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Spiritual responses to individual misfortune: Healers and Shamans

Spiritual responses to individual misfortune: Healers and Shamans. January 29, 2001. In your papers, I expect you to. demonstrate you have done the reading (use referenced quotations and paraphrases, draw on ideas that occur only in the reading)

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Spiritual responses to individual misfortune: Healers and Shamans

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  1. Spiritual responses to individual misfortune: Healers and Shamans January 29, 2001

  2. In your papers, I expect you to • demonstrate you have done the reading (use referenced quotations and paraphrases, draw on ideas that occur only in the reading) • demonstrate you have paid attention to and reflected on the content of the films • use and apply concepts and examples presented in lecture • use at least 1-2 examples per page • write clearly and in full sentences • entirely avoid plagiarism

  3. Context for this week • Last week: spiritual belief and collective experience/misfortune • This week: spiritual belief and individual affliction/sickness • The importance of healing in religious experience • Belief versus effectiveness (will explore more on Wed) • Context for film

  4. Types of spiritual and non-biomedical healers • Mediums and shamans • One kind of medium: prayer-healers (layer-on-of-hands) • Knowers and users of the ‘powers of nature’: magic and herbs • combinations

  5. Spirit mediums and shamanic voyagers • In order to heal, one must tap the power of spirits • They take over the body: the spirit medium (Ex: Mae Menina) • Healer’s soul goes to them: the shamanic voyage (Ex: Hmong)

  6. Becoming a shaman or medium • Signs at birth or in youth (Maria 1) • Being chosen by spirits: the “wounded healer” syndrome (Maria 2) • apprenticeship

  7. Altered states of consciousness • Changes in consciousness • Modes of stimulating ASCs: meditation, chanting, drumming, dancing, swinging, hallucinogens, combinations

  8. Tapping the impersonal powers of the cosmos • Knowers of magic • Aguaruna healer • Herbalists • Amazonian herbalist

  9. Emic etiologies of sickness (review) • Resisting the spirit • response: “domesticate” spirit (as with Maria 2) • Unsettled relations with the dead • neglect (Tallensi -- make offerings) • unresolved issues (response: communicate) • soul-loss • response: Negotiate with spirits for return of human souls • Attacks by evil spirits • response: send spirits to battle attackers

  10. Emic etiologies, cont. • exposure to evil eye, negative energies/fluids • response: sweep away evil fluids • intrusive sorcery attacks • response: extract the evil intrusions

  11. As you watch “Spirit Doctors” • Please feel free to think of and ask any question you’d like; but in particular, I’d like you to reflect on this: • Why might the cures presented in the film sometimes actually WORK?

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