Snowdon - 3/17/22 - Some More Thoughts on Abram's Views in The Spell of the Sensuous

 3/17/22


To build on yesterday’s journal entry based on some rudimentary research I have done for my research paper, I found some information which is both interesting and worth noting against the background of what has been established before. My research topic is shamanism in East and Southeast Asia, and one of my focal points is the culture of the Hmong. Shamans take a prominent place in traditional Hmong culture, and, in some ways, what I have gathered about them thus far does match what Abram writes in The Spell of the Sensuous, with them taking the place of a healer of the people and the natural order in which they live.


However, I thought there were some interesting points to note in contrast to my last post (and the one before that, going back), in this Hmong practice of shamanism. Obviously, it goes without saying that there would be some differences in different places in the world. One such difference to Abram’s account though goes with the geographical element, as Hmong shamans live amongst the villagers whom they serve, in a traditional setting, and I also found that they might be relatively high in number, with more than one in the same general area. Additionally, going back to the discussion of Abram’s assertion that there is no non-sensory, otherworldly locales in oral cultures, with all being contained to the world in which they lived, the Hmong shaman’s spiritual journeys strongly contest that narrative, as they see the shaman traveling to the spiritual land of the dead, accompanied by the spirits of ancestors, in order to face the incorporeal lord of the dead, and discuss with him.


I’m sure that Abram’s intention was never to assert how shamanism could be observed without fail, at every corner of the globe, but all the same I thought these areas of divergence would be interesting to note.

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