Shamans Through Time : 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge

Rating:
Summary: A marvellous book
Review: 'Shamans Through Time'

What is a shaman? How does he practice? Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley, anthropologists of the mind and much else beside, deftly guide us through five hundred years of literature - from the 16th century Christian view (Ministers of the Devil), through the coming of anthropologists, to contemporary accounts by shamans themselves. The selected writings are richly varied, each reflecting its time and place; and they are short, which makes the reading easy. Here's Diderot in 1765, Franz Boas in 1887, Alfred Metraux and Levi Strauss in the 1940s, Carlos Castaneda in '68, Maria Sabena in 1977 -- sixty four in all, a significant number, you might think: Huxley is a conjurer of numbers no less than letters (see the Raven and the Writing Desk). His own contribution to the collection is a gem, 'Smoking Huge Cigars', about an Urubu shamanic ceremony in which vast quantities of tobacco are smoked. Narby also tells a good story, 'Shamans and Scientists'(2000), about an encounter between three molecular scientists and a Peruvian ayahuascero.

The entire collection is divided into seven chronological sections, each with a short, bright introduction by the editors. The result is a map by which to navigate this otherwise quite bewildering terrain. There's also a topical index, with surprising and helpful categories, like 'Varieties of Shaman'' (diviners, healers, jugglers, tricksters and magicians...), 'Creatures' (anaconda, ant, antelope, caterpiller...) and 'Magic Substances' (arrows, cords, crystals, darts, ectoplasm, viruses and DNA!).

'Shamans Through Time' is not only skillfully put together and easy to read: it offers deep understanding. This is important, because shamanism is serious stuff. A shaman - 'one who maintains by profession, and in the interest of the community, an intermittent commerce with spirits...' (using Metraux's definition) -- is gifted with access to major power, for healing and for harm. In an age when many profess to this calling, we need a deeply reliable voice on the matter. This is it.

Milhaly Hoppal, Director of the European Folklore Institute, says 'Shamans Through Time' is "the most comprehensive survey on shamanism ever. It will be a classic in its field." I'm sure he's right. It's a marvellous book.

Michael Schwab, Doctor of Public Health
Berkeley, CA

Rating:
Summary: Shaman Regrets
Review: Francis Huxley attached his name to this project, which explains the fair reviews the book has received and the log-rolling on its back cover. Shamans Through Time, a compendium of weakly-chosen excerpts from the work of other authors, and spanning a 500-year period, poses as an intellectual and scholarly book, but is neither. Poorly contextualized by its editors, the pieces in Shamans Through Time pass the reader by like small tasteless hors d'oeuvres from a better era's garden party.

Although editors Jeremy Narby and Huxley admit he faked much of his material, Carlos Castaneda is included, but of currently frowned-upon James Frazer nothing is seen. Watery passages from esteemed writers Alfred Métraux and Mircea Elíade appear in dribbles.

To illustrate the vacuity of the volume as a whole and the extent of its reach, consider the following: anthropologist Michael Harner (founder of The Foundation for Shamanic Studies), while living among the Jivaro Indians of the Peruvian Amazon, joins in a shamanic ceremony and hallucinates wildy. The subject of his extensive vision is the revelation that a frightening reptilian race resides in the human spinal column, from where it controls the evolution and doings of mankind. Coming to his senses, Harner meets a husband-and-wife team of Christian evangelists traveling in the region and shares his experience. The evangelists explain that 'serpent' is synonymous in the Bible with 'dragon' and 'Satan,' and Harner, educated man and Westerner that he is, is awestruck at this news.

What excuse is there for the absence of a complete index? It appears nobody wanted to spend much time or thought on this book, including its editors. Though Huxley himself titled one of his own works Affable Savages: An Anthropologist Among the Urubu Indians of Brazil, the use of words 'primitives' and 'savages' is decried in the brief politically-correct introduction, especially in regard to all those awful elitist scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Shamans Through Time is pseudo-intellectualism at its best.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Idea
Review: I really liked this book. Edited (in part) by the author of "The Cosmic Serpent", it gives a sweeping five-hundred year look at how outsiders have percieved Shamanism, from early missionaries and explorers who viewed it as the "work of the devil" to early anthropologists to modern seekers who want to experience Shamanism for themselves. The focus of this book is Siberia and the Americas (which is soemwhat disappointing, as they could have included Hokkaido, Micronesia, South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere) and the whole purpose of the book is to tell about how outsiders have viewed (and expierenced) Shamanism. As such, its not always clear what the realities of the practice are or were. In addition, there were a few glaring omissions, such as Frazer. Nonetheless, the sheer scope of this overview (both in terms of times and geography) and the amount of information within make it an excellent source for study. If you are seriously interested in the historical practices of Shamanism, or perhaps the changing attitudes toward Shamanism in the west, then you really should seek this book out.