Sorcery And Shamanism

The curanderos of northern Peru, traditional healing specialists who invoke Jesus Christ and the saints with a mescaline sacrament and a shamanic rattle, are not vestigial curiosities nor are their patients rural illiterates without access to "modern medicine." Instead, many of these shamans have thriving urban practices with clients from all levels of society. Sorcery and Shamanism documents the lives and rituals of twelve curanderos, offering a perspective on their curing role and shared knowledge. Authors Donald Joralemon and Douglas Sharon also consider the therapeutic experiences of over one hundred patients, including case histories and follow-ups. They offer a broad view of the shamans' work in modern Peruvian society, particularly in connection with gender-based conflicts. The significant work goes a long way toward dispelling the stereotype of shamans as enigmatic and wise, showing them to be pragmatic curers confronting the health effects of everyday aggressions and betrayals.

H.M. Solaris was a true sorcerer and experiential shaman who lived his life with a foot in both worlds. He was a rare commodity, a genuine seeker of mystical truth whose entire life was spent on the magical path. He was born in South America were he was brought up alongside the local shamans children, in later life he dedicated his time towards the study of magic and shamanic traditions and became a respected personality on the world wide esoteric scene. This book covers the majority of his great work, being the most complete manuscript in existence. It covers a vast array of subjects ranging from Witchcraft, Ritual Magic Sorcery and shamanic tribal traditions, to philosophy, dream work, Self exploration, rituals and potions. It is a true repository of his life experience including many great insights into the worlds that lie just beyond that our Earthly perceptions.

Exploring the elements of reality in early modern witchcraft and popular magic, through a combination of detailed archival research and broad-ranging interdisciplinary analyses, this book complements and challenges existing scholarship, and offers unique insights into this murky aspect of early modern history.

Until recently, few scholars were even aware that a Slavic Magickal tradition still existed. Kenneth Johnson's book presents his true-life experiences in Russia with the living practitioners of this ancient magickal discipline. It also serves as a course in authentic shamanic practices. Readers can learn about the mythology and lore of the Slavic peoples, and there is material on festivals, cosmology, the gods, Otherworld spirits, and ancestor beliefs.

In Darkness and Secrecy brings together ethnographic examinations of Amazonian assault sorcery, witchcraft, and injurious magic, or “dark shamanism.” Anthropological reflections on South American shamanism have tended to emphasize shamans’ healing powers and positive influence. This collection challenges that assumption by showing that dark shamans are, in many Amazonian cultures, quite different from shamanic healers and prophets. Assault sorcery, in particular, involves violence resulting in physical harm or even death. While highlighting the distinctiveness of such practices, In Darkness and Secrecy reveals them as no less relevant to the continuation of culture and society than curing and prophecy. The contributors suggest that the persistence of dark shamanism can be understood as a form of engagement with modernity. These essays, by leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, consider assault sorcery as it is practiced in parts of Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and Peru. They analyze the social and political dynamics of witchcraft and sorcery and their relation to cosmology, mythology, ritual, and other forms of symbolic violence and aggression in each society studied. They also discuss the relations of witchcraft and sorcery to interethnic contact and the ways that shamanic power may be co-opted by the state. In Darkness and Secrecy includes reflections on the ethical and practical implications of ethnographic investigation of violent cultural practices. Contributors. Dominique Buchillet, Carlos Fausto, Michael Heckenberger, Elsje Lagrou, E. Jean Langdon, George Mentore, Donald Pollock, Fernando Santos-Granero, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern, Márnio Teixeira-Pinto, Silvia Vidal, Neil L. Whitehead, Johannes Wilbert, Robin Wright

The Book of Satyr Magick presents a path of shamanic sorcery for the Otherkin practitioner. Complete with meditations, spells, and rituals specifically designed for the Otherkin experience, it includes daemon correspondences for over thirty different daemons as well as obscure workings such as Ordeal Rites of Predator & Prey, Kitsune-Bi crystal talismans, and using shrunken heads as artificial entities. This is a book the Otherkin community has needed for a long time and is written for all practitioners, witches, shamans, and Otherkin alike.

A collection of Hopi folktales reveals the influence and place of magic in the traditional Hopi world, and describes the roles of witches, sorcerers, and shamans.

On the little-known and darker side of shamanism there exists an ancient form of sorcery called kanaimà, a practice still observed among the Amerindians of the highlands of Guyana, Venezuela, and Brazil that involves the ritual stalking, mutilation, lingering death, and consumption of human victims. At once a memoir of cultural encounter and an ethnographic and historical investigation, this book offers a sustained, intimate look at kanaimà, its practitioners, their victims, and the reasons they give for their actions. Neil L. Whitehead tells of his own involvement with kanaimà—including an attempt to kill him with poison—and relates the personal testimonies of kanaimà shamans, their potential victims, and the victims’ families. He then goes on to discuss the historical emergence of kanaimà, describing how, in the face of successive modern colonizing forces—missionaries, rubber gatherers, miners, and development agencies—the practice has become an assertion of native autonomy. His analysis explores the ways in which kanaimà mediates both national and international impacts on native peoples in the region and considers the significance of kanaimà for current accounts of shamanism and religious belief and for theories of war and violence. Kanaimà appears here as part of the wider lexicon of rebellious terror and exotic horror—alongside the cannibal, vampire, and zombie—that haunts the western imagination. Dark Shamans broadens discussions of violence and of the representation of primitive savagery by recasting both in the light of current debates on modernity and globalization.