Midterm #2 readings Flashcards
Jackson - Gbangbane (WC with the Kuranko people in Africa)
male witch-hunting cult
theoretically witches themselves, some wild powers that can destroy people but also can protect them
Jackson - Pulan
A witch’s shade that is left after their death - possess and haunts
Jackson - Suwa’ye
Their term for witchcraft (closest), it is ambiguous term but alludes to wild or extra social component - good or bad dependent on how it’s harnessed and used
Jackson -“witch is not a person”
idea of personhood “morgue” implies respect and mindful of others - a person who sets themselves apart from others is not a person
Jackson - stereotypical witch
deviant, wild, uses invisible powers, works in dark - systematic inversion of ideal social bx (day/night; sociability/selifshness)
Jackson - Gbangbane hunting
cannot destroy witches directly, only disarm them
Jackson - more on their witches
WC is an inborn proclivity, they are predatory and cannibalistic (they don’t kill they consume a victim’s blood or break their bones)
WC operates through blackmail and indebtedness (someone would of had to betray you to tell witches where you sleep and leaving your door open)
Jackson - Nie
witches life/essence - leavers her sleeping body at night and moves abroad often in the body of familiar animal. seizure type movement as it leaves her - animals most associated are leopard, hyena, snakes, owls, etc
Jackson - Confession of WC
confession (not accusation) is norm. Rare nature of the concessions - most under terminal illnesses/killed for confession
Epitomizes the worst in women - scapegoat
Jackson - WC and Kinship stress
Antagonism exists between Kuranko men and women in everyday life; not seen as equals (pays the bridewealth)
* Resentments that nurture WC- loss of balance - Targets/focus of WC attack is husband/brother/etc
Jackson - Female inferiority
- Mythological - invokes disobedience of Mama Hawa (Eve) to explain why women are innately weak willed
- Sociological - complementarity of a woman’s roles as as wife/mother/sister
Jackson - compulsion to confess
- Contrast - Between the house and backyard (domain of women) and the courtyard (which opens to the village)- domain of men
- Men go out; women turn it upon themselves; men seek causes of discord in the world; women search for causes within; men apportion blame; women take the blame; men accuse; women confess
Jackson - Kuranko seem to resent (Western) medical help
- Putting themselves in the author’s care meant isolation from kin and from tried/tested world of their own medicines
- Their own medicines have protective and insulating functions
- Forfeiture of autonomy
- The known is always preferable to the unknown
Jackson - last freedom of Self-confessed witch
- seems to readily bear responsibility of the misfortunes of those around them - victims of a world which denies them outlet for grievances
- Women are conditioned to bear responsibility for the misfortunes around them
- WC confession a desperate strategy for reclaiming autonomy in a hopeless situation-Borne out of allusions to witch-possessions and by defiant attitudes of [the] women in the face of death
Truzzi - Dictionary definitions of the occult
- Beyond the range of ordinary knowledge; mysterious
- Secret; disclosed/communicated only to the initiated
- Pertaining to magic/astrology/other alleged sciences claiming use or knowledge of secret/mysterious/supernatural agences
Truzzi - science and occult = definition
- Occult tends to have negative connotations among scientists”- Generally equated with mystical and anti-naturalistic world views
- The occult has been growing more interested in the supernormal/paranormal more than the supernatural-Current emphasis on hidden characteristics of such wisdom
- Lack of scientific rigor among occultist’s investigations
- Science - public investigation-The idea of a secret science approximates a contradiction in terms
Truzzi - issues around defining occult
who is doing the labelling, where the labelling is being done, and what time (historically) the designation is made
Truzzi - Common ground of occultism
most (nearly all) perspectives of the occult have somehow involved themselves in things anomalous to generally accepted cultural storehouses of “truths” (science and religion)* Claims that contradict common-sense- this is what makes the occult strange/mysterious
Truzzi - anomalies (2 types)
- Anomalous objects-The existence/claimed existence orf a thing or event that somehow deviates from the usual/credible order of things
- Anomalous processes - Ordinary things/events that occur in some extraordinary conjunction-Usually based on inferences of strange causalities among otherwise ordinary events (things non-occultists may label as coincidences)
Truzzi - anomalies (integrated versus isolated)
- Some (isolated) anomalies are singular and disconnected from other anomalies
- Others (integrated) are more consistent of process anomalies than object anomalies
- Anomalous processes seem to be more likely to be integrated with other anomalies than anomalous objects - The raw materials of occultism involving anomalous processes is more common than that involving anomalous objects
Truzzi - anomalies (general versus theoretical)
- General (common sense)-one that most people in a given culture would consider a strange or incredible event under most circumstances (eg an object appearing or vanishing from nowhere)
- Theoretical (special) -Appears unusual only to one with special knowledge or training
Truzzi - 5 major questions about an occult belief
- What is alleged to be known?
- Who claims to know it?
- How or why do they know it to be so?
- Where/under what conditions do they learn it to be so and is the belief maintained?
- What use does this knowledge have for the believer?
Truzzi - anomaly (general info)
- The basic claim is for the existence of some anomaly which can be dichotomized into the categories of: object-process; isolation-integration; and general- theoretical
- Belief in theoretically anomalous objects is least likely to be labelled by most occultists
Truzzi - Occult Claims
- Categorized according to the criteria upon which the alleged knowledge is based
- Claims of validity are based on the same sources of authority familiar to sociologists from the study of social organizations
Truzzi - Claims of validity
1) authority can rest on culturally inherited beliefs in traditional authority
2) an occult belief may be founded on faith in the charismatic authority of an occult leader
3) an occult belief may rest on rational-legal authority (some pragmatic experiences of the belief’s effectiveness
Truzzi - 5 major points along the continuum regarding criteria for validation of claims
- Proto-scientific occultism
- Quasi-scientific occultism
- Pragmatic grounds (occultism)
- Consensual validation of existential experiences-shared mystical occultism
- Purely private forms of occult validation - private mystical occultism
Truzzi - proto-scientific occultism
- Scientific criteria for some anomaly is desired and attempted but claims have not been fully integrated into the scientific community
- Avoid the term occultism but scientific opponents usually view it as pseudo-science
Truzzi - Quasi-scientific
- lip service is paid in the search for scientific criteria vor validation, but the actual search for hard evidence is more a stated goal that actuality/reality
- Avoid the term occultism but scientific opponents usually view it as pseudo-science
Truzzi - Pragmatic occultism (grounds)
- close to science but usually claiming without any scientific status for the belief
- Tend to be rational-legal
- Most magical practice is good example of level 3
- Basic attitude is that the method works and could be demonstrated to the skeptical scientist but also such demonstration is not part of the occultist’s function
Truzzi - Shared Mystical Occultism (consensual validation of existential experiences)
- The belief centers around some personal demonstrations of truth but without the possibility of empirical or truly intersubjective validation
- May experience a personal and essentially mystical truth but it is not communicable to others through language
- Others are told they too can experience the same subjective truth if they perform the appropriate acts - Eg transcendental meditation
Truzzi - Private Mystical Occultism
- Believer must have a direct mystical experience of his/her “truth”, which is self-validating
- Experience has little to no social support from others- must be strong for the subject to remain convinced that the experience wasn’t just hallucinated or imagined
- E.g. revlations - usually claimed as coming from divine or supernatural agencies
Truzzi - functions of occultism
no simple description
- various forms of occultism provide various of fulfilling elements (claim to power/love/health/etc)
- to account for the popularity by one theory is an oversimplification = further compounded by role between science and religion (and focus on religious element)
Truzzi - advantages of presenting knowledge in deviant form
- The recipient feels he/she is special and superior for having been granted the difficult to obtain “truth”
- By being a private form of knowledge, a reason is given by the generaly community has not accepted the “truth”
- Privacy insulates critical examination of the ideas by outsiders
- Privacy makes the deviant approach more attractive since this emphasizes the difference in the occult’s approach to the receipeitn’s problem from those non-deviant public approaches which probably failed to meet earlier needs
Von Struckard - 1614 book “Fame Fraternitatis”
the mysterious story of the life of Christian Rosenkreutz and his followers, who had dedicated themsleves to a ‘general reformation’ seeking to combine the Xian reformation of the 16th ce with a paracelsian philosophy of nature
Von Struckard - first Rosicrucians
circle that forms in the early years of the 17th-century at the university of tubingen consisting of Christoph Besold, Johann Calentin Andrae, and Tobias Hess - they are considered responsible for the early Rosicrucian manifestoes