Piedra Pintada Books

Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Mircea Eliade
1964, Bollingen-Princeton University Press, paper
610 pages, 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"
$25.00

Shamanism is pre-eminently 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, mystic, and poet. The same phenomenon and techniques occur elsewhere in Asia, in the Americas, and among all traditional indigenous peoples the world over. Mircea Eliade, writing as a historian of religion, synthesizes the approaches of psychology, sociology and ethnology. He analyzes the ideology of shamanism and discusses its techniques, symbolisms, and mythologies.