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American Shamans: Journeys with Traditional Healers
Author: Jack Montgomery
ISBN: 978-0-9666196-9-0
Publisher: BUSCA, Inc.
6 inches X 9 inches - 304 pages
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$19.95
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American Shaman Links:
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface: Why Write this Book?
Introduction: What Is Magic? What Are Magical Healings and Shamanism?
One: Beneath the Spanish Moss: The World of the Root Doctor
Two: Interview: James E. McTeer, the "White Prince"
Three: Powwowing: Magic in the Piedmont
Four: Lee Gandee: Hexenmeister, Teacher, Friend
Five: My First Interview with the Hexenmeister
Six: Interview: Powwow/Herexei-An Eclectic Practice
Seven: The World of the Unseen
Eight: I Get More Than I Bargained For
Nine: The Legacy Continues.
Ten: Appalachian Granny-Woman: The Magic and Wisdom of the Mountains
Eleven: Interview: Meeting the Granny-Woman
Twelve: Interview: The Granny-woman and the Witch-ball
Epilogue: American Shamans
Appendix: Powwow Protection Charms and Healing Chants
Bibliography
About Jack Montgomery
Jack G. Montgomery was born in Columbia,South Carolina in 1953. He earned his B.A. from the University of South Carolina in 1976 and MLS at the University of Maryland- College Park in 1987. Jack has worked as a librarian in Virginia, Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky where he is an Associate Professor and Collection Services Coordinator at Western Kentucky University.
Jack 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.
Jack plays guitar, bass, harmonica, and Appalachian dulcimer. He released his first music CD in 2002 entitled Onward to Avalon and his second CD, Everywhere I Look, in 2004. He performs at local festivals in Kentucky and Tennessee and his music has been featured on several college, international, and Internet radio stations.
Book Review
American Shamans: Journeys with Traditional Healers.
By Jack Montgomery.
Ithaca, NY: Busca, 2008.
Paperback, $19.95, 265 pages.
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" (xi) 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/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:
JM: Mrs. Ramsey, how do you feel about the life you've had?
SR: I'm happy. I don't have any regrets, I'm at peace with the Lord.
JM: What has all of your healing experience done for you?
SR: I don't know what you're asking.
JM: I'm sorry; it's just that you have healed people, delivered babies, even fought with evil. What does all that mean to you?
SR: That my Jesus is everywhere. No matter what happens, he is with me. He's loved me and blessed me through all my troubles. Now I look forward to going home to be with him one day soon. (241-2)
These sentiments come from a woman who had just recounted to Montgomery her way of dealing with a "witch ball" sent as a curse to her, and her conversations with spirits who instructed her that "what you think makes everything." (241)
A large part of the book is Montgomery's account of his time with Lee Raus Gandee, who began as a contact for his USC paper, but became Montgomery's spiritual mentor and teacher of powwow for several years. Gandee is a complex character, whose personality comes through clearly in the dialogues:
"How does one become a Hexenmeister?" I asked him at our first meeting.
"By being a Hex until you can manage it!" replied the elderly gentleman in the rocking chair, calmly smoking his pipe. (72)
American Shamans is somewhere between an academic anthropological account and a personal memoir. Montgomery admits to some trepidation in discussing his own spiritual experiences, his views on magic and spirituality, and how his work as a powwow has impacted his life. Gandee tells the young Montgomery: "Either magic works or it doesn't. I don't worry too much about the theory." (109) While Montgomery gives us a bit of theory, he focuses on the work, especially as it takes form in his life. It is his courage in bringing himself into the story which lends this book its warmth and its spirit of humble authenticity.
The reviewer is a member of the Theosophical Society currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee. He is a freelance theologian, and the author of several books and articles on independent sacramental churches and esoteric Christianity.
Book Review of American Shamans
appearing in C&RL News, April 2008
Vol. 69, No. 4
reviewed by George M. Eberhart
American Shamans: Journeys with Traditional Healers, by Jack Montgomery (265 pages, February 2008), 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. $19.95. Busca. 978-0-9666196-9-0.
Cover art: Triskele in Ochres by Christina Scurr
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