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Manifesting Spirits is an exploration of contemporary trance and physical mediumship at a private spiritualist home-circle called the Bristol Spirit Lodge. Located in a garden on the outskirts of Bristol, the Lodge is a wooden shed specially constructed for the purposes of mediumship development and spirit communication. Through a combination of ethnographic observations in seances - including his own experiences of mediumship development - and interviews with spirits and their mediums, Hunter delves into a sub-urban world of trance states, ectoplasm, spirit lights and discarnate entities. Issues relating to altered states of consciousness, personhood, performance and the efficacy of ritual ...
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This book offers an in-depth insight into post-socialist rural shamans in Mongolia thereby making a rare but important contribution to the ethnography of both Inner Asia and Southern Siberia. It examines the social making of shamans, in particular those of the Shishget depression of the northernmost borders of Mongolia. By analysing practices, discourses and performances in local and national arenas, the author traces the social constitution of the shamans’ inspirational power, examines the shamans’ performance of power during the seance, discusses the economy of reputation of successful shamans and scrutinizes their legitimizing practices. The study will be welcomed by students of social/cultural anthropology and religious studies with a particular interest in shamanism or ritual studies.
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM journal) is a biannual, not-for-profit, free peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the latest social-scientific, historiographic, and ecclesiastic research on religious institutions and their ministerial practices. SHERM is dedicated to the critical and scholarly inquiry of historical and contemporary religious phenomena, both from within particular religious traditions and across cultural boundaries, so as to inform the broader socio-historical analysis of religion and its related fields of study. The purpose of SHERM is to provide a scholarly medium for the social-scientific study of religion where specialists can publish...
We are living in a complicated period in relation to our understanding of 'extraordinary' phenomena. Naive materialist approaches are more assertive than ever, in anthropology and in the world more generally. At the same time, the taboos against admitting to the reality of the paranormal are weakening. There is a growing body of writing which takes the paranormal and extraordinary seriously, while bringing to it the same academic standards that any other subject matter would require. This is a valuable and important development, and it helps open the way to new modes of understanding in the sciences and social sciences that will not reject scientific rationality, but expand that rationality so as to include more of the world of human experience. The articles in this Paranthropology reader provide important clues and suggestions, along with rigorous argument, to help us in exploring what is likely to be a major area of anthropological engagement in coming years. Dr.Geoffrey Samuel, Cardiff University.
This phenomenologically oriented ethnography focuses on experiential aspects of Yanomami shamanism, including shamanistic activities in the context of cultural change. The author interweaves ethnographic material with theoretical components of a holographic principle, or the idea that the “part is equal to the whole,” which is embedded in the nature of the Yanomami macrocosm, human dwelling, multiple-soul components, and shamans’ relationships with embodied spirit-helpers. This book fills an important gap in the regional study of Yanomami people, and, on a broader scale, enriches understanding of this ancient phenomenon by focusing on the consciousness involved in shamanism through firsthand experiential involvement.
This compelling volume explores how war magic and warrior religion unleash the power of the gods, demons, ghosts, and the dead. Documenting war magic and warrior religion as they are performed in diverse cultures and across historical time periods, this volume foregrounds embodiment, practice, and performance in anthropological approaches to magic, sorcery, shamanism, and religion. The authors go beyond what magic ‘represents’ to consider what magic does. From Chinese exorcists, Javanese spirit siblings, and black magic in Sumatra to Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, Chamorro spiritual re-enchantment, tantric Buddhist war magic, and Yanomami dark shamans, religion and magic are re-evaluated not just from the practitioner’s perspective but through the victim’s lived experience. These original investigations reveal a nuanced approach to understanding social action, innovation, and the revitalization of tradition in colonial and post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social transformation.
Shamanism is commonly understood through reference to spirits and souls. However, these terms were introduced by Christian missionaries as part of the colonial effort of conversion. So, rather than trying to comprehend shamanism through medieval European concepts, this book examines it through ideas that started developing in the West after encountering Amerindian shamans. Microbes and Other Shamanic Beings develops three major arguments: First, since their earliest accounts Amerindian shamanic notions have had more in common with current microbial ecology than with Christian religious beliefs. Second, the human senses allow the unaided perception of the microbial world; for example, entopti...
The third edition of Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by unifying themes. First, health-oriented anthropologists are very involved in the process of helping, to varying degrees, to change the world around them through their work in applied projects, policy initiatives, and advocacy. Second, the authors present the fundamental importance of culture and social relationships in health and illness by demonstrating that illness and disease involve complex biosocial processes and that resolving them requires attention to a range of factors beyond biology...
As a non-dogmatic religion, paganism is a spiritualty that is variously interpreted in terms of nature worship, this-worldliness, the valuing of the physical, and multiple understandings of the sacred. Like most religions, pagan spirituality also entertains the experience of mystical ecstasy as an intense state of psycho-spiritual consciousness that radically diverges from ordinary waking awareness. This volume addresses two fundamental questions, namely: “how do the world’s religions understand the mystical and its pursuit?”, and “how and why does paganism offer something different?” Proverbially, the mystical quest is an ultimate human endeavour. The re-emergence of pagan thought in contemporary times challenges the obsolete and unlocks both innovation and available forms of transpersonal emancipation.