Books about Spirits, Shamans, and Stars

Pursuing special experiences that take them to the brink of permanent madness or death, men and women in every age have "returned" to heal and comfort their fellow human beings--and these shamans have fascinated students of society from Herodotus to Mircea Eliade. Gloria Flaherty's book is about the first Western

An invaluable companion which enables the reader to acquire and understand a vocabulary for discussion and critical thinking on all aspects of the subject. The clear explanations of the concepts support students in their practical and theoretical explorations of the subjects and offer insights for research and reflective writing.

“This book is the most comprehensively global and critically sensitive synthesis of what we now know of the material and socio-cultural evolution of the so-called First Societies. Written by a distinguished architectural historian and theorist, this truly remarkable and indispensable study shows how the material culture of our forebears, from

Shamanism can be defined as the practice of initiated shamans who are distinguished by their mastery of a range of altered states of consciousness. Shamanism arises from the actions the shaman takes in non-ordinary reality and the results of those actions in ordinary reality. It is not a religion, yet