Shamanism and writing

From: Thomas Gottschall <Telmori_at_t-online.de>
Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 23:03:52 +0200


Hi everyone,

this came to me last week :
Writing is far less developed (if at all) in shamanistic societies. I think the reason herefore is that shamans are able to summon spirits of predecessors and divine and sorcery societies don't. So no one needs to read and write while he can talk to the spirits directly and ask them how this was 500 years ago while knowledge of dead Lunars is lost if it is not written down. And maybe this is also the reason why shamans are so highly ranked in those societies because they are the preservers of knowledge and they can speak to the spirits and know all the old ways. It would be terrible for such a society to lose a shaman who has talked to let's say 100 spirits. It will take the new one years to receive the knowledge the former shaman had.

bye


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