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This is a 500-year survey of writings on the world's shamans - the healers, sorcerers, conjurers and tricksters. Jeremy Narby and Francis Huxley trace Western civilization's attempts to understand the ancient knowledge of shamans around the world and have collected...(more) observations about and interviews with shamans from more than 60 missionaries, botanists, anthropologists, ethnographers and psychologists spanning from 1535 to 2000. The contributors convey everything from fear, suspicion and condescension to respect, fascination and adulation. The essays are by such thinkers as Claude Levi-Strauss, Black Elk, Franz Boas and Carlos Castaneda.(less)