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"Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans—who communicate with the dead, divine the future, and become possessed—are going mainstream. Attitudes toward Korean shamanism are changing as shamanic traditions appear in staged rituals, museums, films, and television programs, as well as on the internet.
Contemporary Korean Shamanism explores this vernacular religion and practice, which includes sensory rituals using laden altars, ecstatic dance, and animal sacrifice, within South Korea's hypertechnologized society, where over 200,000 shamans are listed in professional organizations. Liora Sarfati reveals how representations of shamanism in national, commercialized, and screen-mediated settings have transformed opinions of these religious practitioners and their rituals.
Applying ethnography and folklore research, Contemporary Korean Shamanism maps...>>
"You’re in your bed. It’s dark, you hear footsteps coming up the stairs and into your room. There’s someone there—a presence. They lie on you or beside you, gripping you tightly, crushing you into the bed. You can’t move. There may be a sound, a grunt or a strange smell. Time passes, you are paralysed with fear. Eventually the entity changes, expanding or contracting, moving away from you, sinking to the floor. With a great effort of will you manage to move the tip of your finger, then the hand until movement returns to your whole body and the experience ends. You have been visited by the old ‘hag’.
Dreams, the real theatre or perhaps...>>
"Have you ever been in a trance? Dennis Wier has been studying, teaching and experimenting with trance for over 35 years. Some of his investigations have wide-reaching implications in the areas of religion, politics, psychology and self-improvement.
For Wier, the study of trance includes not only meditation, hypnosis, addictions, charisma, magic and altered states of consciousness, but also includes electronic mind-control techniques and the ethical questions these practices raise.
Trance is scary for many people because they do not know much about it. The Way of the Trance takes much of this fear away by introducing a model for trance and using that model to describe meditation, hypnosis, addiction and charisma. Electronically induced trance...>>
