medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> I believe the Irish tradition involves hanging or tying a piece of
> cloth(ing), which has been in contact with an ailing part of the body, to a sacred tree
> or bush - with the expectation that the ailment will be transferred to the
> sacred tree, and which will then assume the task of fighting the disease.
In relation to the "brandea" that I referred to in a previous posting to this string, this
would put "clooties" in what structuralist anthropologists would call an inverse
relationship with brandea. The brandea transfer thaumaturgical power to the sick,
whereas clooties transfer sickness to a thaumaturgically effective focus. I have
recently been thinking about other such inversions. For example, the relation of
pilgrimage to processions. Pilgrimage presupposes that people travel to a specific
source of thaumaturgical power, whereas in a procession of relics or miraculous
images, it is the source of thaumaturgical power that journeys in order to be
effective. Is anyone aware of any systematic studies of such inversions in medieval
religion?
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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