The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul. Trance, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon (Living Wisdom Series)
"A shaman from Nepal met a Westerner who remarked how good it must be to live in harmony with the cosmos. The shaman replied, 'The main part of my job is killing witches and sorcerers.'" Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky gives us a balanced account of shamans and shamanic practices from Siberia to the Amazon rain forest that takes into account every facet of a mysterious and increasingly popular religious phenomenon. Field-work anecdotes combined with hundreds of full-color photographs draw the reader into a complex essentialist world which, though it may be following primitive societies into extinction, seems to still manifest itself in many aspects of modern man's religion, literature, and psyche. Extensive bibliography includes a list of new shamanic movements.