Dr Jenny Butler: Hello everyone and Welcome to our University College Cork Study of Religions Research Seminar and we’re delighted today to welcome Dr Angela Puca who’s going to speak to us about folk witchcraft or indigenous Shamanism, understanding vernacular magic practices in Italy. Dr Angela Puca joined Leeds Trinity University in 2016 and is currently lecturing on philosophy and religious studies her research focuses on magic, witchcraft, Paganism, Esotericism, Shamanism and related currents. The University of Leeds awarded her a PhD in Anthropology of Religion with a thesis on indigenous and transcultural Shamanism in Italy which is soon to be published with Brill. Author of several peer-reviewed publications and editor of the forthcoming Pagan Religions in Five Minutes for Equinox. She hopes to bridge the gap between academia and the communities of magic practitioners by delivering related scholarly content on her YouTube channel, Angela’s Symposium. And I will put links later to Angela’s Symposium for those who would like to follow her on there. So I hand it over to you now Angela, you’re very welcome.

Dr Angela Puca: Thank you so much for inviting me, Jenny. I’m delighted to be here and as you know, I really love your department at the University College Cork. So I’m really pleased to be here. So I’m gonna share my screen now. So please let me know if you are able to see my screen, can you.

Jenny: Yes.

AP: Okay. So I will be talking about my PhD research which focused on, not only folk witchcraft but also forms of transcultural Shamanism which are imported forms of Shamanism that get reinterpreted in the cultural fabric of that specific territory, in my specific case in Italy because my fieldwork was in Italy. But in this presentation I will address the vernacular healing tradition or folk witchcraft in Italy and whether it can be considered indigenous Italian Shamanism. But of course, we will have to clarify the terms there.

So first of all, my methodology and my data collection happened over the course of five years of field study in Italy, across the country. I did participant observation because my methodology is mainly anthropological, so I spent time with practitioners, stayed with them and I participated in rituals. Also, I used interviews questionnaires, surveys and casual conversations. Sometimes people are fascinated by the use of casual conversations but you would never imagine how much information, how many important things you can get from there and also discourses emerged from a Facebook community that I created for the specific purpose of my study and also textbooks, articles, internet posts, for use within the community. And as for my data analysis, I use something called a diectic approach which comes from the Latin term deixis. It was mentioned by Michael Lambeck in Provincialising God and he refers to deixis refers to attempts that don’t have a specific meaning unless they are put in a context. Examples are words like here and there, these words are meaningful but only in a specific context when they are when they are put in a context and then I also use discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is the study of the patterns that emerged from the discourses that the community creates and that allows us to better understand the meaning-making on the part of the community by analysing the discourses.

So let’s see now what are the research questions here. Can there be an indigenous religion in Europe? Would be the first one. Can the Italian vernacular healing tradition or witchcraft tradition be a form of Shamanism and is it the indigenous Italian Shamanism? So the way it started, the way these questions started was because, during my fieldwork at first, I was, as I mentioned, analysing forms of Shamanism that were imported from indigenous cultures and reinterpreted in the Italian cultural fabric. But then during my fieldwork, I encountered a woman in Tuscany who claimed to be the last Italian Shaman of a hereditary tradition. So, of course, I spent a few days with her, I sit with her family and I gathered about 10-12 hours of interviews with her and did some practice as well. And during the course of those days, I realised that the traits that she was explaining belonged to her Italian tradition, Italian Shamanism were actually traits that were not new to me. And so at one point, I asked her, so what’s the difference between your Italian Shamanism and another folk magic practice or tradition in Italy? And at first, she said well that’s a good question and then she answered that the main difference is that her tradition has not been syncretised with Catholicism whereas folk magic in Italy has been. So that was her rationale. But anyway, that opened a completely new avenue for my PhD research and so I started investigating the folk magic tradition which I systematised because up until my research Italian witchcraft, Italian folk witchcraft has been considered a sparse practice across the country. But for my research, I did systematise the different practices across the country under the name of the tradition of Segnature and also I argued that it could indeed be considered the indigenous Shamanism of Italy and I will explain why so.

The second question, second research question is, can the Italian vernacular healing tradition be a form of Shamanism and is it the indigenous Italian Shamanism? So let’s first address the category of indigenous. So before we claim or I try to argue for the folk Italian witchcraft tradition to be a form of indigenous Shamanism, I have of course to clarify terminology. So the term indigenous has been often used in a similar way when it comes to religion and people, so what I argue first is that we should disentangle the category of indigenous religions from the category of indigenous people. The two need to be distinguished and that is to better understand both indigenous religions in and of themselves and what indigenous people actually do. Because combining the two together risks getting into the trap of exoticising indigenous people and what they do. And associating too many indigenous religions to some sort of archaic aboriginal primaeval and all this terminology that comes from the 19^th century and their perception of non-western cultures.

So indigenous religions need to be distinguished from indigenous people but also because the category of indigenous people is a political category which has meaning and utility. It is very important but it depends on a specific country and it also exists only in certain geographical and political contexts. So indigenous people are a political category. An indigenous religion is something, is a classification that belongs to certain specific religions. Indigenous religions, according to James Cox who has done extensive research on the matter, have a few traits. So one of these is the focus on ancestors and community-based and contingent on the place. So with indigenous religions, you have that practice that cannot be extrapolated from a culture and just be practised by any other person. So in indigenous religions, you have contact with the culture and a connection to the land, a connection with the specific place and the specific cultural context, so you cannot just remove that practice from that context and you know have the technique and have it practised in a completely different setting, cultural setting or even from a completely different place. Also, it is based on kinship relations and also you have the oral transmission of knowledge here.

When we talk about oral transmission of knowledge I would like to emphasise that I don’t mean specifically oral transmission of knowledge per se but more a one-to-one transmission of knowledge, so a non-standardized transmission of knowledge that is what you find in indigenous religions – the transmission of knowledge is tailored upon the disciple. So you have this contact which is on a one-to-one basis and is very personal and the transmission of knowledge is based on the individual, it’s not something that can be delivered in a workshop or can be transmitted via books, for instance – it’s not a systematised way of transmitting knowledge. Indigenous, when applied to religions, it needs to abandon connotations hinting at primaeval, untouched and pre-colonial traditions as imagined by the evolutionary models of the 19th century. So I’m not the only one to claim this entanglement of indigenous religions and Indigenous people, so I have my references at the end of the presentation. But, of course, I’m applying this to the Italian context.

As for the category of Shamanism from its very inception of the category, it emerged from Russian ethnography during the 19th century and it was first applied to the Siberian Traditions, more specifically to the Tungusic regions. So Shamanism or Shaman, usually scholars of Shamanism tend to say Shamanism rather than ‘shaymanism’ because the term comes from Shaman which is the native term. It was the native term in the Tunguska region to refer to their Shamans. But then these Russian ethnographers noticed that even in the surrounding regions they would have very similar figures who had their own native terms to define their Shamans. But they superimposed that because they realized that there was a common pattern so they used the term from one region and applied it to other regions that had their own native terms.

Now, this process has been going on since the beginning, the inception of the term Shamanism. Then it was applied to South American traditions and so on. So it’s not like it was born in any other way than as a way of superimposing a category identified by ethnographers to label certain practices and certain figures that appear to have common practices. Also, as I was mentioning it is a label that from its very beginning overlaps local specific terms and it was created by Western scholarship, yet it has no agreed-upon meaning. Also, there is a discrepancy between how Scholars and how practitioners conceptualize and intend the term so here we have an emic-etic tension, which is often the case with anthropological research.

And then Italian shamanic practitioners, for instance, endorse quite strongly, I would say, Eliade’s view of the Shaman, which is based on the idea of ecstasy, trans-states and this idea of the primordial proto-religious form, this is still quite popular, I think, even outside of Italy – the idea that Shamanism is the proto-religion – it comes before any other religion, it’s found even in esoteric circles. So what I studied is the Italian folk tradition, the Italian folk magic – witchcraft and I systematised it with the term the tradition of Segnature. The term means signs-gestures and it refers to magical symbols drawn by hands and used in combination with words. So Segnature, which is singular, is the combination of a sign drawn by hand and something that is said, not specifically out loud because we will perhaps talk about that later but the words that are pronounced during the Segnature are actually pronounced inwards, so they are not uttered because nobody can hear them, otherwise they would lose their power, So they are pronounced inwards. And the Segnatori, which is the male plural, then you have Segnatrici as female plural are initiated and performers of these gestures. Now I adopt this label of Segnature and the tradition of Segnature to systematise the different varieties of these practices that are found across the country because according to my research and my data collection I argue that there is indeed a very common pattern – so common that it can be part of the same tradition even though there are, of course, regional variations. And I’m not discounting them but still, you have a pattern underlying them all which is very strong, strong enough for me to argue, I think, that it is one tradition.

So in every region, you will have a native term which we know is very common also in Shamanism. And also in every region, the incantations prayers are usually performed in the local dialect. Now, this is changing as well because, with the fact that now you have different practitioners of the Segnature from all over the country that are in communication, they are starting to translate the local dialect into Italian. But of course, with social media, there are lots of changes that happen at a quick rate. So the Segnature are usually used for healing herpes, falls, sprains, loss of objects and alteration of the weather and other different things. Like there’s a ritual that was referred to me by an informant which would be translated as the herb of fear, which is so interesting because it reminds it reminded me so much of a soul retrieval ritual from a shamanic tradition because it stems from the concept that every time that something traumatic happens in your life, like something that induces fear in you, or any traumatic event, you lose part of yourself. So the way this specific informant explained to me she didn’t say you lose part of your soul as you would have in other shamanic traditions and even in transcultural practices but she would explain that you lose part of yourself and you have to become whole again. So it’s a very similar concept, it was very fascinating. So every healer traditionally has one or more powers, usually one or two which can vary and they are passed down within the family, usually, especially in the South. In the North, you have more openness, perhaps, in that sense but in the South, it tends to be more the case that it needs to be passed through the bloodline, especially for the old generation of Segnature and for each town traditionally there used to be and in some cases, there still is the one Healer. You know you have that one person in the town that you know is going to take care of your Saint Antony’s fire because it’s also fascinating that some of these illnesses have very mythological names and I have a section in my PhD thesis about that – embedding illness into the myth.

So also what I found in my research is that there is a distinction quite, a stark distinction between the old generation of Segnature and the new generations of Segnature. I called it old and new because I didn’t want to make it too much about the age of the practitioners although it is often the case that older people tend to follow within the umbrella of the old generation whereas the younger practitioners tend to fall more within the new generation. So the old generations tend to be dwellers of the countryside and they tend to stick to the traditional approach, whereas the new generation of Segnature are residents of this of the cities and they tend to expand the field of action of the Segnature to use newer forms and also use newer forms of syncretism. So for instance they would use social media and the internet. But I’d say that the main difference between the old generation and the new generation of Segnature is the willingness to share their practices. So the old generation would be people that just keep it secret, they would not tell anyone, you wouldn’t discover for the life of you that they do these practices unless you are part of the community or you are a trusted person. And in that case, you will know that they do that kind of thing, they wouldn’t call themselves witches or anything like that and they are very, very secretive. They don’t want to share their practices, they just have it and will pass it down, quite possibly, to somebody within their bloodline but they are not very keen on sharing.

The new generation of Segnature tends to be more definitely prone to sharing these practices and syncretising them in new ways because I would argue that every religious practice has some form of syncretism. So I’m not saying that the old generation didn’t syncretise, indeed they syncretised with Catholicism for instance and that’s another difference between the old and the new generation, that the old generation has clear syncretism of their practices with Catholicism and the new generation tends to syncretise more with paganism or with other new forms of Witchcraft. So that’s another distinction but I say the main distinction is how willing are they to talk about the practice and share them and alter them in a way that mirrors well the problems that we have in the contemporary world.

So like now you would have Segnature for the anxiety for an exam that you have to take, for instance. I would have liked that. So why might it be indigenous? So it may be indigenous because it is native and connected to the land, it is based on kinship relations, of course, this is likely changing with the new generation of Segnature but traditionally for the old generation especially it is based on kinship relations, the knowledge is passed down orally and on a one-to-one basis and also you have a strong sense of the service to the community. Whereas I think that this is one of the differences that has been highlighted when distinguishing between indigenous Shamanism and transcultural Shamanism or sometimes called Neoshamanism, is that transcultural Shamanism tends to be more self-centred more about the personal development of the practitioner, whereas indigenous Shamanism tends to be more about the community and the environment. And I did find in the interviews that I conducted that the idea of service to the community was very important. So much so that usually these practitioners don’t take any money for what they do in the community and in some cases they would accept offers in other cases they wouldn’t even accept offers. There there was this quite known Segnatrici in Sicily and she wouldn’t even take fruit or vegetables when people would give her offers for what she did she would just give them to the local church because she said that her spirit told her that she shouldn’t take anything for what she was doing.

And that’s another interesting part, you know, that I had some informants from the old generation who would say that they are that they were in communication with a spirit or a Saint and that also implies some kind of communication with the spirit world. So applying this label, the label of indigenous to the Italian tradition helps the conceptualisation of the term to move forward and free itself from the exoticising and western-centric connotations. So no, I would argue that not only applying this concept will help us better understand the Italian tradition but also it will help the categorisation in and of itself. Because I would argue that it needs to lose that exoticising connotation so that we can better understand without applying a very specific cultural perspective to the use of the term.

And why might it be Shamanism? So even in the absence of an agreed-upon label, the Italian tradition still shows the elements that most scholars relate to a shamanic tradition. So you have the belief in communication with the world of spirits here you can argue how they you know depending on the specific practitioner that can be theorized and understood in a different way but I did have informants who clearly talked about their relationship to Saints when they would do this kind of practices. In other cases, it is less clear but there is still a way of entering and that would be the second point the ability to enter altered states or an unordinary reality.

So in some cases, you would find these Segnature, these folk magic practices in Italy are performed in a very mundane setting, you know, just in the kitchen with a place and water and oil. But it’s still, you know, by doing that kind of ritual there is still some sort of entering a non-mundane or a non-ordinary reality, to use the terminology from Castaneda or a shamanic state of consciousness to use the terminology from Michael Harner. So there is, in some way even in the mundane setting, there is some kind of exiting and entering the space where this ritual can happen and can be effective. Also, you have the practice of healing and the service to the community. It’s not just about healing you also have the casting and the removing the evil eye and also alterations of the weather. There are very different things across the country but you find that in Shamanism as well. I think that healing is most known in reference to shamanism but actually, other practices are also very common and not all of them are beneficial.

So the adoption of this label allows a previously neglected folk tradition deemed backward and superstitious to have a voice again. Because it is so interesting that when I talk to Italians everybody knows, everyone who has gone to one of these practitioners or I have hardly ever met any Italian that when I talked about my research would say, oh I know nothing about this, I’ve never heard of it. I think it’s like one per cent of the people that I have talked with. So usually Italians do have an acknowledgement that there are these people that perform these kinds of practices in some cases since there is a lack of information widely available across the country. People think that it’s just in their town. So I have a video on my YouTube channel where I explain this tradition and my research and I got lots of emails and messages from Italians saying, oh really, I thought it was just my town. I had no idea it was throughout the country and that is because there was up until recently and it is still in its inception, this is not something that is talked about. So you wouldn’t know that even outside of your own small town there are other people doing the same thing.

And also some Segnature have already started adopting the term and there is a trend towards an increasing acknowledgement. This emerged from a poll in my Facebook Community but also, as I mentioned, there is that person in Tuscany who says she belongs to an Italian Shamanism. There is another Sardinian practitioner who also says it is she calls it Sardinian Shamanism and also there is a book called Shamanism, which I’m translating, of course, Shamanism in Sardinia and where there are listed practices of folk magic and the author says that the only reason why they’re not called Shamanism or shamans it’s because there is no knowledge of that term. So I don’t think that I’m doing something that is completely outside of what is happening in the community. I think that it is, in its inception and I mean sort of picking up on the trend and having a wider perspective because I’ve done systematic research across the country I can see that this pattern is that it is emerging. And so I’m fostering that the acknowledgement of this practice being across the country.

And so this is what I wanted to say. But I’d love to have a conversation and answer your questions so thank you for your attention, and here is my email and the link to my YouTube channel which is called Angela’s Symposium and also I can tell that there are also some of my Patrons here which makes me happy.

Jenny: Thank you so much, Angela. So we will start off the discussion with some questions so people can use the function to put up their hands or can type in the chat. So I’ll try to keep track of the sequence and so Elizabeth you’re the first hand up.

Elizabeth: Hi Angela. I just want to say that was fascinating and I really personally appreciate that you’re trying to understand it from the inside too. But my question is, what’s your opinion on Aradia by Charles Leland? And do you see people, you knew you were going to get asked that? I was just wondering if you see any reference to that in the older generation or is it something that kind of….

Angela: Of course not.

Elizabeth: Not, okay.

Angela: Yeah, knew I would get asked that, Are you from the US?

Elizabeth% Yes.

Angela: Yeah, I think that it tends to be, you know, in the United States, they tend to be quite associated with Italian witchcraft. No, there is no historical evidence that what Charles Leland wrote is, well we don’t know, it could well be the case that he experienced those things but I have never come across an informant, contemporary practitioner from the older or the new generation who claimed any connection with Leland. It’s more the ones that tend to syncretise with the Wiccan tradition and new forms of Paganism that tend to draw that connection, in some cases to say, oh see there is also this author, that man that mentions Italian witchcraft but no I wouldn’t say that it is connected to Italian witchcraft now.

Elizabeth: Okay, so the things from 1899 in it aren’t the similar rituals you see?

Angela: No.

Elizabeth: Okay, thank you.

Angela: Thank you for asking.

Jenny: Andrew.

Angela: You are on mute, Andrew.

Andrew: Yeah, sorry about that. It comes from being in too many meetings and pretending not to be there. That was really great, really enjoyed that, thank you. I think I’m trying to formulate a question that I’ve got around the question of indigeneity because I’m kind of writing at the moment about the use of the term or the appropriation of the term, really, by the far right and their claims to indigeneity, drawing on ideas of ancestors, landscape and so forth. And I’m finding that it’s, you know, you talk about the tension between practitioners and academics, what I’m seeing here is the beginnings of tensions between practitioners. And I’ve always understood the term in the way that I think it’s intended as a kind of liberatory term for peoples who have had the power for self-expression in religious and cultural ways taken away from them. And what I’m encountering is that here in England, in the former colonial centre, though the consequence of the people who were taking power from people now using that term, reversing it to use it in a very reactionary and straightforwardly racist manner. And I just wonder about how and I’m really turning to you for advice, I guess, in terms of using how that term can be used in a Western context without falling foul to those kinds of reactionary political forms.

Angela: Well, my answer would be, as I mentioned, I think that the term indigenous needs to be used in context and when we talk about indigenous religions it’s very different that when we talk about indigenous people, And the political category and the political connotations come with indigenous people and have, you know, little to do, if not nothing, to do with indigenous religions. So you can have indigenous religions practised by indigenous people but you may also have indigenous religions practised by non-indigenous people? What happens to indigenous people who are Christians does it make Christianity an indigenous religion? So I think that perhaps the solution is to, in my case, I’m a religious study scholar so I study indigenous religions. So in my case, I’d say that the political connotation is not there because that tends to be attached to indigenous people rather than indigenous religions. What do you think?

Andrew: I think what I’m saying is that the groups that I’m looking at are trying to basically combine the two. They see their status as…

Angela: Oh, that’s that’s fantastic. It’s another reason as to why we should disentangle the two then.

Andrew: Yeah no, absolutely, absolutely. And I think I should probably refer back to that in something that I would be writing in the future and the importance of disentangling the two. Okay, I’m going to sit down and read some of your stuff and some of those…

Angela: Oh yeah, I have you and you can cite my publication on that then.

Andrew: Okay, thanks very much for that.

Angela: Okay I’m glad it was useful.

Jenny: So we have a question and then a comment in the chat. So Suzanne says, so fascinating thank you so much for this presentation. I would love to hear more about the process and methods of your fieldwork, and how you build relationships and establish trust such that practitioners were willing to speak openly with you, particularly given the privacy that surrounds the tradition. Have you maintained those relationships?

Angela: That’s a good question. So I think that it helped that one, I’m Italian, and two, I had been attending the Pagan community for many years when I started my research. So I was already known and trusted by a few people who helped me in my research. So I think that, in a way, is already known within the community of practitioners when I started my PhD was quite helpful. I think it would have taken me longer to gain people’s trust. But yeah, with the informants, especially the key informants but, of course, I’ve had interviews with lots and lots of people across the country but with the key informants, yeah. I stay in touch and usually, they also ask me about my research. So yeah, I try, when I get informants, I try not to treat them just as a way of gathering information. They are people and they are revealing to me things that are dear to them, so I really respect that and honour that. So I tend to stay in touch with them when I can.

Jenny: So just a comment from Dave in response to what Andrew was saying, the far right commonly misappropriate provenance, lineage and mythology post-hoc to fit their dogma.

And a comment from Chris, we see the same in relation to indigeneity we see the same with Hindutva ideology in India as well as claims that Hinduism is an indigenous religion which brings up interesting power dynamics when a majority claims indigeneity.

And we have the next question from Edward.

Edward: Hi, can you hear me? I was just wondering about what you mentioned about kinship being one of the key indicators or something that was part of this whole indigenous religion idea and I wonder, how do you see kinship changing? Because, as you mentioned, you had a Facebook group and that forms a sort of group, a collective, a tribe or whatever you want to call it and that the tradition is changing as people use social media to communicate and it’s migrating from these very local centres. Do you see an overall change in the definition of kinship or do you think it’s being expanded, or is it something that will be less important in the future or still be something that’s very key?

Angela: Hmm that’s a good question. I think that the descendent element is going to still be a key trait but perhaps the definition of kinship will be affected by how we interact today and how we build relationships today. And sometimes online platforms can really help create that sense of connection with people that are at a distance. So yeah, what I could see, even from my informants and their use of social media, is now you have the creation of communities online and so there is a slight redefinition of kinship relations in that sense. But I think that at the moment I don’t have enough data to formulate a theory of how these kinship relations are being redefined. But I think that they are being redefined.

Jenny: And the next question from Shweta.

Shweta: Yeah hi, thank you so much it is so wonderful to be here and be attending this from India. I follow your YouTube Angela and I was so shocked to see you here. So it’s really interesting. I myself am from a nomadic community in India, assimilated – I must be very clear about that as well. So I have lost a lot of connection with my spiritual practices as we are settled and assimilated into the mainstream. But my grandmother was a practitioner. So here I would like to take on the two comments that are already made by Mr Andrew Wilson and there was also a comment that Professor Jenny read out about Hindutva. Like in India how do you define… Like this is going to be huge as we move forward and as there is awareness about indigeneity and indigenous religions. Like how do we actually define indigenous religion? Shouldn’t that need to be defined by the indigenous people because tomorrow everybody as especially the decolonization movements move forward, every country which was previously a colony or, you know, that we have had certain such experiences will claim that anything but Christianity is indigenous or anything that is native to the land is indigenous. But that’s not the case. So how do we actually define indigenous religions because we see this kind of idea, the Hindutva idea rising in India and Hinduism has nothing to do with any kind of indigenous people whatsoever.

Angela: Yeah, as I stated in my presentation I think that the first step is to disentangle indigenous people from indigenous religions. The two should stay apart so that we can understand indigenous people in their own right because it is a political category and it depends on the country and the context. Whereas indigenous religions can be practised by non-indigenous people and they have their own very specific characteristics usually related to the land and to the very specific culture, rather than being a systematised structure, a specifically structured form of knowledge that can be focused on techniques and exported and practised in every single place around the globe. Indigenous religions tend to have very specific characteristics and they are not necessarily connected to indigenous people. So you can have indigenous religions practised by indigenous people and you can have indigenous religions practised by non-indigenous people. So the two categories should stay apart, distinguished, and separated so that we can understand both in their own right.

Shweta: Interesting, okay, thank you.

Jenny: James.

Angela: Hi James.

James: Hi, I’m not sure if I was the next person in the line but I just want to comment on that thread there of questions. I’m not so sure that it’s quite so simple as academics that we just make clear for ourselves how we distinguish between indigenous religions and indigenous peoples and expect that to then function in the world at large. I think a lot of the sort of issues and debates around the nature of indigenous religions in a European context perhaps, is to do with processes of marginalisation and religious change from mainstream traditions, whether it’s Christianity or Islam or other religious traditions. So there’s this aspect of power dynamics between repressed and marginalised practitioners or communities within mainstream society, on the one hand, then of course there’s the relationship that’s been pointed to with ethnicity in the European context and that’s when it becomes extremely problematic. You know an alternative term that’s often used in relation to these kinds of religious traditions because I’m uncomfortable saying indigenous religions in this context is native faith movements, native faith traditions. That label is sometimes used in Central and Eastern Europe implying a kind of ancient ancestral layer to the tradition that is not then confused with or entangled with the question of indigenous peoples and their experience of colonialism. So is it not better for scholars of religions to search for a term that semantically, you know, is not so loaded with the legacy of colonialism and the status the political status of indigenous peoples in the UN and UNESCO and so on?

Angela% So can I answer?

James: Can we and should we search for an alternative?

Angela: So at first I thought of using the term autochthonous which would have been very, I guess, accurate but still it didn’t have the history and the scholarship and the understanding that indigenous religions have. So my answer would be that I don’t think that it would be a better solution to find an alternative because I think that indigenous religion is something that is quite clear. Of course, it is malleable and it depends on the context because of the very nature of indigenous religions. But it has very specific traits and they are found even among non-indigenous people. And also, I say that by employing indigenous religion as a terminology that is disentangled from indigenous people, we have a better understanding of the practices of indigenous people and remove that sense of it being exotic, primaeval and all those connotations that come from the cultural evolutionism of the 19th century. So I think that it is something that not only allows us to have a more accurate understanding of certain religious phenomena that happen among non-indigenous people but it also helps to remove that connotation, that exotic connotation that indigenous religions have. And perhaps it could help also to remove the exotic connotation that indigenous in and of itself, indigeneity, has. Because indigeneity doesn’t and perhaps shouldn’t be associated with it being other, to refer to something that is other, other than Western. It should be understood in its own right, that’s what I argue for. Maybe you disagree and that’s fine.

James: No, I don’t, I’m not sure if I disagree or not. I just think it needs, you know, the whole problematic… there’s still plenty of scopes to explore, I think. That’s all I want to say. I think there’s plenty to explore still in that problematic.

Angela: Yeah, of course.

Jenny: Just to mention as well, native faith is often used synonymously with contemporary Pagan so it can be more new religious movement than a continuous folk or a popular practice and so we’ll take a last question from Andrew in the chat, the concept of fear or fright being a factor in causes requiring shamanic healing was also brought up in your interview, Angela, with James Kapalo in your YouTube channel and is this concept widespread in Europe of fear of right requiring shamanic healing?

Angela: I’m not sure if it is widespread in Europe but it is present in Italy.

James: And it’s very, very common in the Balkans. So Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova which is what I’m familiar with. Yeah, it’s one of the few, well there’s a handful of kinds of folk aetiologies, if you like, for illness and fright is one of the main ones.

Angela: Yeah, maybe the idea of fright and being scared of something was used at a time where, you know, we now use a lot the term trauma or traumatic experience, whereas perhaps in the past it was more fear or fright because it is the immediate response that you have.

James: And the associated, at least in Moldova and in Greece where I’ve done fieldwork, the associated understanding is that it somehow creates a separation in the soul or different a fragment of the soul becomes kind of dislodged or separated and needs to be brought back home somehow, yeah.

Jenny: I lied when I said it would be the last question because I have a very quick question before we end. There’s a comment from Barry in the chat, this has been a fascinating talk I’m currently exploring the relationship between topics in artificial intelligence and religions, for example, techno-Shamanism. Thanks for such a great seminar series and an exceptional speaker today.

The question is a quick one from me. When you were talking about people responding to your research in Italy, you know, Italians, saying that they thought it was just their town where these healers were and so on. I’m wondering, I was thinking when you were talking about that of the Irish government, we had the Irish Folklore Commission and they sent out surveys to all of the households, in the kind of 1950s, let’s say and they got some information on things like these popular practices. Was there anything like that in Italy that recorded folk or popular practices, like magical practices?

Angela: Not that I know of. No, I don’t think so.

Jenny: There are lots of comments in the chat saying how much people enjoyed the presentation…

Angela: That’s lovely.

Jenny: So thank you, thank you so much Angela and we hope we’ll have you back again in the future for a seminar series.

Angela: I’d love to. Thank you so much for inviting me.

James: It would be great to have you come and present to our MA anthropology as well.

Angela: Yes, I’d love that.

James: Yeah, I’ll be in touch.

Angela: Yes, do, please.

Jenny: I’ll just stop the recording.