On Sophron fr. 3 K.-A. (Athenaeus 11.480 B)

After a brief review of some of the general problems posed by Sophron’s work, the paper analyses Sophron’s fr. 3 K.-A., offering a detailed commentary and a new interpretation of the passage.     

Material Culture and the Magical Power of Dance Objects

ABSTRACT This paper takes up the call by scholars such as Alfred Gell to consider objects of material culture as objects, by examining them in the context of production, circulation and reception. Because they are unadorned and without visual interest, langarol, the hand‐held artefacts used in some New Ireland dance performances, do not lend themselves to modes of analysis that see cultural objects as surrogate texts, the hidden meanings of which can be ‘read’. This very ‘lack’ enables us more readily to discern their significance, which lies in their magical potency and in the performance of their creator, the shaman, in attracting, wielding and revealing his awesome power. The power sought is less power over others and more power to — the ability to realise projects that can elicit effects. If consciousness and body are one, such achievements are to be understood as embodiments of intentionality and agency. It is through the production and wielding of such objects that people make themselves.     

Research on the history of the third world in Scandinavia

The aim of this paper is to challenge some of the established views on monetary and economic aspects of medieval Norwegian history. This challenge is not only based on a different understanding of the evidence, but also on new interpretations of documentary and numismatic evidence. Contrary to what has been the general understanding I argue that money was available, and it was, in longer periods of time, available within a framework of a well organized monetary system with large coinages. In the second half of the 12th century, coins became distributed and used among a larger group of people in rural areas than ever before. In market places and towns, money economy was emerging in the 11th and 12th, and probably seen partly in effect in the 13th and 14th century. If we accept the evidence for coinage and the use of money as being widely distributed, or even accept it partly, it opens up a range of new perspectives to use as starting points for understanding medieval monetary and economic history in Norway.     

Invincible blades and invulnerable bodies: weapons magic in early-modern Germany

In the world of the occult, as in other realms, the tools and methods chosen by women and men reflected acceptable ways of ‘doing’ gender. This paper will concentrate on magical spells and blessings intended to give men an advantage in sword fights, make them invulnerable, or turn them into perfect marksmen. Because magical practices associated with guns and blades were related to early-modern thinking about masculine power and performance, they were less harshly treated than the kind of magic more often associated with women. Many of these hypermasculine spells drew on contemporary medical beliefs about natural sympathies, including the idea that sympathies existed between the dead and the living. For this reason, invulnerability and weapon spells usually included materials from male corpses (for example, body parts, moss growing on dead men's skulls, and so on). As learned belief in natural magic waned during the Enlightenment, stories of magic blades and bullets retreated from courts and battlefields into the world of fiction and fantasy.     

The Efficacies of Heritage: Syndromes,Magics, and Possessional Acts

In this paper I present critical insights into the efficacies of heritage. I take the phenomenon of the Jerusalem Syndrome (JS) as my point of departure and recast it as Heritage Syndrome (HS). I do this to better understand how such efficacies are experienced and materialized in ritual possessional acts. As a framework, the JS reveals the power and potency that reside in experiences of collapse. Such disembedding events activate subsequent ritual dramas (whether malign/benign or successful/failed) of world-making, redemption, repair, and renewal. Heritage quests as ritual ‘sacred dramas’ and ‘practical magics’ are I argue, similarly experienced in the collapse of known categories: imagined/real, extraordinary/mundane, possessing/being possessed, and crucially what heritage is versus what heritage does. Writ large, heritage efficacies are bound-up in the breakdown and blurring of boundaries — and thus the non-distinction — between heritage in the conventional sense and other dynamics such as magic, prophecy, and well-being/ill-being. These reveal alternative pathways, potentialities, and patterns of behaviour that demonstrate that dominant, elite, rationalized approaches to heritage banalize heritage efficacies and can thus be termed a failed project. I argue that conceiving of heritage as a syndrome — and critically as a movement away from medical pathologization and towards a recasting of heritages as diverse constellations of cultural-spiritual-magical-emotional experiences and engagements — better reflects the deeply felt complex and transformative practices at play. These heritage rites distinguished at points by those who wish their lives were more dramatic and those who wish their lives were less traumatic better describe how the vast majority of global actors engage with heritage, notably at popular, grass-roots level and in contexts of extremis, yet its significance goes largely unrecognized and unvalued.     

选择性环境、能力与农区特色文化产业集群的演化——以宝丰县赵庄乡魔术产业集群为例

通过二手资料和半结构式访谈法,以赵庄魔术产业集群为例,研究了我国农区特色文化产业集群的演化。发现该集群演化是行动者能力与选择性环境互动的结果。当地悠久历史文化传统,与市场、制度和空间结构等地方环境相结合,催生了大量魔术表演团体的地理集中。农村经济体制变迁提供了文化产业化的市场推力和拉力,增强了集群竞争力。而基于血缘、亲缘、地缘、业缘等,由不同行动者互动所建构的子承父业、师徒制、以团代培和行话制,形塑了知识溢出与集体学习的地方化网络。这两方面有别于城市文化创意产业集群的成因。依靠声望、信任等农区社会资本迅速组团,并以较高的弹性应对市场风险。     

Divining the siege of Mugombane

This paper tracks between oral histories, historical documents, early ethnographies and the testimony of a modern traditional healer in order to understand and interpret archaeological evidence for divination and ritual activity practiced during a siege event that took place over 150 years ago. This spiritual dimension, taken together with physical evidence for the death and defeat of the Kekana, when interpreted against the nineteenth century socio-economic landscape, proffers an explanation for the apparent silence in the Kekana oral record about the siege. Contrary to prevailing interpretations of this silence, this paper considers the social and spiritual obligations of the chief towards his subjects and argues that the impact of the siege was so profound that it rendered the chief of the besieged, Mugombane, socially and spiritually bankrupt. This situation would have provoked the removal of the chief and the manufacture of a suitable history to give the new chief legitimacy and the chiefdom continuity.     

秦汉之际仙人思想的整合与定位

战国时期,仙人思想呈现出东西部发展不平衡的状态。这种不平衡导致秦始皇统一后,受关东方士的引诱,逐步沉溺于求仙活动之中,生前全面实践活人成仙术,死后在陵园中实施成仙的种种辅助设施和幻想情景。西汉早期,在政治大一统的格局下,原有的仙人思想不仅进一步地相互交融,而且得到了丰富和扩展;活人成仙术对政治的影响力越来越大;死后成仙思想流行起来,极大地促进了墓葬文化的繁荣,奠定了此后千余年间墓葬表现的基本形式。     

Theatrical magic and the agenda to enchant the world

This paper addresses the agenda of enchantment as it relates to contemporary theatrical magic (those deliberately enigmatic activities that are performed, experienced and commercialized as a form of entertainment). Magic practice is regularly constructed along a particular teleology: ‘action → effect of impossibility → affect of astonishment’. The paper supplements this teleology in four sections. First, a discussion of magicians’ knowledge and the ignorance required for participant-spectators to apprehend effects of impossibility and become astonished. Second, an examination of two forms of reason: one, an investigation into hidden ‘secrets’; the other, a perception of superficial ‘effects’. Third, a critique of the figure of the magician and its disputed role within magic practice. Fourth, a presentation and discussion of three empirical vignettes – professional magician Jay Sankey’s ‘Unreal Experiments’ – which advocate an evental logic with an experimental ethos; thus, enacting a critique of the figure and teleological structure of practice, and posing a challenge to rethink and invitation to expand theatrical magic practice. In conclusion, the paper highlights some of the ways in which theatrical magic participates in the agenda to enchant the world that has so gripped social science.     

Touching the Divine: Recent Research on Neo-Paganism and Neo-Shamanism

Why do religions that are in some sense invented out of the western scholarship on shamanism and paganism have such a hold on the western imagination? This article reviews four recent contributions to the literature on neo-paganism and neo-shamanism. As exemplified in the books under review, these religions have three basic characteristics—magical realism, playfulness, and experientalism—which are not unique to them, but shared by many modern faiths. The article argues that these are not primitive throw-backs but ways of responding to the doubt and skepticism of a modern pluralistic age.