American Shamans: Journeys with Traditional Healers - Softcover

Jack Montgomery

4.53

17 ratings by Goodreads

9780966619690: American Shamans: Journeys with Traditional Healers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0966619692 ISBN 13: 9780966619690

Publisher: Busca Inc., 2008

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Magical healings, ghostly encounters, and alternate realities have been a part of American society since the first colonial settlements. Author Jack Montgomery provides ample historical and personal material to reveal a largely hidden world, primarily influenced by African, Celtic and German roots, that still exists today. It is a spiritual journey into the depths of American folk religion, shamanism and applied mysticism that spans over three decades of research.

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About the Author:

Jack G. Montgomery was born in 1953. He earned his B.A. from the University of South Carolina and MLS at the University of Maryland College Park. He is an Associate Professor and Collection Services Coordinator at Western Kentucky University, and conducts professional seminars on Emotional Intelligence for library groups nationwide. In 2005, his book with co-author Eleanor I. Cook, Conflict Management for Libraries: A Strategy for a Positive, Productive Workplace, was published by ALA Editions. Also a professional musician, Montgomery plays guitar, bass, harmonica, and Appalachian dulcimer. He has released two CDs--Onward to Avalon and Everywhere I Look--and performs with the folk duet Shadowdancer in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Review:

In 1974, Jack Montgomery was an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina, in search of an interesting topic for a religious studies paper. He decided to interview local practitioners of folk magic and traditional healing, representing traditions such as hoodoo and powwow. This project became a quest for knowledge, heritage, and personal meaning which has continued to the present. Today, Montgomery is an associate professor at Western Kentucky University, and American Shamans is the fruit of over thirty years of study of these home-grown spiritual traditions.

Montgomery focuses his attention on traditions native to his home state of South Carolina, from both the lowland and Piedmont regions. Unlike Louisianan voodoo, these South Carolina traditions do not cultivate an alternative practice of religious worship and ritual, but are most often practiced by people who see themselves as pious Christians, and understand their magical work as a gift from God. For example, here is an excerpt from Montgomery's interview with Sarah Ramsey, an Appalachian granny-woman:

--Reviewed in Quest Magazine

I think Jack Montgomery's wonderful book may be . . . what you are looking for. Jack's book is real. He lives it. He understands it on the deepest levels and values it's survival. --The Backdoor Hexologist

American Shamans: Journeys with Traditional Healers, by Jack Montgomery recounts his personal experiences with root doctors, hexenmeisters, granny-women, Powwow practitioners, and other folk healers in South Carolina and the Appalachians. Montgomery, collection services coordinator at Western Kentucky University Libraries, conducted extensive field research with healers in the 1970s for a religious studies class at the University of South Carolina. His mentor in this endeavor was a retired history professor, author, and healer of Dutch Fork, South Carolina, named Lee Gandee (1917-1998), who taught him many folk medicine techniques and revealed the little-known history and anthropology of American shamanism. --George M. Eberhart, C&RL News, Association of College & Research Libraries, ALA

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