Back | An Approach to Traditional Stories | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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In indigenous cultures there's are always traditional stories and it is usually the Medicine men in the society that are keepers of those stories. |
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Often the Medicine man is a person who heals people with medicinal herbs or gives advice and heals by teaching based on the traditional stories and traditional knowledge. Turkic people call the Medicine man Kam and in some places Sham. The origin of the name Shaman is related to the word Sham. There is many misuses of the word Shaman. Shaman should be used to define a Sham or a Kam. In the Great Lakes area in US and Canada there are different types of Medicine men, the Great Lake area versions of a Kam. One of them is a Tchissakiwinini whose work is based on the idea of communication with underworld spirits. Many people think of a Shaman being magician or a sorcerers as soon as they hear about the Shamans work being associated with communicating with spirits. That's true for places where there's a sorcerer or magician being called a Shaman. |
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In indigenous cultures in Turtle Island the Shamans in general use medicinal herbs to heal people. There is a number of Shamans who try to communicate with spirits. This practice dates very far back in time among indigenous people. It is commonly accepted that there are creatures like us but from another substance and different from us. In Arabic they are know as Jinn. In Algonquin languages they are called Manidoos. The Shamans that practice communicating with them have a tradition of doing that since before the Ice Age. According to the monotheistic religions of the Middle East, before Ice Age there was a time when people and Jinn, Manidoos, if we can say, could see each other. |
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Then according to the scriptures Suleyman, Solomon, asked the Creator that people stop abusing Jinn, Manidoos if we can call them that. After that people could no longer see Jinn, Manidoos, if we can say, and communication with Jinn was very much reduced. To indigenous people Suleyman, Solomon, lived in a very distant place and they could have easily not heard any messages from Suleyman, Solomon, and have continued to practice communication with Jinn by calling them and having them enter people or designated places. The persons specializing in that were Shamans. They would ask Jinn, Manidoos, if we can say, where animals for hunting were, what the weather in distant locations was like etc. Obvious placing a Jinn, a Manidoo, at the level of a god is contradictory to a monotheistic belief. The debatable question is whether the Shaman associated with communicating with a Jinn, Manidoo, is simply communicating or placing the Jinn, Manidoo, in the position of a god. The Shamans in the Great Lakes area as well as all traditional aboriginals claim not to be worshiping Manidoos but rather One Creator only. |
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According to the monotheistic religions of the Middle East every
human being has a companion Jinn, a Kareen. Followers of those religions
explain that when the person dies that companion Jinn, Kareen, lives on
and knows everything about the person he lived with. They say that a who
may communicates with a Kareen and get information can about the
deceased person from the Kareen and that the Kareen pretenders to be the
deceased person.
Going to people and telling them not to talk to Jinn
after they have been talking with Jinn for millennia is an interesting
issue. In a Muslim country there were Muslims who had a zeal for Islam
but didn't ever learn Islam well enough because they lived far away from
Arabic countries. There was a grave in front of an old mosque at their
location. Apparently they didn't know that graveyards should not be
placed in front of mosques. |
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A young man, who spent time in an Arabic country, came and told the Imam there, who was a very old man, that it's not permissible to pray towards a grave. The old Imam said: "Our Jamaa here has been praying like that for 600 years, and you come to tell us now." There are Shamans, Kam, who practice communication with Jinn, Manidoos, if we can say, since well before the Ice Age. It would be interesting to hear what they would say if a young man told them that after Suleyman, Solomon, using Jinn, Manidoos if we can say, stops. |
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In the Great Lakes region as well as in many other indigenous cultures there is a Shaking Tent ceremony. During the Shaking Tent ceremony the Shaman, called Tchissakiwinini in Great lakes region culture, is tied inside a small tent , then untied and noises come from inside the tent and the surrounding area. The primary spirit that the Tchissakiwinini claims to be communicating with during this ceremony is an underwater panther with horns and spikes on the back. According to people who read the Bible, the spirits that the Tchissakiwinini's work is based on communicating with, are horned devils. The traditionalist Shaking Tent ceremony practitioners associate the underwater panther with storms and waves on water and strong rapids. |
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In their culture they are not considered evil but rather a part of nature. On this point, in all human cultures waves, rapids and currents are natural occurrences and not evil devils. Followers of the the Bible that join the Shaking Tent ceremonies call the underworld spirits devils which is a clear contradiction since the underworld spirits represent natural phenomena such as waves on water. To call a wave on the lake or river evil with the pretext that all evil should be eradicated, would be trying to eradicate a natural phenomenon that is an important part of the universe. In Islamic beliefs which are a part of the religions from the Middle East, just like the Bible based religions, it is forbidden to say anything negative about the wind and weather elements, including waves. |
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Therefore not all religions from the Middle East support the Bible based concept of all underworld spirits being evil. Regarding talking to Jinn, Manidoo, if we can say, in many Muslim countries, Arab countries in particular, many Muslims indulge in talking to persons who they believe have been possessed by a Jinn, a Manidoo if we can say. Does that make them sorcerers is debatable. Then when the Tchissakiwinini according to people's beliefs is talking to a sprit or Manidoo or Jinn, from the area with water, about the water conditions there, the question whether this is it an act of sorcery is debatable. |
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Besides practices of talking to Jinn, Manidoos, if we may say, there are people who are considered Shamans and who don't do any of that. Their teachings of tales about supernatural beings and supernatural events are symbolic interpretations or real things. The stories they teach are not taken literally; instead they are interpretational and made to get a point across. An underwater panther with spikes and horns is a symbol for rapids on a river. If a person who takes these stories literally hears about a water panther spirit, he/she will either try summoning a Manidoo of the river, or if he/she doesn't believe in Manidoos then would probably call a zoologist to try capture on camera a water panther. However if the person who hears that story, is a person who takes the stories according to the interpretational meaning that they carry, he/she will understand that it warns about sharp rocks and fast waters at a certain part of a waterway. |
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Many traditional stories talk about events that took place millennia ago and are a window into the past. Dismissing them as Shaman recipes for summoning Jinn, Manidoos, is a narrow way of looking at them. Likewise taking them literally and misunderstanding them is losing them. By loosing the traditional stories we might be loosing a window into the past and along with it, the millennia old knowledge of plants and animals, based on millennia of experience. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2007 © Miighan-Kurt Co. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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