A 9-week online class
*** A PDF of the book will be supplied to all students
Dates: Saturdays January 22, 29, February 5, 12, 19, 26, and March 5, 12 and 19, 2022
Time: 2:00 - 3:30 EST/ NYC time (11 am-12:30 pm California time, 7 pm-8:30 pm London time, 8 pm-9:30 pm Paris/Amsterdam time)

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Taught via Zoom by Morbid Anatomy Founder Joanna Ebenstein

This class includes materials that are emailed to students upon registration. Class fees are non-refundable.

$75 ($65 for $5/a month and above Patreon members)

In this six-week reading group, led by Morbid Anatomy Founder and Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein, we will read and discuss anthropologist Rogan Taylor’s seminal, provocative, and hugely influential 1985 book The Death and Resurrection Show: From Shaman to Superstar. As a final project, students will be invited to present a shamanistic interpretation—integrating all we have learned over the course of this class—to a performer or cultural producer of their choice. And, if we are lucky, the author will join us at some point to field questions and comments.

The book The Death and Resurrection Show traces the evolution of western show biz from its origins in the bizarre and spectacular performances of shamans -- the medicine men and women of nomadic tribes. Beginning with the ancient religion of shamanism, he describes a shaman's descent into the role of magical doctor -- his descent into the Underworld, his sufferings, eventual death, dismemberment and resurrection. Reborn, he subsequently flies to meet the spirits of the upper world before finally returning to earth as a shaman with full power.

The author finds that every single trick and stunt, song and dance, so familiar to us on the popular stage has its taproots in the shaman's re-enactment of these strange adventures. When the white rabbit emerges from the conjurer's top hat this is the last act; we no longer see the first, when the rabbit is dropped and dismembered. He concludes that show business still operates therapeutically in a way very similar to that of the shaman's ritual magic. Modern show biz, it appears, is anchored in the Underworld experience—in Hell itself.

This explains the established Church's long-standing opposition to all popular entertainment, maintained despite—or perhaps because of—the unmistakable similarity between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that of the traditional shaman. ("Jesus descended into Hell. On the third day he rose again..." What did he do there?) It also explains the necessity for the disguising of show business and throws light upon the time of its emergence as a major cultural force in the modern age.

The author sees rock-and-roll particularly as the most obvious flowering of the ecstatic mystery inherent in the magic show. After tracing the development of show business from the shaman's healing performances through to the traveling show, pantomime, circus and popular music, and by examining the life stories of Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Bessie Smith, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and David Bowie, he uncovers the direct line of descent from the shamans of the past to the superstars of today.

Schedule/Table of Contents

Week 1

1) The Magic of Showbusiness: An Introduction
2) Shamanism: The Old Religion

Week 2
3) The Shaman's Initiation
The Shamans Sickness; the Shaman and Soul Loss; The Shaman and the Dream
4) The Shaman's Story
The Russian Doll; The Mystical Marriage and Sex Change Shamanism

Week 3
5) The Shaman's Demonstrations of Power
The Trial of a Shaman; A Shaman's Trick
6) The Shaman's Healing Rite
Black and White Shamans; The Shaman's Healing Tools; The Shaman's Tricks; The Sickness and the Cure; A Healing Séance

Week 4
7) How Did Shamanism Become Show Business
How Shamanism become Showbiz and when the Nomads Stop Traveling; How Shamanism Becomes Showbiz when the Nomads Don't Stop Traveling
8) The Making of the Modern Entertainer
Greek and Roman Traditions; Northern European Traditions; The Mummer's Play; The Complete All-rounder; Harlequin: The Sex-change Shaman

Week 5
9) The Shamanism of Clowns and Fools
The Christian Fool; The Buddhist Fool; the Shamanistic Fool; The European Feast of Fools
10) Showbusiness, Heresy and Hell
The Church of Showbusiness; Science, Magic and the Underworld; Showbusiness: A Modern Therapy?

Week 6
11) Pantomime and the Fantasmagoria
Magical Transformations; The Puppet Theatre; Doctor Faustus, the Devil, and Pantomime; Pantomime and the Classical Underworld; Harlequin and the Sex-Change Magician; Pantomime and the Shaman's Story; Panto's Paganism; Joey Grimaldi; Panto in the Victorian Age; The Fantasmagoria; The Hanlon-Lees
12) The Circus
The Circus and the Shaman; Circus Acts and the Shaman's Tricks; The Emergence of the Modern Circus

Week 7
13) Magical Mysteries and Harry Houdini
Eastern Magic Tricks; The Great Bosco; Robert-Houdin; Harry Houdini

Week 8
14) Shaman Superstars
Charlie Chapin; Louis Armstrong; Bessie Smith; The Blues and Jazz; Chaplin's Charlie
15) Rock 'n 'Roll": The Magic Puberty Show
Little Richard; Jerry Lee Lewis; Elvis Presley; Sixties Superstars; Bob Dylan; Jimi Hendrix; David Bowie; John Lennon

Week 9
Present final projects

Dr Rogan P Taylor was born in Liverpool; left school at 16; travelled widely around the world as a young man 'on the road'; didn't really stop until nearly 30yrs old; went to university aged 33; got a first and did a PhD focussed on shamanistic ritual and psychoanalysis. Published first book (of six) in 1985, The Death and Resurrection Show' looking at remnants of shamanistic themes in modern showbiz.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was co-founder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy, Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus and The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (with Colin Dickey). Her work explores the intersections of art and medicine, death and culture, and the objective and subjective.