The Enduring and Evolving Magical-Healing Practices in Pomerania over the Past Two Hundred Years.

Western science tends to distance itself from magical healing processes. It fails to see that such processes reflect a very wide range of issues, including beliefs, orientation toward the world and people, and all kinds of religious, mythological, and spiritual views. I am persuaded that adequate understanding of such processes illuminates a broad scope of social and cultural behavior. Here I focus on processes that have been present in Pomerania (the northern part of Poland and the Baltic Sea) over the past two hundred years. Delimiting a specific geographical area enabled a more detailed study of the changes, their origin, and future prospects within a particular community. The geographical, historical, and political area of Pomerania has been subject to transformations, and it is interesting to see if changes in magicalhealing processes reflect these historical and political shifts. To capture this dual process accurately, I apply methods developed within social sciences and humanities, so as to enable observation of changes and their outcomes in Pomerania, and in particular, Kashubia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]