accounts and narratives of the ancient iranian texts and sources of the islamic period concerning fereydun indicate that this iranian dragon-slayer hero has been known for his three powers, that is “fighting powers,” “medical skills,” and “sorcery arts”. on the other hand, his name, fereydun (middle persian “frēdōn”, avestan “θraētaona-“), seems to mean “the owner of three powers” or “the one w...

CONTEXT Sorcery-related killing and violence has increased in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in recent years. The international community has condemned the violence and a number of non-government organisations have called for action; however, effective and appropriate interventions at a community level remain elusive. It has been suggested within some communities and in the literature that post-mortems...

This article surveys some descriptions of the Fore people made on early contact in the 1950s by patrol officers, social anthropologists and medical doctors. Sorcery accusations and cannibalism initially impressed these outside observers, though gradually they came to realize that a strange and fatal condition called kuru was a major affliction of the Fore, especially women and children. Fore at...

The paper deals with the problem of identifying the internal dependencies and similarities among a large number of random processes. Linear models are considered to describe the relations among the time series and the energy associated to the corresponding modeling error is the criterion adopted to quantify their similarities. Such an approach is interpreted in terms of graph theory suggesting ...

This article describes the principles of sihr (sorcery) from an Islamic perspective, starting with discussion how to become a sorcerer and perform sorcery help satanic djinns amulets. Then, ruqya, practices for countering aid Qur’an Sunna, are exemplified in detail. Next, analyzes these can be interpreted by means ritual studies models identifies four components that essential successful cure. ...