magician,
juggler,
jongleur,
folksinger,
weatherman, artisan, culture hero and trickster-
transformer” (Irwin, 2004) In the poetry of the
beat generation we see a revival of the idea of
animism. We also see the emergence of an
idiomatic “poetic state” and a desire to heal
society. Related to this is the idea of “sympathetic
magic” (Note: Kerouac stated the term “beat”
meant “sympathetic”).
Johann Herder (1770’s) was one of the early
scholars to emphasize the role of the shaman as
“artist, poet, singer, prophet and seer”. (Harvey &
Wallis, 2007). He ascribed the shaman to a
classical model dating back to the Greek hero
Orpheus. Herder claimed that all the early Greek
poets were linked to nature through their poetry.
Ludwig Tieck (1770’s) looked at Shakespeare as
“the consummate shaman”(Irwin, 2004) Schelling,
Goethe, Victor Hugo, Emerson and Thoreau all
assimilated “shamanic elements” into their
varying philosophies in a mode akin to animism
(Harvey & Wallis, 2007).
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