Residual forms of matricentric clairvoyance and shamanistic practices in Yunnan and Sichuan

One of the main objectives of this interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dissertation is to explore what currently remains of female-centred shamanistic and clairvoyance practices which may be encountered in the Bai and Naze (Moso) in Yunnan and in Sichuan, mostly near to the Yunnan borders. In such stunning and remote areas of China I have explored what survives of matrilineal kinship amongst the Naze living in the areas surrounding Lugu Lake and Yonning, both on the Yunnan and Sichuan side. As well as what female forms of spirituality, have developed from such unique types of kinship.
After a lengthy exploration into the connotations, meanings and both the popular and academic nuances of the much misunderstood term ‘matriarchy’; the debates surrounding the term and the concept of Mother Law; the method of Consensus, and motherly power; the thesis discusses various implications inherent to the term shamanism itself and proposes a number of relevant case studies.
These focus on the last Naze Seer who died during my third PhD year, shortly after the completion of my fieldwork, and various other forms of indigenous female shamanistic or oracular practices in the areas surrounding Lijiang, Shaxi and Dali.