Hello everyone. It’s Angela and welcome back to my channel. Today it will be a very different video. So you will see the paper I delivered at the conference of the British Association for the Study of Religions at Leeds Trinity University. So the paper is on the impact of social media on shamanism and folk magic in Italy.

Hope you like the video and if you do, smash the like button, subscribe to the channel, and stay tuned for all the academic fun. I will leave you with my paper. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

Today I will talk to you about the impact of social media on Italian shamanism and folk magic. So the research questions that I’m going to address in today’s paper are: has the use of social media redefined shamanism within the community of practitioners? And have folk magic and its traditions been reshaped by the internet?

So spoiler alert, the answer to both questions is yes, but we will see why and how that is.

So, first of all, my methodology is, of course, based on my doctoral research, so it’s part of the wider project. So the data that I’m using for this paper are drawn from three years of field studies, from using participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, and casual conversations. But, of course, for these particular papers, [what] would matter the most, are the discourses emerging from the Facebook community that I created for this specific purpose for my doctoral research and also texts, books articles, and internet posts that are produced within the community where I draw the information from.

So, the Facebook group I created this Facebook group in October 2016 so when I was, basically, just starting my PhD and the Facebook group is called Practitioners of Shamanism in Italy, of course, in Italian it is Practicanti di Sciamanesimo in Italia. The idea was that I was thinking if I were a practitioner of shamanism what would I go out and search for and it would be somebody, basically, in my community, to find other people who are practising the same thing that I’m doing. To find other people to share experiences with. So, basically, one of the rules of this group, which is actually about to reach a thousand members – the screenshot is taken from a few days ago so now they’re just about to hit a thousand. So I never invited anyone in this Facebook group. They have to they have to intentionally search for it and there is no advertisement anywhere that I ever shared.

So that was, basically, part of my research, I think because I wanted to see how many people were actually seeking other people in the same community. Also, a member, when they asked to join in, has to answer a few questions related to their definition of shamanism and whether they considered themselves practitioners of shamanism and also the interesting thing is that most members practice or are interested in what is called, not just me, what is usually in the literature ‘transcultural shamanism’ which is a form of shamanism that is not locally based. So, it is not linked to any specific place or any specific lineage or tradition but rather a set of techniques or practices that can be physically practised in Italy or in Britain or in Africa, everywhere basically.
So they are not linked with a specific tradition or a specific place.

So, yeah, the group has hosted many, many discussions, polls, events, event advertisements and they share experiences. Sometimes they even share their dreams – asking other people to help them understand what the dream might mean. So, yeah, what emerged from this Facebook group and not just, I don’t think that the Facebook group is, just like this, emerged but also has, somehow, created this in the community, which is that, what I say here; shamanism is in the perception of the beholder. Meaning that, basically, sometimes there are discussions that arise from, in this Facebook group, there are the bad guys and good guys. So the bad guys are the purists, who say you’re only allowed to say that you’re doing shamanism if you are initiated in a specific tradition, in a bloodline, in the Nordic core, the Siberian, in a very specific tradition. And the good guys are those who allow for openness but the purists wouldn’t, So that’s okay for you, shamanism is this, for me, shamanism is something else.

So what happens here is that shamanism is getting redefined by the community and by the discourses emerging in the community because what is really emerging is that – you are considered by the community, by somebody approachable and somebody who’s on the on a spiritual path, if you are open to this kind of eclecticism and also to somehow personalize your practice and [what] your idea of shamanism is. So, also, there is another knowledge syncretism with neo-paganism.

So I find that, especially when solstices and equinoxes are approaching, their advertisements of events like, for example, shamanic Samhain or shamanic Imbolc or shamanic winter solstice and these kinds of posts tend to be really recurring and very popular. And it seems like these people don’t really acknowledge that these eight festivals that they are celebrating as shamanic festivities are actually coming from the Wicca tradition and from neo-paganism.

So, it is like the knowledge and the perception of these festivities has been absorbed somehow and that the ‘where they’re coming from’ has been basically missed. So they don’t really acknowledge where they come from but they feel like those traditions are part of the shamanic experience, so that is also interesting.

So, basically, the perception of shamanism is more fluid and incorporates other New Age practices. So, even like, Reiki and other forms of healing basically can be found and other New Age practices. And also, sometimes, they incorporate parts of witchcraft and paganism, as I said.

So, there are also more and more emulations of popular shamanism. so, for example, the most popular form of shamanism or Western shamanism, in the West, is Core Shamanism which was created by Michael Harner who basically gathered the core principles, according to him, which are in all shamanisms so that Westerners could practice shamanism without having any specific link to a specific tradition. So this has been, now here’s a Foundation for Shamanic Studies: there’s a set of workshops that guide you through your, basically sort of, initiation process or following these workshops and learning how to perform this shamanic practice. So now, even those who are not really affiliated with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, they go to a seminar, for example, to a workshop and they start creating their own. So it is very easy for these practitioners to go from being a student to a teacher in the time-lapse of a workshop, basically. So that is also something very interesting and it happens quite often that people tend to become the leaders of their own community in a very short amount of time.

So yeah, another interesting fact is that what social media creates, is a sort of popularity contest when the more you’re popular, the more your posts are popular, and the more validated you are as a shamanic practitioner and this is clearly something that is affecting the community because of course the more likes you have the more somebody might come to you to learn how to perform a shamanic ritual or to know what shamanism is. So yeah, that is interesting and it is clearly something that is affecting transcultural shamanism through social media.

So now let’s talk about folk magic. Folk magic, in Italy, is quite widespread, although still quite underground, and I’m systematizing folk magic in Italy for my doctoral thesis and I’m labelling it as the tradition of ‘segnature’. The reason for this is that the core aspect, the core practice in folk magic, in Italy, across the different regions and the variations that you can find is the use of these gestures, accompanied with prayers which are called segnature and yes, these are the most popular, the three most popular Facebook groups – I’m using Facebook specifically, as an example, because it is the most popular social media platform in Italy.

So even older people tend to use Facebook and other social media them to be not as used, in Italy as Facebook. So yeah, these are the three most popular Facebook groups and they gather as you can see quite a few members and yeah, these are close groups, but it’s very easy to us join in and be part of these groups. So what happens here, basically, there is a significant divide created by social media between older generations and younger generations.

So the older generation, in folk magic traditions in Italy, tend to be very related to their own family bloodline. So, only if you are a family member you can be initiated, you can only be initiated on Christmas Eve, only with a certain procedure, and there are only certain gestures that your bloodline processes and you can have as a consequence. Whereas, thanks to social media, thanks to these Facebook groups, now it’s changing quite rapidly.

So now it means that now you don’t need to be in a certain bloodline to be initiated. You can be initiated online, basically, and although there are certain traditions that are maintained, so for example, there is one of these groups where the leader, the person who’s leading the group, she leads, basically, the procedure on how to get the segnature passed on to you on Christmas Eve for four hours and then she removes them from the group. So somehow the tradition of Christmas Eve is maintained but at the same time the number of people that can be initiated is much more – it’s quite extended.

And also, another thing that changes, is the field of action of segnature. So there are more things that you can treat with the segnature now, compared to the tradition of the older generation and also, although according to the older generation you only can have the segnature that are linked to your bloodline. So, for example, if my grandmother was able to remove the evil eye the only thing that I would be able to do is remove the evil eye. Now if I can remove the evil eye and you can heal herpes – we can exchange segnature and we can both have two instead of one or even five or ten. So there is, basically, a sharing of these practices and they are helping each other and they are gathering somehow more of these and they are able also to use them.

And I also interviewed quite a few of them and they swear that they work. I interviewed a person who now lives in Switzerland, she was initiated online, on Christmas Eve, and she was swearing to me; I swear to you, they do work, they do work, because afterwards I did feel something and I used this segnature to heal a person and it did work, actually multiple [times] and she, yes basically, was swearing that they worked. So, apparently, the fact that it happens through an online medium doesn’t really affect the efficacy according to you my participants.

Also, an important factor is the emergence of a common shared term which is segnature, basically, because in the past segnature was only used in this region, the region of Emilia Romagna and according to the literature as well. So, but now, whether you talk to somebody in Sicily or in North Italy or in the centre they understand what segnature are and in the past, it wasn’t like that at all. So basically, every region had either a different name like for example in Sardinia there is still the brebus, in certain regions other than Sardinia, but if you talk about segnature now they would understand, whereas twenty years ago that wouldn’t be the case. So it is something that has massively changed since social media has become a medium for people to talk about these kinds of things. And, of course, when you talk to people in different regions you do need a shared term in order to understand each other. Because if I’m from the region Campagnia and you’re from the region Friuly or Emilia Romagna, we still need to understand each other.

So that is clearly something that the Internet has created because the connection created by the internet, which you do have a community coming from so many different and varied regions and places, creates the necessity for you to understand what you’re talking about with one term and not several, twenty-something terms.

So yeah, so my conclusion is that the internet and social media have allowed a circulation of information never possible before and what this creates is, that the diverse amount of information gives the individual practitioner more, basically, more choices to tailor their practice around their personal inclinations and that is very clear when you read the conversations and the discussions that happen, people, that they really care about the fact that it works for them – that the practice that they are doing, that form of shamanism that they are practising is meaningful to them. And you can have this you can have more personalized meaning to the practice when you have more choices. Because if you had lived in a place without the internet in a secluded area the only choice you have, if you want to practice these kinds of things, is to follow your tradition – your local tradition because that’s the only information that’s available to you but now it’s not like that at all. So you have such a wide range of information, and practices to tap into that you are able to tailor a practice around yourself, your personal inclinations, your personal belief system, and so on.

So you can find people in these communities that are even Catholics, or they are pagans, or they are spiritual, or they are non-religious. So, you find really all sorts of belief systems and they still believe they’re practising shamanism and to them is just as valuable as well, except for the purist – but they are the bad guys, you know when you get you into this kind of internet discussions, they are portrayed as such.

So yeah, also the definition and manifestation of shamanisms are subject to continuous change to trends created by social media. So, by this, I mean that I think there’s no coming back from – there’s no coming back from this. So I think that social media and the internet are going to influence shamanism and even folk healers more and more over time.

And my prediction is that we will see more and more changes and it’s going to be more and more difficult for scholars, I think, to define things according to categories and we may need to find alternative ways to understand these kinds of practices that may go beyond categorizations.

So yeah, thank you very much for your attention. These are my contact details. Also, I recently opened a YouTube channel so if you’re interested in these kinds of topics magic, witchcraft, or shamanism, I would really appreciate it if you would check it out.