The quest for the shaman : shape-shifters, sorcerers and spirit-healers of ancient Europe
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The quest for the shaman : shape-shifters, sorcerers and spirit-healers of ancient Europe
Thames & Hudson, 2005
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Note
Bibliography: p. 219-233
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Here is an exciting, innovative study of ancient European religious practice and practitioners.The Aldhouse-Greens' entertaining and informative book represents a search, a voyage of discovery in which evidence is sought that there were individuals living in Europe from the Stone Age to the early post-Roman period who believed they were able to liaise with the spirit-world through the medium of trance and who perceived themselves to be part-human and part-animal. The authors support their argument with diverse and rich evidence, including the 30,000-year-old lion-human ivory figurines found in south-western Germany, which may represent monsters seen by shamans in altered states of consciousness; the newly discovered and spectacular Nebra sky-disc, which depicts the sun, moon and the Pleiades, indicating that Bronze Age shamans were using highly sophisticated objects to explore the heavens; and the `Doctor's Grave' from southeast England, which suggests that a Late Iron Age chieftain, who may have been a shaman, was sent to the Otherworld equipped with hallucinogens, medical kit and divining tools.
Table of Contents
1. Shamanism: An Introduction 2. Beyond the Stone Gates: Later Palaeolithic Ritual Practice 40,000-10,000 Years Ago 3. Swans'Wings and Chamber Tombs: Searching for Shamans 10,000-3000 BC 4. Rocks and Gold: Bronze Age Shamanism 5. Priests, Politics and Powerr: Controlling the Supernatural 6. Monsters, Gender-Benders and Ritualists in the Roman Empire and Beyond 7. Myths and Magic: Shape-Shifting and Shamanism in Early Celtic Literature 8. Epilogue
by "Nielsen BookData"
