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Why Do Nacirema People Believe In Magic

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The Nacirema people are a group of people living in Northern America, with little information on how they truly began (Miner, page 503). In general, there is not information at all of these people. What is understood of this group; however, is that there is a strong rooted belief in magic in this group of people. The magic is done by what they believe as medicine men and even holy-mouth-men, but the actual charms are created by herbalists (who get the recipe from the said medicine men to create the charm). This is nothing new to most cultures, as many seem to believe in magic, but the major difference from the Nacirema people to other magic believing cultures is that they are also strongly tied with painful and torturous rituals. Many of these …show more content…

Although they are not eagerly searching to procreate, even when they do they will bend around their typical “rituals in secret” to properly teach their young on what to do during a ritual and how seriously to take it. Even with this in mind though, I find it incredibly fascinating that these people even continue this culture. Although it does seem to be something that has carried weight and tradition for decades or more, with the amount of pain these people allow to be given to themselves I cannot fathom how they want to continue it! I am more uncomfortable with the knowledge of this group than I am truly intrigued. Yes, it is interesting and I respect them for their courage, but I also find no interest in truly getting to know more about them and it is not a culture I’d decide to join into one day. The statistics I would like to know would be; what are the death rates of infection caused by the “holy-mouth-men” or the “doctors” at the temple? Are they more joyful than fearful, or vice versa? With so much torture afflicted upon them, it is easy to assume there must be little joy within this culture but you also cannot assume

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