[Mihalic] Witchcraft - qualification

[dwj at uwo.ca]

Just to qualify: I did not claim (or did not mean to claim) that /poisen/ or
/sanguma/ are no longer in use; only that the 'new' phenomenon flagged in
Deborah's posting (often) runs under different colours. The advent of /wiskrap/
as a category is what I was hoping to draw attention to.

Dan

Quoting "Thomas H. Slone" <THSlone at yahoo.com>:

> Dan Jorgensen recently wrote on ASAONET that "poisen" and "sanguma"
> are no longer the terms used for witchcraft in Tok Pisin.  Mihalic
> List members might be interested to know that our dictionary entry
> was cited in the ASAONET discussion on this topic.  Jorgensen wrote
> that "wiskrap" is the commonly used term and that it represents a
> different type of sorcery, linked to "Third Wave Evangelism".  Third
> Wave Evangelism is apparently a type of post-evangelistic
> Christianity that incorporates the need to combat demonic forces.
> Specifically, this type of witchcraft is a recent phenomenon
> associated with the AIDS epidemic and the folk concept that AIDS/HIV
> is associated with sorcery (i.e., the belief that there is no such
> thing as natural death).
>
> Some recent news stories on witchcraft in PNG may be of interest:
> http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s1117012.htm
> http://www.time.com/time/pacific/magazine/20010507/witch.html
> http://www.wwrn.org/parse.php?idd=9020&c=14
>
> --Tom Slone
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