Shamanism:
Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
By Eliade, Mircea, translated by Trask
1964/01 - Princeton University Press
0691017794 - Trade Paper
Our Price $19.95
Related Books: Other
Religions (Egyptian, Hermiticism, etc...)
Shamanism is preeminently a religious phenomenon of Siberia and
Central Asia; throughout this vast area, the magico-religious life of
society centers on the figure of the shaman, at once magician and
medicine man, healer and miracle-doer, psychopomp, priest, mystic, and
poet. The same phenomena and techniques occur elsewhere in Asia, in
Oceania, in the Americas, and among the ancient Indo-European peoples.
The
Reader's Catalog
Healer and
psychopomp, the shaman is these because he commands the techniques of
ecstasy--that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam
at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky.
Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the
extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has
already been there. The danger of losing his way in these forbidden
regions is still great; but sanctified by his initiation and furnished
with his guardian spirits, the shaman is the only human being able to
challenge the danger and venture into a mystical geography.
