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This compelling volume explores how war magic and warrior religion unleash the power of the gods, demons, ghosts, and the dead. Documenting war magic and warrior religion as they are performed in diverse cultures and across historical time periods, this volume foregrounds embodiment, practice, and performance in anthropological approaches to magic, sorcery, shamanism, and religion. The authors go beyond what magic ‘represents’ to consider what magic does. From Chinese exorcists, Javanese spirit siblings, and black magic in Sumatra to Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, Chamorro spiritual re-enchantment, tantric Buddhist war magic, and Yanomami dark shamans, religion and magic are re-evaluated not just from the practitioner’s perspective but through the victim’s lived experience. These original investigations reveal a nuanced approach to understanding social action, innovation, and the revitalization of tradition in colonial and post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social transformation.
“War Magic is a significant new look at some old questions, and while the collected essays are relatively few and brief, they are important and interesting… we can only hope that the volume will spur more attention to the subject of malicious spiritual power, which in turn should shed light on prominent problems like holy war and fundamentalist terrorism.” · Anthropology Review Database
"This fascinating volume reconfigures the study of magic, sorcery, and religion by inquiring beyond the meaning of beliefs and symbols to ask what spiritual performances do in accomplishing or preventing violence and death." · John Whalen-Bridge, National University of Singapore
Douglas Farrer is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Guam. He is the author of Shadows of the Prophet: Martial Arts and Sufi Mysticism (Springer), and co-author of Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World (SUNY).
List of Illustrations
Introduction: War Magic: Religion, Sorcery, and Performance
D. S. Farrer
Chapter 1. Tangki War Magic: Spirit Warfare in Singapore
Margaret Chan
Chapter 2. Javanese Ritual Initiation: Invulnerability, Authority, and Spiritual Improvement
Jean-Marc de Grave
Chapter 3. Discourse of Decline: Sumatran Perspectives on Black Magic
J. David Neidel
Chapter 4. Tamil Tiger Ritual, War, and Mystical Empowerment
Michael Roberts
Chapter 5. Shamanic Battleground in Venezuela
Zeljko Jokic
Chapter 6. Chants of Re-enchantment: Chamorro Spiritual Resistance to Colonial Domination
D. S. Farrer and James D. Sellmann
Chapter 7. War Magic and Just War in Indian Tantric Buddhism
Iain Sinclair
Index