Borneo-Dayak CRAFTS
indonesia exporter of dayak tribe's handmade crafts & tribal arts

Amazon.com's special collection on Borneo-Dayak arts and crafts .....

This A War Of Witches: A Journey Into The Underworld Of The Contemporary Aztecs is one of Amazon.com's collection on Borneo Dayak's-related products. Brought on this site by Borneo-Dayak Crafts Indonesia.

A War Of Witches: A Journey Into The Underworld Of The Contemporary Aztecs

Today's shopping tips: "Be wise in purchasing ..... find best value one"

---

Manufacturer: Westview Press
List Price: $28.00
Our Price: $19.95
You Save: $ 8.05 ( 29% )
(prices subject to change)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Average Customer Ratings:




DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 301
EAN: 9780813333878
ISBN: 0813333873
Label: Westview Press
Manufacturer: Westview Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1997-10-30
Publisher: Westview Press
Studio: Westview Press


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• The Island of Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea
• Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)
• Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural
• Aspects of Islam


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Really boring
Comment: This book has many parallels with the writings of Carlos Castaneda such as The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, The Original Teachings in a Deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition and Separate Reality. Both authors were anthropologists and studied Mesoamerican old shamanism and witchcraft as it was still practiced in Mexico in the 1960s and 1970s. Both authors study and describe a similar underworld, world of dreams, and the supernatural.

However, Carlos Castaneda is a far superior writer. He is a gripping story teller. His main mentor, Don Juan, jumps out of every page with vivid mythical proportion. Their counterparts, Rubia and Inocente, in this book really pale by comparison. They are dying or delirious elderly beings far from the top of their game. They go on and on about speculative and boring dream interpretations. As a result, the story has a hard time getting off the ground. The second half of the book gets more interesting as it reaches back into the past when Rubia and Inocente were more vibrant and human. Their struggle in defending the agricultural culture of their village against the greedy economic interest of usurping outsiders (coffee growers) is pretty good. But, this may be too late for many readers.

Giving Knab the benefit of the doubt, maybe the difference between Castaneda and Knab is the difference between fantasy and reality. We all know Castaneda's writings are most controversial and not well accepted in anthropological circles. In other words, anthropologists have accused Castaneda of making it all up. Knab's writing so far has not suffered such an ill fate. The Acknowledgment section of the book suggests Knab is on strong scholar footing. But, is Knab's book more credible than Castaneda's because of his lack of relative notoriety? I can't readily answer this question. At this stage, I may accept that Castaneda is a far more entertaining fiction writer. Meanwhile, Knab's duller prose may be better grounded in reality. Sometimes that's just the way it is. Reality is a bit duller than fiction.

Customer Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books.
Comment: A wonderful, involving journey into the midst of a modern Aztec blood fued. Knab does a sensational job of keeping this story very technical while at the same time creating a very tangible sense of dread and even terror.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Stop Reading!
Comment: I was actually assigned this book for my Sociology of Religion class. I'm not one for reading... in fact I rarely read anything, and when I do it's because I need to. This on the other hand I couldn't stop reading. Read it within a few days which is probably a record for me. lol

Take it from me. I hate reading, but I couldn't stop reading this! Awesome book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Curanderos Abound in Mexico -- Watch Out!
Comment: I find THE DIALOGUE OF EARTH AND SKY (2004) more interesting than this earlier story of the Aztecs beliefs by this same writer. It's a more in-depth study of the modern Aztec underworld in Mexico and the dreams which may heal and cure souls removed by these witches.

In this real-life mystery, he tried to be a healer to restore a child's soul (tonal). The thing to make me want this book was his 'dedication' "For the white-haired woman who insisted I embrace her tradition,"as it shows how some educated people respect and honor white-haired women. In the Indian culture, the woman is the head of the tribe, not the chief. We have a "sculpture" bust of a Cherokee woman in the courtyard of the old Whittle complex, now a federal court system.

It proves that a white-haired woman has more wisdome than a 48-yr-old male who has maybe two years more of college education than she. Liife is an education, and reading will educate a person more than any teacher. I know, because I was married to a college professor and have two sons who are college professors, one a PhD, two wives of those sons with PhDs.

It does not take a degree, though I do have one, to make an educated person and certainly not one to write short columns. Now that last, extra long (with some duplication -- after all, it was written over a period of three weeks) article was scholarly and I asked him, "When did you get so good?" Four years ago, it was too many "that's" which caused me to start criticising my favorite writer. How on earth could he go from that state to one of scholarly discourse with very few "that's"? Did he listen to this white-haired woman and study a bit of grammar on the side? I doubt it as he is too busy following local bands along on the Amtrack as a groupie and writing weird things about New Orleans where his son is in school.

The Mother Mary stature is showed on the title page of this book with other religious symbols. Yet, this book is not about religion, but about the devil's work. It would take an actual devil to steal a child's soul. Children are born with a purity we lose only in adolescence. I had thought at one time that my youngest son was a 'bad seed.' and sometimes still wonder how he got to be so bad. He was, after all, brought up in the United Methodist Church.

Timothy Knab is an Amreican anthropologist who has become an expert on the Aztecs and regales us about the dark past of San Martin. Since I graduated from Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, Tennessee, perhaps some of San Martin's devilishness entered my body (not the soul) as I've had to deal with voodoo at the last place I lived here, and the devil incarnate followed me from there to here. God works in mysterious ways and will protect the innocent and pure at heart. Devils are here to test our beliefs and to transform some into bad, bad people who become non-human. You can see it in their eyes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not like Castaneda -- this is real shamanism & anthropology
Comment: For anyone who wants an idea of what Carlos Castaneda's work might have been like if he had written real ethnographical accounts of sorcery and "dreaming" as practiced by followers of ancient Mexican traditions, I strongly recommend this book. It's also a colorful and intriguing story of revenge, murder and the impact of cultural upheavals spanning a period of over sixty years.

Knab was an anthropology professor in the early 70s at the National University of Mexico doing fieldwork in a small village in the Sierra de Puebla when he encountered authentic brujas and brujos who followed ancient traditions of sorcery and dreaming dating back to at least the Aztecs.

Unlike Castaneda, Prof. Knab is fluent in Nahuatl, and records the actual ancient terms used for various practices, and for regions of the dreaming world--Talocan or Tlalocan--that witches need to visit to help cure their patients, or to inflict harm on their opponents and other witches. He also faithfully records and translates his Nahuatl conversations with his two primary informants, an elderly man and woman of the village--Innocente and Rubia--who had both practiced curing and witchcraft for over 50 years. Unlike the supposed metaphysical and philosophical discourses of don Juan (especially in Castaneda's later books), these conversations are what one would expect of someone coming from this kind of cultural milieu.

Probably the most fascinating aspect of the book for Castaneda readers is the detailed descriptions of dream journeys that Prof. Knab is instructed in by his two informants. These sections of the book describe a realm that has a geography and consistent features that have supposedly been experienced by generations of Aztec-descended brujos.

Knab's instruction and interaction with his informants described in the books takes place over a three-year period, from the fall of 1974 to the fall of 1977, but it also eventually leads him to unravel a dark tale of witchcraft and intrigue in the same region in the 1920s that ultimately led to dozens of deaths attributed to witchcraft. These killings, which occurred over a period of about a decade, were ultimately brought to an end only when the townspeople literally crucified one of the alleged witches.

---

NOTE: All online transactions are processed at Amazon.com's secure server, using the latest technology on internet's secure transactions.
| Borneo books | Borneo posters | Dayak books |

M&N Design - interior design, furnitures, and decorative lamps
M&N Design offers interior design services and home interior furnishings for residential and hospitality projects. We also produce and market custom-made wooden furnitures as well as hundreds models of wooden decorative lamps: table lamps, floor lamps, wall lamps, and pendant lamps. Truly a total solution for your interior needs.