Collectibles or Cultural Heritage?

[Bob A]

Sir James Frazer, anthropologist author of the monumental study The Golden Bough described the basic principles of magic: sympathetic magic and contagious magic.

Sympathetic magic is based on the principle of “like produces like,” while contagious magic is based on the principle that things which have once been in contact can continue to have an effect on each other even after they are separated.

"Magical thinking" has been derided in our more technical age, though annoyingly enough, the outer reaches of physics has conjectured that on a very basic level, things once in contact continue to affect one another.

For my part, I've come to collect objects which are exemplars of cultures that no longer exist; they establish a connection between my consciousness and vanished times and places. They range from a Luristan bronze sword some 3000 years old, to Naga swords and spears, remnants of a culture only recently dissolved into the 21st century.

My Naga collection is perhaps my most extreme example. Having bought a nice Naga dao from Artzi years ago - because Headhunters! - I was led to the books written by Ursula Graham Bower, whose introduction to the Naga people brought forth an incredible story of hidden connection with a people of whom she had no previous knowledge. She was so strongly influenced that she spent years in Nagaland, writing two books on her experiences.

Of course, I found and treasure first editions of her books, signed and inscribed to a friend of hers (another example of contagious magic), a biographical study, and a comic book (!) in which her experiences leading a Naga troop against the Japanese was luridly described, though not as accurately depicted as one would like.

Her immersion in that culture, and her writings and work within the culture, garnered her the T.E.Lawrence Award for her anthropological studies.

All things are interconnected, if we have the inner sight to observe the web that ties the universe together, in its infinite complexity.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Graham_Bower

[Jim McDougall]

Nick Evangelista in "Encyclopedia of the Sword", p.84,
On Sir Richard Burton:
"...he thought there was nothing finer in the world than the sword and the pursuit of knowledge concerning its history and use".

I recall many years ago, after some time searching, I discovered that his actual notes were at the Huntington in California, and I was able to gain an invitation to visit and view these.

When I went there I was overwhelmed as I was guided into a private room by guards, and with white gloves, I beheld the box of notes that turned out to be the manuscript pages of "The Book of the Sword" (1884).
This book was the Genesis of my lifetime of study following his exact course, and I could not believe it as I handled the yellowed pages, with penciled lines of printed words in the tiniest lettering!
Many of the line drawings of the book were pinned to the pages with straight pins.

The corpus of these sheaves of papers and notes were in incredible disarray, and I thought of my own boxes of notes, index cards, articles piled in the same sort of chaos and smiled.