Traditional peoples and ... people of the paleolithic, have ... two concepts which change our vision of the world. There is the concept of fluidity, and the concept of permeability. Fluidity means that the categories that we have: man, woman, horse, tree, etc. can shift - a tree may speak, a man can get transformed into an animal and the other way around, given certain circumstances. The concept of permeability is that there are no barriers ... between the world where we are and the world of the spirits - a wall can talk to us or a wall can accept us or refuse us. A shaman for example can send his or her spirit to the world of the supernatural or can receive the visit inside him or her of supernatural spirits. If you put those two concepts together you realise how different life must have been for those people to the way we live now.
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Traditional peoples and ... people of the paleolithic, have ... two concepts which change our vision of the world. There is the concept of fluidity, and the concept of permeability. Fluidity means that the categories that we have: man, woman, horse, tree, etc. can shift - a tree may speak, a man can get transformed into an animal and the other way around, given certain circumstances. The concept of permeability is that there are no barriers ... between the world where we are and the world of the spirits - a wall can talk to us or a wall can accept us or refuse us. A shaman for example can send his or her spirit to the world of the supernatural or can receive the visit inside him or her of supernatural spirits. If you put those two concepts together you realise how different life must have been for those people to the way we live now.
The spoken words of a French prehistorian in Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
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