As an academic, may I plead for some restraint on the stretching of terms way beyond their original context. For instance, to equate 'shaman' with 'cunning man / wise woman' sows confusion into the important (and relatively new) field of study of cunning folk as they existed and worked in Britain from medieval to fairly recent times. Let's please keep 'shaman' for practitioners who claim to undertake spirit journeys with benevolent intent (e.g. Eliade's original Siberian examples, or Ginzburg's benandanti). When an English cunning man undertook to unwitch your sick cow by sticking an animal's heart full of pins and putting it up the chimney to dry out, this is a quite different form of magic.
Jacqueline Simpson
--- On Sat, 8/11/08, nagasiva yronwode <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: nagasiva yronwode <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Novelty and Self-Consciousness in Occultism
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Saturday, 8 November, 2008, 2:09 AM
> howdy and well met, Ben,
>
> [log in to unmask]:
> > I think the esoteric/occult is a living, indeed
> thriving, field.
> > Concepts and words will be imported, transformed and
> changed.
> > This process has a long history and that is the
> history of
> > occultism.
>
> I couldn't agree more, and this was one of the reasons
> that i sought to differentiate between the artistic
> (participative) and the academic (reflective) aspects
> of the engagement of magic or religion. surely this
> is one of the areas of concern for the academic
> community admitting participants into its midst.
>
> > One point of view is that these processes can be
> > charted without value judgement.
>
> this is an excellent point, and during this avoidance
> of value judgement, some standards might be laid out
> so as to preserve integrity of the data, such as when
> a standard for what constitutes a 'tradition' (e.g.
> 3
> generations of participants) is put forward to be
> used regardless of what any religious might mean
> in their specific practice or social group otherwise.
>
> > Some occultists who are partisan to a particular
> > system sometimes think it is a bad thing. I often
> > think it is a good thing, as an indication of the
> > vitality of the current.
> >
> > I came across an example of this recently at a
> > lecture about Odinism. The lecturer, an Odinist,
> > bemoaned modern representations of Odin upside
> > down upon Yggdrisil, apparently there is nothing
> > in the source materials suggesting he was inverted.
> > He suggested the idea originated, unconsciously,
> > from a familiarity with the Hanged Man tarot card.
>
> an interesting speculation. the iconography itself
> has changed from its apparent origins in Italy as
> 'Traitor' and a punishment for disgraced leaders
> to more recent expressions in association with Jesus
> and other hanged heros and gods (e.g. 'The
> Passion').
>
> > Ironically I thought this development of a new
> > iconography though unselfconscious cross
> > fertilisation a signal that modern Odinism was
> > indeed a living faith. Rather more interesting
> > than modern pagans asking historians and
> > archaeologists what they should adopt
> > as their beliefs.
>
> this had a recent crescendo in the controversy
> surrounding (and authority extended to) Margaret
> Murray, at least in the Neopagan communty. she
> was an egyptologist writing on the subject of
> European anthropology, outside of her field by
> my recall, and there have been twin extensions
> therefore from her work: one from Neopagans who
> have taken her texts and adopted them as seminal
> to their theology and mythos, and one from
> academics who consider what follows after her
> as suspect and unreliable in terms of the facts.
> these tines may be closing over time.
>
> other fractures of study relating to religion
> and magic intersecting with the academic field
> include the controversy surrounding the person
> and research of Carlos Castaneda.
>
> these cases are of course different in that
> Murray was an academic who sincerely attempted
> to draw conclusions she appears to have
> believed were accurate, whereas Castaneda was
> an academic who appears to have intentionally
> falsified data about the accounts which he
> incorporated into his Don Juan book series.
>
> corrections about either/both welcomed.
>
> > There is an idea that Cunning Men and Women
> > are alive and well, they just call
> > themselves shaman nowadays.
>
> when the shamans consult anthropological or
> archaeological data, then use these to bolster
> their attempted revival or reconstruction of
> what they believe were pre-Christian magical
> or religious activities, then we may begin
> to encounter a level of self-consciousness
> that is truly exciting and confusing.
>
> I encountered an extreme development of this
> type in full flourish within the Satanist
> community where some participants provided
> for those whom they encountered a complete
> sociological broadside of Satanism as part
> of a self-representation in religious context,
> predictably sporting twists and turns intending
> to persuade the reviewer of their authority
> and give an impression regarding historical
> origins and their role as presenter within
> a progression of religion more august and
> aged than actual.
>
> in occultism this seems to make itself known
> most prominently where a back-projection (at
> times put forward by practitioners as a
> 'romance', or, in organizations such as the
> Golden Dawn, a 'charter-myth') is provided
> to a magical tool or object. one well-known
> example of these in modern occultism is that
> which was given to the Tarot (as by de Gebelin
> or others, projecting an arcane kabbalistic
> and/or Egyptian origin overtop the gaming
> and commissioned reality).
>
> excellent topics!
>
> nagasiva yronwode ([log in to unmask]), Director
> YIPPIE*! -- http://www.yronwode.org/
> -----------------------------------------------------
> *Yronwode Institution for the Preservation
> and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology
> -----------------------------------------------------
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