Why are "different" individuals afforded supernatural power?
August 16, 2016 2:03 PM   Subscribe

Among the Buryat, shamans sometimes had six fingers. Elsewhere, shamans might be intersex, or they might be quiet and slightly twitchy, or they claim to have crystals inside their body, or they are epileptic, or they never eat the best foods or they never have sex. There's a sense in which they're transformed, and because of it, we're more likely to say that they can commune with spirits, or exorcise people, or fly. But does anyone have a sense of why it's like this?
posted by mrmanvir to Religion & Philosophy

This post was deleted for the following reason: Sorry, this is pretty much chatfilter. -- LobsterMitten

 
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