A survey of five centuries of writings on the world's great shamans-the tricksters, sorcerers, conjurers, and healers who have fascinated observers for centuries. This collection of essays traces Western civilization's struggle to interpret and understand the ancient knowledge of cultures that revere magic men and women-individuals with the power to summon spirits. As written by priests, explorers, adventurers, natural historians, and anthropologists, the pieces express the wonder of strangers in new worlds. Who were these extraordinary magic-makers who imitated the sounds of animals in the night, or drank tobacco juice through funnels, or wore collars filled with stinging ants? Shamans Through Time is a rare chronicle of changing attitudes toward that which is strange and unfamiliar. With essays by such acclaimed thinkers as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Black Elk, Carlos Castaneda, and Frank Boas, it provides an awesome glimpse into the incredible shamanic practices of cultures around the world.

Sarah Nelson, recognized as one of the key figures in the studying gender in the ancient world and women in archaeology, brings together much of the work she has done in a single volume with her latest thinking on the development of gender studies in the field.

Shamanism can be described as a group of techniques by which its practitioners enter the “spirit world,” purportedly obtaining information that is used to help and to heal members of their social group. Despite a resurgence of interest in shamanism and shamanic states of consciousness, these phenomena are neither well-defined nor sufficiently understood. This multi-disciplinary study draws on the fields of psychology, philosophy and anthropology with the aim of demystifying shamanism. The authors analyse conflicting perspectives regarding shamanism, the epistemology of shamanic states of consciousness, and the nature of the mental imagery encountered during these states.

Shamans of the Lost World bridges the gap between recent work in the cognitive sciences and some of humankind's oldest religious expressions. In this detailed look at the prehistoric shamanism of the Ohio Hopewell, Romain uses cognitive science, archaeology, and ethnology to propose that the shamanic worldview results from psychological mechanisms that have a basis in our cognitive evolutionary development. The discussions in this volume of the most current theories concerning how early peoples came to believe in spirits and gods, as well as how those theories help account for what we find in the archaeological record of the Hopewell, are of interest to archaeologists and cognitive scientists alike.

'Shamans Through Time' is a five-hundred-year survey of writings on the healers, sorcerers, conjurers and tricksters who have fascinated us for centuries, tracing Western civilization's attempts to understand the ancient knowledge of shamans round the world, from Asia and Australia to Africa and the Americas. Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley have collected observations about and interviews with shamans from more than sixty missionaries, botanists, anthropologists, ethnographers and psychologists from 1535 to 2000, who convey everything from fear, suspicion, fascination and adulation. With essays by such acclaimed thinkers as Claude Lévi-Straus, Black Elk, Franz Boas and Carlos Castaneda, it provides and glimpse into the shamanic practices of cultures around the world.

You're no idiot, of course. You know that shamans are also known as medicine men and women, who use the power of the mind and call on spiritual helpers to heal the afflicted. However, this ancient art has been put to more modern uses, including problem solving, empowerment, and personal mastery. But you don't have to trek through steamy Amazonian jungles or frigid Siberian tundra to become enlightened in the ways of shamanism! 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Shamanism' will show exactly how to discover your own shamanic power and how that power will guide you in your everyday life! In this 'Complete Idiot's Guide', you get: -Shamanic history, from its origins in Paleolithic times to its spreading influence today. -Power animals, where to locate them and how they communicate with you. -How to take a shamanic, travelling through the Lower, Upper, and Middle Worlds, and exploring your past or future. -Shamanic healing techniques in use with modern medicine.

Part travelogue, part experiential spiritual memoir, Kevin Turner takes us to visit with authentic shamans in the steppes and urban centers of modern-day Mongolia. Along the way, the author, a practicing shaman himself, tells of spontaneous medical diagnoses, all-night shamanic ceremonies, and miraculous healings, all welling from a rich culture in which divination, soul-retrieval, and spirit depossession are a part of everyday life. Shamanism, described in the 1950s by Mircea Eliade as "archaic techniques of ecstasy," is alive and well in Mongolia as a means of accessing "nonordinary realities" and the spirit world. After centuries of suppression by Buddhist and then Communist political powers, it is exploding in popularity in Mongolia. Turner gives compelling accounts of healings and rituals he witnesses among Darkhad, Buryat, and Khalkh shamans, and goes on to provide us with his insights into a universal shamanism, principles that lie at the heart of shamanic traditions worldwide. This astounding, inspiring book will appeal to shamans and shamanic therapists, students of Mongolian culture and comparative religion, and fans of off-grid travel memoirs.

Shamanism can be defined as the practice of initiated shamans who are distinguished by their mastery of a range of altered states of consciousness. Shamanism arises from the actions the shaman takes in non-ordinary reality and the results of those actions in ordinary reality. It is not a religion, yet it demands spiritual discipline and personal sacrifice from the mature shaman who seeks the highest stages of mystical development.

Concerned with Andean cosmology both as the manifestation of a system of belief and as a way of thinking or worldview that orders the social environment, this volume advances an explanation of why Andean indigenous communities are still recognizably Andean after a half-millennium of forced exposure to Western systems of thought and belief. Dealing with cultural authenticity in an Andean context, the essays describe a process facilitated by a cosmology which readily integrates the accoutrements of non-Andean community. At issue is not so much what is authentic but, rather, how it is perceived to be authentic and how it is so maintained. The nine authors explore a model in which a consistent and persistent cosmological discourse leads, not to an emergent social order, but to a social order which continually emerges as a peculiarly Andean phenomenon.

Publisher Description