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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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From:
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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.