Thanks for this, Rob. Hadn’t heard of this particular Tommy Sheridan before. He offers what seems to me to be a very lucid account of these matters, particularly of the Fairy Doctors and the ever-tricksterish Sidhe.
No need to buy into any particular tradition, if it doesn’t appeal. That’s always been a matter of what attracts you personally. But that worldview, where the contents of a magician’s mind - and soul - directly, physically affect other people, for both healing or hexing, and also the surrounding physical world, by direct psychokinesis, has now been subjected to about a century of careful, high quality scientific experimental investigation. and it has been demonstrated in those tight circumstances to be real, with high credibility.
It’s my contention that as the techie-techie allopathic tradition loses its grip on society, both through the sort of villainous feck-up that’s currently being foisted on us by the scamdemic/poison-stab crusade, and also, more fundamentally, by the steady ebbing away of techie-techie capabilities, as the Long Descent removes industrialism from this planet, then the sort of magical/shamanic customs which Thomas details so knowledgeably and lucidly will be coming back into fashion, and into daily use as a steady trend. And whaddya know! it turns out they’re by no means so empty and ineffectual as we’ve been taught - when you actually try them seriously…
As he points out, it’s already resurging in Eire. And in Britain too, and more widely. Been watching that happen in my whole lifetime. This is people adapting instinctively to their intuition that PROGRESSFOREVER!! is now a defunct basic myth, and will have to be replaced with new ones - which are also very much older ones.
As techie ‘healing’ processes slip away from availability, the much older shamanic approach will be back with a bang. Fortunately, it’s very well founded on basic reality. We, in the ‘civilised’ Western tradfition of modern thought, are all indoctrinated from childhood on to believe that those older ways were both empty superstition, and simply ineffectual. Wrong on both counts. The world is indeed a magical reality, which we absent-minded Westerners have somehow forgotten to notice. But that realisation of serious error amongst ‘know-better’ Westerners (and wannabe Westerners in other parts of the world too) has yet to dawn fully. The arrogant assurance will continue for a little longer - though growing a touch less sure of itself just lately, as the fossil-hydrocarbon energy sources that enable and drive it all grow ever more problematic to exploit, with literally NO comparable replacement energy source anywhere in sight…
The retreat to simpler ways of running a society will necessitate a return to older, simpler, and long-proven-effectual ways of doing healing, both individual and societal. They will be coming back into serious use again, perforce.
. The first link tends to suggest that Croatia is broadly on the same trajectory. Villains.