Greetings!
>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.
What you say is very true and my mention of Cunning Men does confuse the
issue as no one, in my experience, calls themselves Cunning Men today.
People in UK and other modern western societies do call themselves
shaman. I think it would be wise for academics to distinguish this use
of the term from those identified as shaman in, say, traditional
Siberian societies.
However I personally do not think that this modern, western autonomic
use of the term is to be dismissed as meaningless, empty or wrong. I am
wary of such value judgements when expressed by occultists concerning
other occultists. The modern western autonomic use of the term is a
glamour that informs occult activity. I think the importation of terms
from other cultures and the transformation of their meaning to supply
glamours indicates a healthy occult current. For instance the anonymous
appendices to the 1665 edition of Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witches
attributes significant teachings to Nagar the Indian. This text was very
influential upon the practices of some Cunning Men, either directly of
through Ebenezer Sibly's Occult Sciences, the fourth book of which
incorporates great chunks of it. Sections have been found reproduced in
the notebooks of Cunning Men, such as the Harries (father and Son) of
Wales. I also wonder if the Cunning Men's use of Hebrew and Latin terms
might be a similar importation of glamours, and were used in ways that
were very different to that recognised by contemporary academics.
With my best wishes
Ben
--
Ben Fernee
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