Wow! eBook
The A to Z of Shamanism: 173
Author(s): Graham Harvey (Author), Robert J. Wallis
- Publisher: Scarecrow Press
- Publication Date: 1 April 2010
- Language: English
- Print length: 332 pages
- ISBN-10: 0810876000
- ISBN-13: 9780810876002
Book Description
Few religious traditions have generated such diversity and stirred imaginations as shamanism. In their engagements with other worlds, shamans have conversed with animals and ancestors and have been empowered with the knowledge to heal patients, advise hunters, and curse enemies. Still other shamans, aided by rhythmic music or powerful plant helpers, undertake journeys into different realities where their actions negotiate harmony between human and other than human communities. Once relegated to paintings on cave walls, today Shamanism can be seen in performances at rave clubs and psychotherapeutic clinics. The A to Z of Shamanism has the duel task of exploring the common ground of shamanic traditions and evaluating the diversity of both traditional indigenous communities and individual Western seekers. This is done in an introduction, a bibliography, a chronology, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries, which explore the consistent features of a variety of shamans, the purposes shamanism serves, the function and activities of the shaman, and the cultural contexts in which they make sense.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Graham Harvey is Professor and Head of Department of Religious Studies at the Open University, UK. His research largely engages with the performances and rhetorics of religion among indigenous peoples, Pagans and Jews but also seeks improved understanding of everyday relational religioning.
Robert J. Wallis is Professor of Visual Culture, Associate Dean of MA Programs, and Convenor of the MA in Art History and Visual Culture at Richmond University, the American International University in London. His research engages with prehistoric and indigenous art and religion, and the ways in which people reproduce, reinterpret and make claims to prehistoric art and religion today.
