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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:56 pm
by MichelleH
Hope your don't guys, I'm moving this to Mythology, Ritualisms, Traditions and Folklore....

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 1:05 pm
by Minimalist
That's okay, boss....my wife is always moving my shit around too.

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 1:08 pm
by MichelleH
Minimalist wrote:That's okay, boss....my wife is always moving my shit around too.
That's our job and we do it well....

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:04 pm
by Ishtar
OK, if you’re sure you want me to talk about this, Michelle.....?

I don’t want to hijack Min’s Zoroastrian thread, but perhaps we can have just a short diversion, so here goes anyway ...

After so many thousands of years, people have mainly forgotten what the shaman does – and so his various roles as healer, spiritual guide, psychopomp, diviner and so on are only dimly remembered, if at all. But one thing that hasn’t been forgotten is that the shaman can bring the rains – and that’s probably because he is still doing it.

One of the few civilisations left who are still living in the same, traditional ways on the same land for around 20, 000 years are the San Bushmen. In her book, Archaeologies of Materiality, Professor of Anthropology Lynn Meskell talks about the San’s rain making capabilities.

In his Hunter Gatherers of the Modern World, anthropologist Peter P Schweitzer quotes Lewis Williams 1981, and Campell 1987 who found that the Bantu-speaking farmers of the southern African Bush became completely dependent on the San shamans for bringing the rains, as it enabled them to farm in desert-type regions that were normally too dry.

There are countless other examples ....

So next, I expect, you’re going to ask me, how does he do it? How does the shaman bring the rains?

Well, I’m sorry to say, I don’t know - except that I’ve heard that it’s something he does, magnetically, to the lakes of water that are under the surface of the earth in the locality where he is. Somehow, he moves this subterranean water and this triggers something off in the skies ... don’t ask me what, or how, but if I ever find out, I’ll let you know. :lol:

Now, back to Zoroastrianism.

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:41 pm
by pattylt
Great going so far, guys...
Quick questions: What does PIE stand for and a brief description?
Many Indo-European branches show evidence for horse sacrifice, and comparative mythology suggests that they derive from a PIE ritual.
Also, what is HG?
Agriculturalists, HGs and shepherds have different problems
Trying to learn the lingo....
TIA
patty

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:42 pm
by Ishtar
Hi Patty

No problem! :lol:

PIE means Proto Indo European.

HG means hunter gatherer.

Hope that helps!

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 5:38 pm
by pattylt
Thank you, helps alot!
Also makes more sense! :roll:

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:00 pm
by Minimalist
How does the shaman bring the rains?

He times his prayers for the start of the rainy season.

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:30 pm
by rich
uh - I was at least going to say he tosses a lot of silver iodide into the lake on a really hot day and waits for the evaporation process to carry it up into the sky! :D

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:46 pm
by john
All -

More to it than that.

I'll refer again to "The Way of the Hopi", by Frank Waters

and Oswald White Bear.

And just off the top, the Kalahari Bushmen and the Dogon.

Not to mention Shinto or the Ainu.

These peoples exhibit the bicameral worldview

Discussed by Jaynes.

Rather than the subject/object worldview of the present.

Possibly call that worldview "Newtonian."

OK. What's the diff?

Ishtar, I'm gonna take your name in vain here,

Because we are dealing with the Shamanic worldview here,

vs. the Newtonian.

One of your essential points is that the Shamanic ultimately

Regards any topology as non-dimensional.

Remind me to look up Whitehead again (note to myself).

The Newtonian worldview takes time, space, matter and awareness

As an objective, intellectual, non-manipulable pecking order.

The ultimate conclusion of this type of thinking

Is that there MUST be an ultimate being

"The Wizard of Oz", the guy behind the curtain pulling the levers

And we are all permanent victims of this hierarchical order.

Powerless, unless we invoke "God on our Side" and

Commit a number of very physical atrocities which

Prove our political, religious and economic superiority.


The Shamanic worldview takes time, space, matter and awareness

As simultaneous, heterogenous, and manipulable.

Therefore, we are each and all of us are ultimate beings

(this includes all forms of life, including planets, galaxies, rocks, oceans, etc.)

Who happen to share the responsibility for keeping

This simultaneous and heterogenous

Order in harmony.

I realize this sounds outrageous.

So, an even more outrageous statement.

Einstein spent his life seeking the "Unified Field Theory,"

I think it was called.

The Shamanic had the Unified Field Theory dialed

A long, long time ago.

Einstein, as an individual, was responding to what we,

As a species have lost, using the tool he knew best,

mathematics.

I think we are all familiar with that awareness, that longing.



hoka hey


john

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:23 pm
by rich
So in that sense can we say humans are the cumination of the animal world then and are the "gods" of the animal kingdom? Bound with the responsibility to care for them rather than destroy them? And if so - what if there is another step beyond humans - what would they be? Or has evolution just stopped? Or can it ever stop?

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:08 pm
by Ishtar
pattylt wrote: Quick questions: What does PIE stand for and a brief description...
Also, what is HG?
Agriculturalists, HGs and shepherds have different problems
Trying to learn the lingo....
TIA
patty
Min and Michelle

Would it encourage more people to post if we had a hyperlinked glossary?

On Acharya S's site, these sorts of words or acronyms are automatically hyperlinked to its entry within a glossary of terms, with just a sentence or two to explain it.

So for instance, if you wanted to know what Pre-Clovis meant, you would just click on it and it would take you to a short definition which also contains a link to wiki for a fuller explanation if necessary.

I can think of lots of words and terms that could benefit from this treatment, not least all the HHs, HNs and HHSs which could be grouped in chronological order. Also Pleistocene, Holocene and Miocene ....

Just a thought anyway.

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:10 pm
by Minimalist
Good idea.


Of course, the dictionary definition for "pre-Clovis" would be "THERE AIN'T NO SUCH THING."

:lol:

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:13 pm
by Ishtar
Minimalist wrote:Good idea.


Of course, the dictionary definition for "pre-Clovis" would be "THERE AIN'T NO SUCH THING."

:lol:
Yes! :lol:

But we could have our own non-Club glossary.

AIT - no such bloody thing ever happened!

Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:39 pm
by Ishtar
or

Stone Age Boats

YES!