Shamans Through Time

Author: Jeremy Narby
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781585423620
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
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.

Shamans Through Time

Author: Jeremy Narby
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500283271
Category : Shamanism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
'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.

Shamanism, History, and the State

Author: Nicholas Thomas
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472084012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Nine case studies of shamanic practice in widely different cultures

Wayward Shamans

Author: Silvia Tomášková
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520275322
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Wayward Shamans tells the story of an idea that humanity’s first expression of art, religion and creativity found form in the figure of a proto-priest known as a shaman. Tracing this classic category of the history of anthropology back to the emergence of the term in Siberia, the work follows the trajectory of European knowledge about the continent’s eastern frontier. The ethnographic record left by German natural historians engaged in the Russian colonial expansion project in the 18th century includes a range of shamanic practitioners, varied by gender and age. Later accounts by exiled Russian revolutionaries noted transgendered shamans. This variation vanished, however, in the translation of shamanism into archaeology theory, where a male sorcerer emerged as the key agent of prehistoric art. More recent efforts to provide a universal shamanic explanation for rock art via South Africa and neurobiology likewise gloss over historical evidence of diversity. By contrast this book argues for recognizing indeterminacy in the categories we use, and reopening them by recalling their complex history.

The Way of the Shaman

Author: Michael Harner
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062038125
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
This classic on shamanism pioneered the modern shamanic renaissance. It is the foremost resource and reference on shamanism. Now, with a new introduction and a guide to current resources, anthropologist Michael Harner provides the definitive handbook on practical shamanism – what it is, where it came from, how you can participate. "Wonderful, fascinating… Harner really knows what he's talking about." CARLOS CASTANEDA "An intimate and practical guide to the art of shamanic healing and the technology of the sacred. Michael Harner is not just an anthropologist who has studied shamanism; he is an authentic white shaman." STANILAV GROF, author of 'The Adventure Of Self Discovery' "Harner has impeccable credentials, both as an academic and as a practising shaman. Without doubt (since the recent death of Mircea Eliade) the world's leading authority on shamanism." NEVILL DRURY, author of 'The Elements of Shamanism' Michael Harner, Ph.D., has practised shamanism and shamanic healing for more than a quarter of a century. He is the founder and director of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Shamans Through Time

Author: Jeremy Narby
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440649774
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Shamanism for Beginners

Author: James Endredy
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 073871562X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
Healers and visionaries, food-finders and rainmakers--as intermediaries between the physical and spirit worlds, shamans have served a vital role in indigenous cultures for more than 40,000 years. The timeless wisdom of the shaman also holds relevance for the challenges we face today. James Endredy explores shamanic paths from around the globe and discusses the tools, rituals, and beliefs that are common to most traditions. You'll discover how shamans are chosen and initiated, and how they establish a relationship with power animals, ancestors, and other inhabitants of the spirit realm. Along with many stories from his own experiences, Endredy shares insights from other scholars in the field, including Mircea Eliade, Michael Harner, and Holger Kalweit, and from indigenous shamans throughout history. Shamanism for Beginners concludes with a thoughtful, empowering look at how shamanic practices can help restore balance and peace to our lives and the earth.

American Shamans

Author: Jack G. Montgomery
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780966619690
Category : Shamanism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Magical healings, ghostly encounters, and alternate realities have been a part of American society since the first colonial settlements. Author Jack Montgomery provides ample historical and personal material to reveal a largely hidden world, primarily influenced by African, Celtic and German roots, that still exists today. It is a spiritual journey into the depths of American folk religion, shamanism and applied mysticism that spans over three decades of research.

The Wheel Of Time

Author: Carlos Castaneda
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439186731
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
World-renowned bestselling author Carlos Castaneda's selection of his writings on the shamans of ancient Mexico. Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, bestselling author Carlos Castaneda soon immersed himself in the sorcerer’s magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew all along—that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one’s own. In Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda introduces readers to this new approach for the first time and explores, as he comes to experience it himself, his own final voyage into the teachings of don Juan, sharing with us what it is like to truly “stop the world” and perceive reality on his own terms.

Shamanism in North America

Author: Norman Bancroft-Hunt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Native Americans believed that it was their responsibility to maintain harmony in the natural world on which they depended by performing a variety of rituals. Shamans were credited with exceptional powers to act on behalf of the community. They claimed to be capable of separating their spirits from their bodies and interceding with those spirits that controlled the many forces of nature. Having studied the subject at first hand during his many visits to American tribes, Dr. Norman Bancroft Hunt sets out the richly rewarding results of his research in this survey of shamanic traditions and practices in various Native American groups. Shamanism in North America is profusely illustrated with the most remarkable masks, effigies, and implements used by shamans and includes evocative images of the often harsh wilderness inhabited by the tribes under discussion, as well as some revealing historical photographs of shamans.