Entrancement

Ruth Finnegan

Description

This study of dreaming, death and shared consciousness develops a context that is humanistic, comparative and evidence-based in its engagement with the work of cultural anthropology, ethnomusicology and the study of the imagination. It also reaches into current research on consciousness at the interface of neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, musicology, computer studies, psychology/parapsychology, literature and cognitive studies, in the process of drawing its content from a range of original writing from diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds.

Preface
‘There’, Ruth Finnegan,
Walking with dragons, Tim Ingold
The double language of dreaming, Barbara Tedlock
Home as dream space, Kate Pahl
In the land of dreams: wives, husbands and dreaming, Irma-Ritta Järvinen and Senni Timonen
Pre-dreaming: telepathy, prophecy and trance, Gerd Baumann with Walo Subsin and doctoral students
Trance and sacred language in religious Daoism, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew
Everyday trancing and musical daydreams, Ruth Herbert
An angel of modernity: Karlheinz Stockhausen's musical vision, Morag Josephine Grant,
How do singers and other groups synchronise to form communities? Guy Hayward
The un-speak-able language of united sensing: taste the wine! Gianmarco Navarini
Then… Ruth Finnegan
Coda
Further reading
Bibliography

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Anthropology
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786830012
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

EntrancEmEnt
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 1 09-Mar-17 10:07:26 AM00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 2 09-Mar-17 10:07:26 AMEntrancement
The consciousness of dreaming, music,
and the world
edited by
Ruth Finnegan
University of Wales Press
2017
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 3 09-Mar-17 10:07:26 AM© The Contributors, 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by
electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some
other use of this publication) without the written permission of the
copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission
to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the
University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff
CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78683-000-5 (hardback)
978-1-78683-076-0 (paperback)
eISBN 978-1-78683-001-2
The rights of the Contributors to be identifed as authors of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 4 09-Mar-17 10:07:26 AMRemembering
Alan Sell
that wise human spirit who takes us, still,
into and beyond all things earthly
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 5 09-Mar-17 10:07:26 AM00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 6 09-Mar-17 10:07:26 AMContents
Preface ix
Acknowledgementsxi
‘There’Ruth Finnegan1
Walking with Dragons
Tim Ingold 37
The Double Language of Dreaming
Barbara Tedlock65
In the Land of Dreams: Wives, Husbands and Dreaming
Irma-Riitta Järvinen and Senni Timonen 81
Home as Dream Space
Kate Pahl 91
Pre-dreaming: Telepathy, Prophecy and Trance
Gerd Baumann with Walo Subsin et al. 107
Trance and Sacred Language in Religious Daoism
Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew125
Everyday Trancing and Musical Daydreams
Ruth Herbert149
An Angel of Modernity: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s
Musical Vision
Morag Josephine Grant 165
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 7 09-Mar-17 10:07:26 AMContents
How do Singers and Other Groups Synchronise to Form
Communities?
Guy Hayward 189
The Un-speak-able Language of United Sensing:
Taste the Wine!
Gianmarco Navarini217
Then . . .
Ruth Finnegan 239
Coda267
Further Reading269
Bibliography273
Index287
viii
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 8 09-Mar-17 10:07:27 AMPrefaCe
Until I somehow found myself in the middle of this book I hadn’t
known that I was interested in what I call (for the moment) the
experience of entrancement – extra-sensory perception, separate-
togetherness. Nor did I realise that the same is probably true of
countless others. Far less did I think it was, or could be, a subject
of study. With a wild story-telling and ‘spooky’ mother from the
magical land of Ireland, I should have known better – and perhaps
in some reaches of the self I did.
At any rate I began at last to look more directly into the literature,
and, equally, into myself. I was increasingly intrigued. I saw that
in many ways it was a natural extension of my earlier interests
as an anthropologist, historian and (up to a point) classical scholar:
in modes of thinking, memory, multi-sensory experiencing, and,
perhaps above all, in things that are known, humanly experienced,
but somehow, though in plain view, hidden. For me these all
emerged as obvious links to my earlier work. More surprisingly
but even more profound, it dug deep into my interest in the
humandivine arts of quoting and of communicating through allusion,
myth and metaphor. This led almost imperceptibly to a more
conscious exploration of the signifcance of dreaming – where most
people frst fnd themselves entering this mysterious realm – and
of what I might call (again for the moment) the ethereal, noetic
and psychic dimensions of human experience. This in turn
complements my earlier discussion of quoting, that profound human
mechanism for extending memory and contact across time, by
some consideration of communicating – communion – across
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 9 09-Mar-17 10:07:27 AMPreface
space, or, better put, beyond spatial limitations. It takes us, in some
kind of Einsteinian myth, outside time and space into a hidden
but fully existent dimension of experience.
The subject is now in many (but far from all) circles accepted as
worthy of serious study. But how to pursue it, or the terminology
to articulate it, is far from easy (an issue to return to in the fnal
chapter). One way in however is, as here, to draw extensively on
the fndings and insights of cultural anthropology and related
studies. Here, essentially from an interdisciplinary perspective, we
can fnd ourselves in close contact with the detailed, carefully
observed and unquestionably real experiences of ordinary people
on the ground, allied – this too is needed – with the theoretical
insights that link these to the more far-reaching contemporary
studies of the mind and the imagination.
The volume also touches, as is necessary, on the burgeoning
current research, in this area, especially that on consciousness and
mental processes, research that sometimes challenges the very roots
of our inbuilt preconceptions. Here we encounter thinking at the
interface between neuroscience, anthropology, musicology, scientifc
theory, psychology and cognitive studies. And if this sounds
overambitious, I can only say that any exploration of the core topics
of the human mind, experience and imagination, and how we make
contact with one another, separate but together – all that must
necessarily draw something from a wide range of perspectives,
inevitably transdisciplinary.
Anthropology, like history, like any truly open-minded discipline,
allows, indeed encourages, its readers to treat seriously, and learn
something from, unfamiliar beliefs and actions which they would
normally dismiss as nonsense or at any rate to would
attach little or no credence, whether within their own time and
culture or elsewhere. Dear reader, I ask you to follow this suspension
of belief and pay attention to many things strange and wonderful
as you peruse this volume; and to follow the authors here in learning
from these creatures and creations of, perhaps, another world.
Old Bletchley,
May 2016
x
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 10 09-Mar-17 10:07:27 AMaCknowledgements
I have many thanks to offer, above all to the imaginative
University of Wales Press for their preparedness to take on a topic
which other established presses shunned. I thank especially their
truly wonderful and thoughtful reader who radically (and I mean
radically), improved this volume, sticking with it through successive,
slowly improving, versions, most signifcantly of all insisting on
the need for a concluding chapter. I salute also all those, past and
present, who have worked in this area, including those with whom
I disagree (much to learn from them too), as also the many, named
and unnamed, from whom I have gained in informal discussion
– the Platonic dialogue lives on.
Throughout the years I have had great support from my
wonderful institution, the Open University, its library and, specially, from
open-minded and friendly colleagues in sociology. I must also
mention, with joy, David, my husband of over ffty years, and my
sceptical but ever-loving daughters. I think too that our pair of
cairn terriers may have had something to do with it – who can tell?
00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 11 09-Mar-17 10:07:27 AM00 Prelims Entrancement 2017_3_9.indd 12 09-Mar-17 10:07:27 AM1
‘There’
Ruth Finnegan
Department of Sociology,
The Open University
Everywhere there is enchantment, it seems, everywhere the rational.
In the modern West we have the achievements of science. We also
have shamanic trancing, zodiac-inspired name changes, healing
workshops, web prophecies of the future, birthdate predictions,
all widely advertised and paid for on the internet. We have offers
of help with ethereal communicating, swathes of high-selling books
on dreaming, returns from death and telepathy, and wide popular
interest manifested in everyday conversations once people let their
guard down, and by the candid reports from the hundreds-strong
1Mass Observation panel. There is immense interest, not always
openly declared, in the nature and experience of entrancement
and of entranced, altered, shared consciousness.
The normality of ‘queer’ experiences is reinforced when we look
at current approaches to human – and other – consciousness
described more directly in the concluding chapter of this volume.
To some these ideas are blind alleys, misleading.To many, including
myself, they are advances in insight, linking the topics of this
volume and in doing so bringing new understanding of the ether,
the noosphere, the beyond – call it what you will (an issue to return
to in the fnal chapter). So much is now becoming common know -
ledge for those prepared to open their minds to new understandings
and have the perseverance to look.
This chapter, however, shorn of documentary references, is
different. As in some other chapters of this book it digs into a single
01 Finnegan_Baumann 2017_3_9.indd 1 09-Mar-17 10:07:50 AMRuth Finnegan
case to move close and deep. The case is my own, and not easy to
2enunciate. Like many who have tried to speak of their own unusual
(but perhaps not so unusual) experience I struggle to communicate
it. For a number of reasons I cannot recount all my own experiences
or frame them with complete detail. But what I do say is, I promise
you, fully candid. Having led, I believe, a truthful life as scholar,
as human, why would I n