge; many alchemical manuscripts in the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nacionale; the Ashmolean and Digby collections of alchemical manuscripts deposited in the Bodleian Library, as well as many early alchemical manuscripts located in Milan, Florence and Venice.  He has examined the archive of Howard Carter, the discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun, deposited at the Griffith Institute in Oxford. 

 

In 1998, he appeared on the Channel 4 television series, 'Sacred Weeds' which investigated the use of psychoactive substances in archaic shamanism and ancient Egypt.  He lives and works in Oxford, where he is writing a history of the origin of science from shamanism.

LECTURE

LEGACY OF THE SHAMAN

Beginning in the distantly prehistoric past, shamanism is the cultural tradition that - more than any other - has shaped our cultural heritage. Originating as the psychological technique to expand and intensify human consciousness and its principal components - perception and rationality - shamanism is the psychic fountainhead for art, science, magic, religion and medicine. From Neolithic archaeological evidence only discovered in the past decade, shamanism clearly emerges as - not only the ancient intellectual paradigm of Neolithic culture - but also as definitely in control of scientific knowledge so advanced that it remains barely perceptible to modern science. Due to its psychological and rational pre-eminence in Neolithic culture, shamanistic traditions shaped the origins of civilisation. Dynastic Egypt, ancient China and Vedic India are three cases that will be investigated for shamanistic traditions. The legacy of shamanism extending through the classical, mediaeval, renaissance, enlightenment and modern periods will be presented from a critical analysis of an abundant array of evidence. Shamanistic trends emerging today across a broad spectrum of cultural development in: art, religion and science will be identified.

Visit Michael's website at http://www.michaelcarmichael.com

 

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