Sodom
Bill Roh
KMO wrote:
> Subject: The Spell of the Sensuous
> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 15:11:36 -0700
> From: KMO <kmo@amazon.com>
> Organization: Amazon.com Books
> To: Virus <virus@maxwell.lucifer.com>
> CC: kmo <kmo@amazon.com>
>
> For reasons I can't disclose, I have nothing to do at work at this
> moment, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to share a paragraph from
> the book that I'm reading (and may, in the fulness of time, actually
> finish). It's "The Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679776397/qid%3D906155997/002-2582446-9909448
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> The most sophisticated definition of "magic" that now circulates
> through the American counterculture is "the ability or power to alter
> one's consciousness at will." No mention is made of any _reason_ for
> altering one's consciousness. Yet in tribal cultures that which we call
> "magic" takes its meaning from the fact that humans, in an indigenous
> and oral context, experience their own consciousness as simply one form
> of awareness among many others. The traditional magicaian cultivates an
> ability to shift out of his or her common state of consciousness
> precisely in order to make contact with the other organic forms of
> sensitivity and awareness with which human existence is entwined. Only
> by temporarily shedding the accepted perceptual logic of his culture can
> the sorcerer hope to enter into relation with other species on their own
> terms: only by altering the common organization of his senses will he be
> able to enter into a rapport with the multiple nonhuman sensibilities
> that animate the local landscape. It is this, we might say, that defines
> a shaman: the ability to readily slip out of the perceptual boundaries
> that demarcate his or her particular culture--boundaries reinforced by
> social customs, taboos, and most importantly, the common speech or
> language--in order to make contact with, and learn from, the other
> powers in the land. His magic is precisely this heightened receptivity
> to the meaningful solicitations--songs, cries, gestrues--of the larger,
> more-thatn-human field.
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> Make of it what you will and enjoy.
>
> -KMO