Ebook: Shamanism in Siberia: Russian Records of Indigenous Spirituality

From the reviews:

"Znamenski set out to provide for readers of English a wealth of sources that will be utterly new even to most experts in the field. He recognises the value of all of his chosen texts, whatever their viewpoints, and demonstrates it to others. His introduction is the best concise summary yet made of the history of research into Siberian shamanism, from the earliest times to the present, and outstandingly valuable in its range and perception."
(Professor Ronald Hutton, Dept. of Historical Studies, The Universityof Bristol, UK)

"This volume is a fascinating … summary of Russian-language sources of Siberian ritual practitioners (‘shamans’). … the book is interesting and useful both for students and specialists. … The book is particularly noteworthy for the fact that it records the variety of local terms that are used for ‘shamans’. I have already recommended the book to postgraduate students … . the volume is well-edited. … This book is a welcome addition to a new generation of analytical work on forms of indigenous spirituality." (David G. Anderson, Polar Record, Vol. 41 (4), 2005)

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This book takes you to the "classical academy of shamanism," Siberian tribal spirituality that gave birth to the expression "shamanism." Popular imagination frequently associates this phenomenon with Native American religions. At the same time, because of the language barrier, a large number of primary sources coming from Siberia, the "motherland" of shamanism, have been inaccessible not only to the general reader but also to scholars. For the first time, in this volume Znamenski has rendered in readable English more than one hundred books and articles that describe all aspects of Siberian shamanism: ideology, ritual, mythology, spiritual pantheon, and paraphernalia. The anthology is also supplemented with an extensive interpretive essay, in which Znamenski introduces the reader to shamanism studies and shows how Russian and Western writers and scholars have covered Siberian spirituality from the eighteenth century to the present. Both anthropologists, historians of religion, psychologists and practitioners of shamanism will find in this text plenty of valuable information, which they can use in their research, seminars and workshops.