Great bit about the animism of the written word from an interview with David Abram:
We are the culture of the alphabet, and the alphabet itself could be seen as a very potent form of magic. You know, we open up the newspaper in the morning and we focus our eyes on these little inert bits of ink on the page, and we immediately hear voices and we see visions and we experience conversations happening in other places and times. That is magic!
It’s outrageous: as soon as we look at these printed letters on the page we see what they say. They speak to us. That is not so different from a Hopi elder stepping out of her pueblo and focusing her eyes on a stone and hearing the stone speak. Or a Lakota man stepping out and seeing a spider crawling up a tree and focusing his eyes on that spider and hearing himself addressed by that spider. We do just the same thing, but we do it with our own written marks on the page. We look at them, and they speak to us. It’s an intensely concentrated form of animism. But it’s animism nonetheless, as outrageous as a talking stone.
In fact, it’s such an intense form of animism that it has effectively eclipsed all of the other forms of animistic participation in which we used to engage — with leaves, with stones, with winds. But it is still a form of magic.
Read more here.
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
- Notes: Millions of Us Corp.
- Where do I sign up???
- Human Universals
- Definition of magic that I like
- Magick, a Distraction?
12 Comments
i disagree. the stone is always a stone. the words on today`s paper are different from yesterday`s.
we have all spent years learning the very precise code of these words and are intimate with what they mean as a consensus.
the shaman in the woods talking with stones and spiders has taken a different form of training and wouldn`t know the first thing about the printed word unless he had grown up in a post gutenberg society like us.
You disagree with what?
But you’re leaving out the fact that today’s paper is going to be different tomorrow, but the paper for October 7, 2006 is going to be the same no matter where or when you read that particular issue. So I’m not sure what you mean.
Are you really serious that you believe words are a “precise code” and that their meaning is totally consensual? Cause now I *really* don’t understand what you mean!
Well, right. Of course. Isn’t that self-evident? Are you challenging the value-assumption laden in that - the idea that maybe the shaman is somehow “better” because of his alternate form of training?
That may be what Abram means, but it may not be (see my point above about words not being a “precise code”). To me, what he means is that because of our post-Gutenberg training, the only kind of language we can understand intimately without other training is based on texts, media and spoken and written communication. He seems to be saying that because of our natural language faculties being filled up with this system of culturally-based language, that we consequently have a reduced capacity to apply our natural language capacity to “reading” other types of language systems which exist.
I think his point is not that the shaman’s woodland language skills are not intrinsically better than our textual ones. But that he is recognizing that humans are products of nature, products of the forest, and as such have an inherent need to be physically, emotionally and spiritually connected to that world, and that the lack of such a connection is what causes us to feel alienated, empty and desparate. I think THAT is the value judgement he is making and I would tend to agree!
I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention, Tim. It is an expression of much that I have been stumbling towards in semi-darkness (a wonderful journey which has been well worth doing in that fashion) and held me - I think I can say this in the circumstances - literally spellbound.
In all times people have looked for signs. People have seen an animal , or a stick, or a bird and looked at these things as omens. Are they.? Since everything is connected, and there are no accidents , yes.
How though are they connected.? This is the second part of the construct. How do we interpret the signs.?
I have traveled to a few of the ancient oracle sights from the ancient world. I have been to Delphi in Greece, Didama in Turkey, and Siwa in Egypt . In each of these places, words were used to try to divine, or interpret the future. Each of these places were interestingly located , in a kind of beautiful or spectacular area.
Each of these places operated for hundreds of years. I suppose you could say they were a little like magic think tanks.
the written word has precise and specific meanings…….or at least they used to. when one gets into the scientific or legal definitions of words we start to realise the specificity. granted the english language hasn`t got the precision of german for instance, but still, we rely on the objective nature of words to engage in contracts of all manner, from legal to romantic to business to social. if words didn`t have some absolute value we couldn`t rely on them to support the performance of contracts.
now, when it comes to the relationship we have to all things in the universe, that`s an entirely different thing. the dialog is ongoing and inate. the linguistic, written word culture splits us from the spiritual dialog pretty much automatically. the traditions that support the oracles aren`t written, they`re oral……..tribal.
the effect of five hundred years of written language has distorted our spiritual relationship. thanks to technology we are able to return to the tribe, the oral tradition and the reconnection with spirit directly.
i`m sure this cycle has occured many times before on this planet and possibly others too. there are some signs to suggest high technology on the desert floor.
the noise in the head created by reading words on paper drown out the other voices.
But it’s only *apparent* specificity because contracts are *always* challenged and picked apart in court. And science on the grand scale seems to be all about squabbling over the definition of things, how they work and why they do what they do. Scientific language seems almost to change daily! Just look at Pluto being demoted from being a planet!
Yeah, I love pointing out to people who consider themselves to be sane, that they often find themselves hallucinating the sound of each word whenever they start reading; and if they are not hallucinating the sound of each word, then they generally are hallucinating pictures &/or movies. Sometimes all 3 at once! Actually, for the most part, it could be likened to another form of synaesthesia; interpreting little blots of color into sound, and that’s on top of all of reality that we’re constantly hallucinating together. It’s pretty amazing that we can hallucinate reality, and then on top of that have little tangent bouts of hallucination intertwined throughout the day as we think & process sub-routines. I wrote a frantic little piece on speed reading awhile back; http://tinyurl.com/zu9br
It’s nto news, exactly- the ancient greeks, egyptians, and Hebrews all cottoned to the idea thousands of years ago. (”I will create as I speak..”)
c’mon, the chars of the alphabet are put together deliberately by other humans who want to communicate with us. This is not so with the spider and the stone, who don’t want to communicate with us.
There’s a basic difference between the pretenses of the priests and the accomplishments of the scientists, the researches and so forth (even if they can be the same person). The latter are made for a purpose and meant to be learned by anyone as they are passed on into culture. The first are never provable and depend on the sole claims of the priest itself.
It doesn’t seem the sam ething to me.
what happened to the message I posted here? Just out of curiosity.
Right on Jp. These are big differences. Science is fact. Belief is opinion. A good society has freedom of and from belief , or opinion , or religion. People should be free to believe any old nonsense. People should also be allowed to say any damn thing they care to.
Why.?
Because then everyone gets to play things out . Nothing is repressed. More fun that way.
“Science is fact…” Is that a belief?
“Belief is opinion…” Is that a scientific fact?
Sorry, I just had to say that, it’s in my nature; more fun that way! : )
There are many people who masquerade belief as science. Likewise, there are many scientists who cloud their science with dogmatic beliefs. Hey, I’m guilty of it too. If I were a scientist, I would try to force myself to take into consideration the possibility that my observation of a seemingly controlled experiment, may actually be slightly altering the experiment itself, thereby stopping it from being a controlled experiment; …or is it the other way around? Ah buggers, here, watch this video. I’d challenge anyone to read Michael Talbot’s Holographic Universe and walk away without the slightest doubt about some of physics supposed “laws”