Re: [HoE] A Few Qs

[Matthew DeForrest <mmdeforrest@worldnet.att.net>]

A quick quote as to how life for shamen might go in the post-apocalypse
of HoE from _Black Elk Speaks_, a book about a shamen who was at Little
Big Horn and a participant in the Ghost Dance movement (a must read for
just about anyone, whether you are interested in the West or Indians aor
not).  This version is VERY truncated (it lasts for 3-4 pages in the
book):

...Black Elk remarked to his son, Ben: "Something should happen to-day. 
If I have any power left, the thunder beings of the west should hear me
when I send a voice, and there should be at least a little thunder and a
little rain."  What happened is, of course, related to Wasichu readers
as being merely a more or less striking coincidence.  It was a bright
and cloudless day, and after we had reachef the summit the sky was
perfectly clear.  It was a season of drouth, one of the worst in the
memory of the old men.  The sky remained clear until about the end of
the ceremony.

[Here is a long prayer/song/speech which has been cut.]

	We who listened now noted that thin clouds had gatehred about us.  A
scant chill rain began to fall and there was low, muttering thunder
without lightning.  With tears running down his cheeks, the old man
raised his voice to a thin high wail, and chanted:  "In sorrow I am
sending a feeble voice, O Six Powers of the World. Hear me in my sorrow,
for I may never call again.  O make my people live!"
	For some minutes the old man stood silent, with face uplifted, weeping
in the drizzling rain.
	In a little while the sky was clear again.

If a shaman can manage that in this world, I'd guess a "magic rich"
world like HoE should have a good bit of energy with which to work.

Unless you don't believe such things are possible but, personally, I am
with Hamlet's comment to Horatio (quoted, perhaps imperfectly, from
memory):  There is more between Heaven and Earth than is found in our
philosophies.

Just $.02 for the conversation.
_________________________________________
Matthew M. DeForrest, Ph.D.	Adjunct Professor of Communications and
Adjunct Professor of English	Adjunct Professor of English
UNC Charlotte			Wingate University
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001	Wingate, NC 28174-0157

"Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not
powerless.  Dead -- I say?  There is no death.  Only a change of
worlds."  Chief Seattle, "Our Poeple are Ebbing Away like a Receding
Tide," 1855.