Shamans Through Time : 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge - Softcover

Huxley, Francis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500510709 ISBN 13: 9780500510704

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2001

Synopsis

This is a 500-year survey of writings on the world's shamans - the healers, sorcerers, conjurers and tricksters. Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley trace Western civilization's attempts to understand the ancient knowledge of shamans around the world and have collected observations about and interviews with shamans from more than 60 missionaries, botanists, anthropologists, ethnographers and psychologists spanning from 1535 to 2000. The contributors convey everything from fear, suspicion and condescension to respect, fascination and adulation. The essays are by such thinkers as Claude Levi-Strauss, Black Elk, Franz Boas and Carlos Castaneda.

About this title

About the Author:

Jeremy Narby studied history at the University of Canterbury and received a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. He is the author of The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. Francis Huxley took his degree in anthropology at the University of Oxford and has written widely on the subject.

From Publishers Weekly:

Surprisingly little appears to have changed in shamanic practices throughout the world in the last 500 years. Most rely on plant hallucinogens to communicate with otherworldly spirits for guidance and for enhanced perceptions of diseases and the identities of enemies. And most can choose whether to direct their energies for good or for evil purposes, an ability that provoked much hostility among their early observers. Scholarly treatments of shamanism, however, have changed dramatically over the centuries. In this excellent volume, anthropologists Narby (The Cosmic Serpent) and Huxley (Affable Savages) have collected observations about and interviews with shamans from more than 60 missionaries, botanists, anthropologists, ethnographers and psychologists spanning from 1535 to 2000. The contributors convey everything from fear, suspicion and condescension to respect, fascination and adulation. Many contemporary anthropologists lament shamanism's recent popularization and its likely degeneration in global culture. Anthropologist Michael F. Brown writes, "Tribal lore is a supermarket from which [New Age Americans] choose some tidbits while spurning others." As an example of shamanism-as-commodity, British anthropologist Piers Vitebsky cites a dumbed-down version of traditional healing that is part of a compulsory course for schoolchildren in northeast Siberia, where 50 years ago shamans were put to death. On the positive side, ethobotanist Glenn H. Shepard believes that shamans will become the ethnobotanists of the future. This first sweeping study of shamanism is sure to become a classic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0500510709
• ISBN 13: 9780500510704
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Narby Jeremy