Witchcraft And The Shamanic Journey - Tumblr Posts

Wow I really want to read this now (homework go away plz I need time to read witch books)

Witchcraft and the Shamanic Journey

Just read the book of this title by Kenneth Johnson. His field is Comparative Religion, which gives a very good perspective on this topic. Recognition of the Shamanic element in European history has revolutionized the issue of Pagan Survival studies for Europe. Scholars of the Burning Times often dismissed vast realms of Witchcraft and surviving Pagan activity because “they were just having visions”! Sometimes we need a name, or more accurately, a concept, to see what is right in front of us. The concept of Shamanism has been the missing element in studying the chaotic period of the late Middle Ages. It can also be thread to follow, that allows us to see how Paganism has survived in many periods of history under changing forms.

Johnson surveys several important living Shamanic cultures in Europe with an informal style that lets us see how these cultures have survived, and how they function today. Syncretism, the blending of two or more religions, has often blinded us to the survival of the Pagan spirit under the regime of Christianity. It is a complicated theme, and Johnson handles it well. He puts forward a bold and interesting thesis: that the resurgence of Witchcraft which terrified the Christian Church at the dawn of the modern age was a “Crisis Cult” which was responding to the forces disintegrating the Medieval society from within in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries.