Ancient traditions : shamanism in central Asia and the Americas / Gary Seaman and Jane S. Day, editors.

Papers from a symposium held at the Denver Museum of Natural History, June 1989.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 293-299) and index.

Shamanism is the world's oldest religion. The rituals and beliefs of this ancient tradition were carried from Asia and Siberia into the New World by nomadic hunting bands beginning 12,000 years ago. This unique collection of essays on shamanism in Central Asia and the Indian Americas provides sound and engaging scholarship that reflects the great diversity in this fascinating field. Over the centuries, shamanism has endured as an abiding topic of interest not only because of a human concern with the past, but also because of a common yearning to acknowledge life lived in closer symbolic relationship to earth cycles. For the reader interested in indigenous cultures and religions, this collection of essays clarifies much of the New Age speculation on universals in shamanism by bringing studies of different ethnic and historical expressions to bear on the subject.

Introduction : an overview of Shamanism / Peter T. Furst -- The attributes and power of the Shaman : a general description of the ecstatic care of the soul / Lawrence E. Sullivan -- The cultural significance of tobacco use in South America / Johannes Wilbert -- Shaminism in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala / Robert S. Carlsen and Martin Prechtel -- "The Mara'akáme does and undoes" : persistence and change in Huichol Shamanism / Peter T. Furst -- The dark emperor : central Asian origins in Chinese Shamanism / Gary Seaman -- Shamans in traditional Tuvinian society / Vera P. Diakonova -- The Shaman costume : image and myth / Larisa R. Pavlinskaya -- The horse in Yakut Shaminism / Vladimir Diachenko -- Texts of Shamanistic invocations from Central Asia and Kazakhstan / Vladimir N. Basilov.

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