FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50  
51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   >>   >|  
on, or of irreligion, a fashion in intellectual temperament, may bring these experiences more into notice at one moment than at another, but they are always said to recur, at uncertain intervals, and are always essentially the same. To prove this by examples is our present business. In a thoroughly scientific treatise, the foundation of the whole would, of course, be laid in a discussion of psychology, physiology, and the phenomena of hypnotism. But on these matters an amateur opinion is of less than no value. The various schools of psychologists, neurologists, 'alienists,' and employers of hypnotism for curative or experimental purposes, appear to differ very widely among themselves, and the layman may read but he cannot criticise their works. The essays which follow are historical, anthropological, antiquarian. SAVAGE SPIRITUALISM. 'Shadow' or Magic of the Dene Hareskins: its four categories. These are characteristic of all Savage Spiritualism. The subject somewhat neglected by Anthropologists. Uniformity of phenomena. Mr. Tylor's theory of the origin of 'Animism'. Question whether there are any phenomena not explained by Mr. Tylor's theory. Examples of uniformity. The savage hypnotic trance. Hareskin examples. Cases from British Guiana. Australian rapping spirits. Maori oracles. A Maori 'seance'. The North American Indian Magic Lodge. Modern and old Jesuit descriptions. Movements of the Lodge. Insensibility of Red Indian Medium to fire. Similar case of D. D. Home. Flying table in Thibet. Other instances. Montezuma's 'astral body'. Miracles. Question of Diffusion by borrowing, or of independent evolution. Philosophers among the Dene Hareskins in the extreme north of America recognise four classes of 'Shadow' or magic. Their categories apply sufficiently closely to all savage sorcery (excluding sympathetic magic), as far as it has been observed. We have, among the Hareskins:-- 1. Beneficent magic, used for the healing of the sick. 2. Malevolent magic: the black art of witchcraft 3. Conjuring, or the working of merely sportive miracles. 4. Magic for ascertaining the truth about the future or the distant present--clairvoyance. This is called 'The Young Man Bound and Bounding,' from the widely-spread habit of tying-up the limbs of the medium, and from his customary convulsions. To all of these forms of magic, or spiritualism, the presence and aid of 'spirits' is
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50  
51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

phenomena

 

Hareskins

 
hypnotism
 

present

 

Question

 

theory

 

categories

 
widely
 

spirits

 

Shadow


examples

 

Indian

 

savage

 
borrowing
 
Diffusion
 

seance

 

Miracles

 
independent
 

oracles

 

recognise


classes
 

America

 
Philosophers
 

astral

 

extreme

 

evolution

 

Montezuma

 

Similar

 

Modern

 
Medium

Jesuit

 

Insensibility

 

descriptions

 
instances
 

Movements

 
American
 
Thibet
 

Flying

 

called

 
Bounding

clairvoyance

 
ascertaining
 
future
 

distant

 

spread

 

convulsions

 

spiritualism

 
presence
 
customary
 

medium