Even if the terms emic and etic are problematic, the
difficulty they attempt to address can be quite a
practical one!
In the days when I was a journal editor, a contributor
from Ireland submitted an article on the Pookah. One
matter under discussion was what title to give the
paper, and i suggested "The Pookha: A Multi-Functional
Irish Fairy". He rejected this indignantly, as from
the Irish point of view Pookhas are quite distinct
from fairies, indeed hostile to them. But from my
english viewpoint it seemed obvious that in all the
tales about the pookha he was behaving either like a
house-spirit (brownie, pixy etc), or like a trickster
shape-changing spirit (Puck), and that both these are
fairy traits, so in my eyes he was a type of fairy.
Naturally, I let the author's view prevail, and we
agreed to call him a 'supernatural entity'. As it was
only a single article, we could agree this compromise.
But if I'd been editing, say, an Encyclopedia of
European Folklore, it would have been a more
troublesome problem.
Jacqueline
--- jacqueline simpson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Hi, Caroline,
>
> If you're interested in the ways that Neo-paganism
> has
> drawn on folklore materials, have you read Hutton's
> "Triumph of the Moon" yet? It's more recent than his
> "Stations of the Sun" and has a whole section on
> this
> topic, plus much else that is of top-grade interest.
>
> For folklore in itself, of course, the reading list
> would be huge, even for Britain alone.
>
> Jacqueline
>
>
>
>
> --- Caroline Tully <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Hi Sabina...
> >
> > You said...
> > >>Thanks for the fan letter! It's always nice to
> > know one's books are read
> > and appreciated, that they don't just go out there
> > into the ether, or the
> > Romulan Neutral Zone of unread academic books, or
> > (the worst of all
> > horrors!) the remainder bin at the used book
> shop.<<
> >
> > I am very enthusiastic about academic works that
> are
> > informative, in a new
> > way, about Neo-Paganism and broader subjects - for
> > the benefit of
> > practitioners, as well as for those studying them.
> > Without sounding like a
> > sychophant (how can a fan *not* sound somewhat
> > sychophantic however!?!) I
> > think your book is on the level of importance for
> > the Neo-Pagan movement's
> > looking-at-itself as is, say, "Ronald Hutton's
> > Triumph of the Moon" - your
> > book is different to his, sure, but still very
> > informative in its
> > highlighting and analysis of components of
> > Witchcraft-Neo-Pagansim that we
> > may have not seen, or looked at, or been aware of
> > before. I liken it to
> > contributing to what I think of as "The Continuing
> > Detective Story About the
> > Origins of Modern Paganism". Your folklore angle
> is
> > really, really
> > interesting - I became interested in folklore's
> > relationship to modern
> > Paganism a few years ago when I read that last
> > chapter (I think it was) in
> > Hutton's "Stations of the Sun" and so I'm pleased
> to
> > read something else
> > that is even more folklore, or
> > folkloristics-informed (because I know hardly
> > anything about folklore but am interested in it).
> I
> > was also led to Pagan
> > Reconstructionism in part via your Streghe &
> Aradia
> > articles, it went
> > something like this... thinking about Wicca,
> > thinking about C.G. Leland's
> > contribution, thinking about Raven Grimassi's
> > claims, thinking about your
> > articles regarding Italian Witchcraft, thinking
> > about Leland's Etruscan
> > book, thinking about ancient Roman religion,
> leading
> > to ancient Greek
> > religion etc.
> >
> > I notice in the Introduction in "Witching
> Culture",
> > which I hadn't read as
> > of my last post but have now, that you mention
> > aesthetics and creative
> > expression as some of what you're looking at
> > regarding Neo-Paganism. (Now of
> > course can't find citation). I've been toying with
> > the idea that religion,
> > so-called religious experience, is really
> aesthetic
> > experience, an "art
> > experience" if you will - even when it involves
> > aniconic religions, it's
> > still an aesthetic.... I need to think about this
> > more to elucidate exactly
> > what I mean here.. but I am inspired in this by
> the
> > grumpy atheism of
> > Richard Dawkins, which I find liberating, but my
> > simultaneous attraction to
> > Pagansim which I think may be aesthetic, I'm not
> > sure if it is primarily
> > aesthetic or not, and by "aesthetic" I mean not
> only
> > visual, but literary,
> > bodily...
> >
> > >>I've been enjoying your posts to the magic list,
> > and I really loved your
> > essay in Laura Wildman's edited book, which I got
> > for Christmas; you made
> > your experiences with birth and death very vivid
> and
> > embodied, which is
> > something I strive for in my own writing.<<
> >
> > Oh thanks. That book's got lots of interesting
> > stories, with a lot of the
> > "miraculous" in them. My favourite chapter in that
> > book is K.A.Laity's
> > "Ancient Texts and Venerable Tales". As for my
> > chapter, (sorry to other list
> > members who might be bored by me talking about
> > myself, I won't keep doing
> > it, but...). Yeah, it was a sad experience, very
> > traumatic actually. I am
> > kind of self conscious about that chapter, because
> I
> > don't want it to look
> > like I'm coming across as "poor me"... "pay
> > attention to poor old me"... Its
> > not meant to be a "poor me" chapter, even though
> it
> > sort of is. What I think
> > was interesting is how that experience led me to
> > having a real "crisis of
> > faith" regarding some of what I'd previously
> > believed regarding "women's
> > spirituality", and how that's kind of led me on to
> > researching the gulf
> > between popular use of, and belief in, aspects of
> > archaeology, like say,
> > paleolithic "Venus" figurines, versus academic
> > approaches to the same
> > figurines - which are quite different to popular
> > approches ie/ in academic
> > archaeology at the moment, prehistoric female
> > statues are *not* regarded as
> > being Goddesses at all - sure they *might* be
> > Goddesses, but they might be
> > something else entirely... There's no evidence for
> > divinity etc.... Also, at
> > the time of that experience, I was genuinely
> baffled
> > because I guess I'd
> > spent years kind of believing that being a
> "Goddess
> > woman" ensured me to be
> > "biologically successful" in reproduction.. all
> that
> > girly womb stuff which
> > I'd been under the impression about for years that
> > biological female =
> > goddess worshipper = successful at reproduction...
> > does that sound like it
> > makes any sense? I guess what I'm saying was that
> in
> > the 1980's, when I
> > started mixing with Wiccan-types - mostly they
> were
> > about 10 years older
> > than I was and they had children - they kinda
> > believed (and conveyed to me)
> > that Wicca and Goddess stuff was *about*
> > reproduction... I think its called
> > "biological determinism" these days...... Plus,
> I'm
> > not really *that*
> > maternal anyway... Simon, who I live with, is more
> > maternal than me. So
> > that's another thing... do I have to fit into this
> > 'Mother Goddess' mould?
> >
> > >>The Neoplatonic origins of Craft are something I
> > may re-think. It's one
> > of my HP's favorite rants, and part of his party
> > line, and I do think there
> > are some common points, in the sense that
> > Neoplatonism served as a
> > foundation for so much of late antique and
> medieval
> > thought. But there are
> > also significant differences, and the line of
> > succession may be broken, or
> > mediated by the Renaissance magi -- something I
> only
> > brushed past in WC.<<
> >
>
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