Doug,

It might be helpful to give you and idea of the range and content of shamanic beliefs in Mesoamerica as a template to compare with African and Egyptian ideas. For example, the existence of several "souls" in humans, some of which can leave the body and return, is crucial to shamanism and I did not see that in the example you gave me.
A short passage from my book:

Aztec religion is unique in its combination of an elaborate state religion with shamanism. Among the concepts and practices which are characteristic of shamanistic religions are: all phenomena in the environment are animate; the soul can be separated from the body during life by soul loss or by straying during sleep; the shaman in an ecstatic state can project his soul; the existence of an initial ecstatic experience for shamans, including a "sickness" vocation; supernatural causes and cures for illness; different levels of the universe with respective spirit rulers; man-animal transformations; animal spirit helpers, alter egos and guardians; and acquisition of supernatural or "medicine power" from an outside source (Furst 1976: 6). Hultkrantz (1985) points out that shamanism is usually found in hunter-gatherer societies and disappears when groups -change to horticulture or agriculture. Yet all of Furst's concepts are present in Aztec society. This is unique because the Aztecs were a state-level society with an ecclesiastical religion. Schultes and Hofmann (1979: 27-30) point out that Mexico represents the world's richest area of diversity and use of hallucinogens in aboriginal societies despite a comparatively modest number of species in the flora. This is significant because the use of hallucinogens is the most common way of inducing an altered state of consciousness, the ecstatic trance which is the key component of shamanism. La Barre (1970) proposed that the original migrants that settled the New World were hunter-gatherers practitioners of shamanism. They were thus culturally programmed to seek hallucinogens in this new flora and adopted plants native to the New World. In contrast to the rest of the world, religions retained their shamanistic traits even in the societies such as the Aztec which achieved a state level of complexity.

Among the Aztecs, shamans (nanahualtin, nahualli singular) were predestined. People born on a day 1-rain or 1-wind would become nahualli (Sahagún 1950-1969: book 4, 93, 101). Nanahualtin were chosen by illness vocations, by narrowly missing a lightning bolt, or by being marked at birth by albinism, lameness, cross-eyes or other birth defects (Serna 1953: 86-87,240-242). It was said that a nahualli would emerge and retreat into the womb four (naui) times at birth. We have already discussed the different levels of the universe with their different rulers and the fact that tonalli could leave the body. Shamans differed from ordinary people in that they could send their tonalli voluntarily on magical flights to other worlds outside their body, aided by hallucinogens. These different levels also corresponded to different time scales. The first time level corresponded to the time of the gods. The second time scale was the time of creation, mythic time. The third time scale was that of this world, that of humans. The shaman could travel to mythical time (#2) in either the upper or the lower world and simultaneously see his tonalli operate in earth time (#3 ) (López Austin 1988: vol. 1, 61-62, 67). The tonalli could enter animals (animal doubles) which were also called nahualli. Gods could also have a nahualli, a sort of disguise, or another form in which they could appear. For example, Tezcatlipoca's nanahualtin were the skunk, or the coyote while the that of Painal, an avatar of Huitzilopochtli, was a hummingbird (López Austin 1988: vol. 1, 368).

Similarly texts discussing drunkenness, peyotl (Lophopora sp.), tlapatl (Datura sp.), and ololiuhqui (Rivea sp.) use terms such as itech quinehua ("it takes possession of him") or itech quiza ("it comes out in him"). These indicate that Aztecs believed that possession by deities contained in these plants caused their effects. This concept of god "in a plant" is expressed by the word--entheogen ("God within us"), which Ruck (Wasson 1980: xiv) coined to replace terms such as hallucinogens, psychotomimetics, and psychedelics. These plants had a double function. They housed the god which took possession of the consumer and also sent his tonalli on a magical flight to mythical time and space (López Austin 1988: vol. 1, 356-358). We know that visions seen under the influence of entheogens are artificial and are due to the actions of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. To aboriginal shamans, the entheogenic experience is perceived as another dimension of reality. Reichel Dolmatoff (1978: 151-152) points out that the Tukano Indians distinguish between what one knows by seeing in ordinary reality and another type of knowledge which the mind "hears" under the influence of entheogens. Thus one cannot truly comprehend "reality" unless one sees the real world and also the mythical world as perceived in an altered state of consciousness. Wasson (1980: 79-92) proposed that the word xochitl ("flower") in Nahuatl poetry often referred to entheogens. For example in the poem,

Our priests, I ask of you:
From whence come the flowers that enrapture man?
The songs that intoxicate, the lovely songs?
Only from His home do they come, from the innermost part of heaven,
Only from there comes the myriad of flowers...
(León Portilla 1963: 77).

The word used to describe "flowers" as "enrapturing" or "intoxicating " in this poem is ihuinti, which is also the word used to describe the actions of hallucinogens. Caceres (1984: 208) points out that entheogens also produce auditory effects which can be structured by music. Therefore, the second word of the metaphor for poetry, cuicatl, may also refer to the effects of entheogens. In 1961, when León Portilla (1961: 128) pointed out that the Aztecs believed that only poetry--in xochitl in cuicatl--could lead to truth and that truth "was not found on earth", much less was known about the entheogenic experience than is known today. It is plausible that the expression was based on shamanic experience and refers, as in the case of the Tukano, to the concept that the full meaning of reality can only be perceived under the influence of entheogens.

Bernard