Lets get Litty

[Anonymous No.13565980]

Any recommended books on shamanism? or perhaps the history of amazonian culture? Want to learn more about ancient symbolism and spirituality. Cheers.

[Anonymous No.13566021]

Eliade has an interesting book on shamanism but it's pretty ahistorical. It's more him condensing the entire "shaman" phenomenon as a general thing across all primitive cultures into a sort of perennial perennialist yogi, so that every culture has its entheogenic spirit-talker yogi type guys.

I came across this book while reading into Eliade:
https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/33149856/boekhoven_binnenwerk.pdf
not sure why the whole pdf is available online but it seems like someone's PhD thesis. It's a "reception" history of the concept of shamanism, so going through the various ways the term has been constructed and adopted by scholars (and other enthusiasts). Might be a good place to start. Looks like it has interesting chapters on Eliade and the Jung milieu at Eranos. Also whole chapter on Castaneda. Probably toward the ends of these reception chapters, he'll list some more recent scholarship in comparative religions, which obviously tends to be more sober. There are probably some big names in there.

I have a feeling that most of the major modern stuff on shamanism is going to be written by big trendy anthropologists like Ingold though, or that How Forests Think guy. Those books are often more like continental philosophy forcing another culture to be their mouthpiece. Arguably Eliade was doing exactly that by turning every culture in the world into naive neoplatonist perennialists, but I dunno, at least his books were more fun.

[Anonymous No.13566054]

>>13566021
I've once started to read his work and there was 40 pages of foreword from some asshole shitting on Eliade's understanding of shamanism, I couldn't continue reading after that.

[Anonymous No.13566107]

>>13566021
Very informative, thanks for your help.