Re: Among our many types of animist...

From: KYER, JEFFREY <jeff.kyer_at_...>
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 09:00:15 -0400

Alex Ferguson wrote:
>
> Jonas Schi�tt:
> > If Spirit Cults occur in all or most animistic
> > cultures, the definition of "animism" needs overhaul. :-)
>
> Funny you should say that...
>
> Greg uses 'animist' (and pretty much interchangeably, 'shamanic') in
> a manner that's rather too broad for my tastes. I think that at
> the least, there are 'primitive animists', such as the hsunchen

Animist is the word to describe, by our media, anyone not a Christian or a Muslim or Jewish in Central Africa.... Seems like a perfectly good word to me.

> and a large chunk of the Doraddi tradition, which is closest to
> what HW presents as 'pure' animism: their core magic is
> integration, of one sort or another; then there are the 'totemic
> shamanists', which is how I would understand the trolls, and the

Sorta. The Trolls have Ancestor Worship as their primary focus through Big Mummy KL and her children.

> Praxians. Spirit cults a-go-go. This latter sort seems, according
> to the HW take, more like part-animist, part-theist, which is indeed
> rather confusing, given that this is so common. One might also

The Praxians are probably graduates par-excellance of the school of Hard Knocks and post-graduate degrees in 'What Works". I think that living in that blasted (literally) land lends a certain pragmatism to one's religious practices. (And conservatism -- this is how we've survived this far, why change a good thing?)

> However, to look on the bright side, there's no reason at all
> HW can't be an excellent vessel for this sort of thing, once the
> Misapplication Zealotry is dispensed with. Most things use the
> same basic mechanics, magic included, so what sort of magic such
> and such and effect _actually_ is can be something of a theoretical
> rather than a practical one.
>
> Cheers,
> Alex.

Hmmm. Your zealotry is my trivia and vice versa. Could we keep the ascerbic level down to something more civil? The posts on this thread by a few folks are starting to resemble postings on the GD.

Jeff Kyer

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