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Shamanism and Research
So, in the past weeks I've been trying to do research on European shamanism - both celtic and norse. I've read web pages by supposed scholars, and excerpts and reviews of books available on Amazon. I'm still trying to weed out the crapiest ones before I start buying books.
There is little that hasn't been tainted by either Christianized interpretation, or pseudofeminist neopagan wishful thinking and cultural syncretism. I swear, I get more valid and valuable information out of my own UPG and practical experience. No frills, no cultural appropriation, just what works.
I realize I'm fortunate - I don't have to go through a huge song and dance to reach "elsewhere". For me, it's like flipping the mirror on your car at night - flip, and there it is, there I am.
I don't have to go around to the barrows of the dead to look at the future that may be, in all of it's twisty probabilities and permutations. I look at it directly, as a matrix of events, lives, choices, natural phenomena, and energies. I can even try to show sections of it to others. I've been able to do it for at least 20 years, with my ability to interpret getting better all the while.
So, it has occured to me to try and write up the concepts and methods that I use, used to learn this stuff, and why and where it came from. I already have a list of terms that need defining, that once defined and understood, encompass 90% of what I do in a shamanic context.
My challenge is to "map" these terms against European shamanic/religious terminology, and maybe a bit of "modern" psychology of religion. Should I even bother? Probably, lest some twit think I'm some sort of IRAB Plastic Shaman. But man, the bibliography is going to be a bitch.
Do you think anyone would want to publish my drivel?
There is little that hasn't been tainted by either Christianized interpretation, or pseudofeminist neopagan wishful thinking and cultural syncretism. I swear, I get more valid and valuable information out of my own UPG and practical experience. No frills, no cultural appropriation, just what works.
I realize I'm fortunate - I don't have to go through a huge song and dance to reach "elsewhere". For me, it's like flipping the mirror on your car at night - flip, and there it is, there I am.
I don't have to go around to the barrows of the dead to look at the future that may be, in all of it's twisty probabilities and permutations. I look at it directly, as a matrix of events, lives, choices, natural phenomena, and energies. I can even try to show sections of it to others. I've been able to do it for at least 20 years, with my ability to interpret getting better all the while.
So, it has occured to me to try and write up the concepts and methods that I use, used to learn this stuff, and why and where it came from. I already have a list of terms that need defining, that once defined and understood, encompass 90% of what I do in a shamanic context.
My challenge is to "map" these terms against European shamanic/religious terminology, and maybe a bit of "modern" psychology of religion. Should I even bother? Probably, lest some twit think I'm some sort of IRAB Plastic Shaman. But man, the bibliography is going to be a bitch.
Do you think anyone would want to publish my drivel?
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And it's true - Christian monks did a lot of the recording of traditions so they are in some cases the only filters we have. I learned a fair bit of the Irish tradition of the Tuatha De Danaan and once the oral tradition was killed, the only sources were those monks.
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I always liken it to quantum physics.
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Now, for your research, I have a possible source for you that you may not have considered. John Reyna did a lot of research on shamanism way back when. I know he was studying it "religiously" in 1976-77. I don't know where he is now, but last I heard it was C'oer D'lene(sp) in Idaho. Your dad might know as I think he is still in contact with Michelle and John's sister. He will likely be working in counseling somewhere, a CETA place if one is there. If I find out more before you do I will either email or comment it to you.
I'm still struggling to pay the bills on both places (what else is new eh?). I had a nibble on purchasing this one, but the guy cannot make an offer for another 30 to 60 days. :-( I would really like to be out of it by then so that I can be all set up at 108 before I have to go in for knee stuff. I've lost 33 pounds since you saw me last, cut my hair back to its usual and still haven't got through any much of the stuff in either place. The knee is more limiting than I thought it would be. i guess I, too, will have to start using my writing skills to make some money. My physical limitations make much else cost and time ineffective. Love you! Call when you can. BTW, do you like cameos? Can you recommend a good book or cheap source for wire sculpted jewelry beads, silver wire, tools and destructions? That is another thing I can do sitting down and during knee recovery. Miss you and the cat still kisses your picture at Gmas. Peace ~~~Tandala
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Certainly available here.
http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/35873
Not cheap but well worth it.
Wassail
Oops.
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Thanks for the link!!
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I've been researching Norse magic off and on for years, as you may know. In academia, there was a black hole on the shamanism aspect because Lapp shamanism was (a) extinct and (b) not generally agreed to fit the definition; and the Norse practices were excluded because the role of the practitioner was different. Germanic would be the only society with both priests and shamans . . . plus it has at least one other strain of magic. So most academics counted seið as by definition not really shamanism, and/or viewed the similarities as signs of borrowing from Finnish/Lapp.
Strangely enough, this means the best grounding in the academic terminology and the terms in which the debate has been framed is still an ancient monograph in decidedly quaint English, to whit: Louise Bäckman and Åke Hultkrantz, Studies in Lapp Shamanism, Acta Universitatis Stockholmensis/Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion 16, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978. Example of the quaint English: "nuclear" for "crucial" or "core," throughout. This unprepossessing looking thing starts with a super-fantastic survey of the definitions, approaches to, and terminology of shamanism in differing academic fields (such as the use of "ecstasy" or "trance"), proceeds to define shamanism with reference to multiple cultures and not just Siberia, and then sets the Lapp record--including the Historia Norvegiæ account of a séance--in this definitional context. Frankly, I'm suspicious that any later academic works add much, although there is one very recent one on seiðr that I need to hunt down in case it does.
I have a xerox. There is a copy shop near your place. Wanna copy?
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If only to add to your knowledge of the effects of datura/jimsonweed . . .
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What's the audience, though? An awful lot of people in this field think that other people in the same field are ignorant crackpots. It's also one where belief and expectations have real effects; one is very likely to see what one expects, consciously or otherwise. (Steep yourself in norse material, and get a Snorri cosmology....)
It may be that whatever terminology you adopt or reference, that will just tell some people what type of kook they'll thereupon consider you to be. I get nervous when people treate Eliade with excessive respect, but half or more of those involved - even the acadmics - treat him as fundamental. I think that if you want to be respected by the academic disputant crowd, or those practitioners who think that way, you need more than just the language. But I'm having trouble figuring out how to explain what I mean. Good luck with it anyway.
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I personally am going on a journey of exploration and resarch myself into spiritualism. I dont know if I would call it shamanism or not, but it is most likely very similar to yours. I have gotten alot of flack from the NA livejournal group, but that is alright, because depsite thier issues, I know what is right in my heart, and they cant change that.
Publishable?