Here is a truly curious pair of shoes. They are so-called khutaitchi shoes, made by a sorcerer or magician of the Central Australian Pitjantjara tribe. In traditional Aboriginal beliefs, there is no such thing as a natural death, which means that there is usually an […]
All posts tagged: Magic

”Loaded with devilry”: The shamanic artefacts of the Haslund-Christensen Collection
It did not take long for the Mongolian assistants to realise that something was terribly wrong. The jingling and rattling sounds coming from the bags on the heavily loaded camel exposed their terrifying cargo: a complete set of shaman equipment. Powerful artefacts imbued with spirits, […]

Magic and Medicine: On the benefits of fungi, blood, and iron paste
Did you know that the famous 5.300-year-old ‘iceman’ Ötzi found in the Italian Alps in the 1990s carried around a fungus that worked as an antibiotic? And that it would have helped him alleviate the symptoms of the parasites scientists have found in his colon? […]

A little extra luck for 2018—we need it!
I think most of us will agree that 2017 has been a bit of a crazy year. It has been the year of Trump and his Twitter wars on everything from North Korea to Meryl Streep to his own White House staff. There has been […]

Fetish from Burkina Faso
The word ‘fetish’ probably brings up some rather saucy mental images to most of our readers. But in anthropology, a ‘fetish’ is an object, which is considered to be imbued with spiritual power or magical potency. This metal spear from Boulon in Burkina Faso might […]

Pende Mbangu Mask – DR Congo
So, I don’t know about you guys, but often when something bad happens to me, I can’t help but wonder: Why me? Personally, I think the Pende people from DR Congo have come up with an answer that makes just as mush sense as any […]