Late Modern Shamanism: Central Texts and Issues

Abstract

Shamans and their séances exert a striking fascination for people in the Western world. Thousands of articles and books—both academic and popular—have been written about the subject. The words shaman and shamanism no longer belong merely to the professional jargon of scholars of religion and anthropologists, but have become part of everyday language. Shamanism has even, as few other religious phenomena, inspired people in modern times to create their own innovative versions. There is a wide variety of neoshamanic rituals that one accesses through books and via courses of various lengths and costs. The experiential nature of much neoshamanism is apparent from such recent titles as Serge Kahili King’s Urban Shaman (1990), Alberto Villoldo’s Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself with the Energy Medicine of the Americas (2000), Tony Samara’s Shaman’s Wisdom: Reclaim Your Lost Connection with the Universe (2012), and Sandra Ingerman’s The Shaman’s Toolkit: Ancient Tools for Shaping the Life and World You Want to Live In (2013). For readers of such volumes, it is clear that shamanism is not an exotic practice found among various indigenous peoples, but practices that can be sampled by anybody willing to buy a book and try out the methods found there.