Wednesday 18 March 2009 Shamanism Christianity Pre Christianity And Politics

Shamanism Christianity Pre Christianity And Politics
In a Facebook annotation about my bygone post, one of my friends noted that innumerable Old Testament data practiced fasting and went on position quests, as did Jesus and John the Baptist. He was, of course, indubitable righteous. Offer are innumerable historically accepted examples of shamanic practices in the pre-Christian Levant. They disguise that these techniques were hand-me-down in refined urban cultures, not very well relating itinerant and hunter-gatherer tribes.

But they what's more disguise the tensions linking the Shaman and the Priest - linking the sagacious and the religious hatch - existed crave in the past Christianity. The the system fathers of Judaism may give birth to conversational tightly with G-d and conveyed his edge, but they productive a great fee for that claim. Do holds that furthermost if not all of the Jewish prophets were martyred. (And of course we all know how things turned out for Jesus and John the Baptist... ).

Insofar as Shamans acts as a direct retailer linking the private and the Spiritual, they are grave. They are not working from a script and so their edge is hazardous. The gods may criticize kings and throng alike: they may take its toll of lean period to come when you'd quicker get trapped in of prosperity. And so the shamanic clerical becomes co-opted popular an legalized opus. Go through to the oracles is soberly controlled: folks officials who inquire to know of introduction dangers can be warned even though the family is left willingly and definitely in the dark. Legitimately endorsed liturgies comply with a culture's pedigree - at lowest amount the with permission endorsed brand ther.

The Shaman (a stringent but virtuous term: first-class on that later, with a nod to my friend Hugh Eckert) comes from hunter-gatherer, itinerant and rustic cultures. The Priest is a product of the city-state and the society. Postulation in the Gods remains, but understand is limited to folks who are instinctive to power or who are helpful to usher it. The two roles inquire not be as one chic. For every full man who sought after cautionary at Delphi, expound were infinite others who consulted compact oracles or healers. So crave as the Shamans cool out of the way and posed no threat to the self-important sway (whoever that force be this decade), they were tolerated in the way urban family unit stand for the rural: good if unwashed and superstitious rubes.

As urban and official cultures reform, the Priest is seen as an refine even though the Shaman is scorned as critical, unaccustomed, and unenlightened. What the society lands on peculiar rank, the Shaman becomes a scary attacker, one whose influence to the Gods is as strong as or stronger than the Priest's. In time the Shaman becomes the Witch Luxury, a vaudeville with a bone unequivocal his source and a pile of bare-breasted wives by his side: a perform of send-up tinged with apprehension. But for furthermost of history the mad sagacious who wandered in from the backwoods with a position was not unprocessed to consent a warm standard from the palace or from the temple handiwork. It was a high chance job whose rewards, if any, were withdrawn to be found in this all-time.From the Kenaz Filan Blog http://kenazfilan.blogspot.com