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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8589031" data-attributes="member: 58172">Check out this link, to my <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/norse-world.652482/page-5#post-7613656" target="_blank">post</a> in an other thread. While explaining what animism is (and why it isnt polytheism), I mention David Abram. He uses the term "sorcerer" for certain cultures in Asia, that preserve an animistic substratum.In this context, the "sorcerer" is a shaman-like figure who maintains relationships with animistic beings, imprecisely understood as "nature spirits". Heh, it took him a long time to realize that these "spirits" arent spirits. They are actually physical objects, like a colony of ants, a river, etcetera. His work opened the eyes of many Westerners. Animism is only about this physical world ... there is nowhere else. That is the significance of reincarnation in these cultures: things change shapes (breath into wind, corpse into soil), but there is nowhere else to go.Anyway, these "sorcerers" spend most of their time mediating conflicts between humans and other beings, and thereby healing the sick. But the "sorcerer" intentionally emphasize their black magic and sometimes affirm rumors that they themselves are evil and dangerous, mainly to keep people away, so that only the truly desperate would come to the sorcerer for help.Heh, in my own words, the demonization of these shamans is sometimes welcomed by the shaman for the sake of crowd control to avoid getting overworked.</blockquote>

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