Dreamtime and Inner Space

Combining the cross-cultural scholarship of Eliade's "Shamanism" and the experiential teachings of Harner's "Way of the Shaman," Kalweit's "Dreamtime and Inner Space" has remained the single most useful work on shamanism in my research library. Fascinating, readable, and accessible, this is a book to refer back to again and again. Kalweit is a believer, but he is an educated believer. He presents the reader with shamanic experiences from a multiplicity of cultures, teaching techniques through the stories of shamans from around the world. If you have any interest at all in this subject, "Dreamtime and Inner Space" is a book you must own.

Really wonderful book. I happened across it in my college library. It isn't a story and he isn't selling an idea. It brings to light how a person comes to be recognized as a shaman. He explores how the individual is transformed from a normal person into a shaman through a traumatic event or illness. Once the transformation is complete that person can never return to her former self or know her former and 'normal' consciousness again. Fascinating stuff.

I cannot emphasize it enough, this is one of the most definitive books on shamanism available to the public at large. This book goes into extensive details about the practices and rites of Shamanism. The author writes about the indigenous religions of societies from North and South America, Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Siberia, Polynesia and Nepal. I strongly recommend this book.

To my mind, this is still the best book on the topic. I found it much more thorough and much deeper than Harner, and Kalweit makes no pretentions about being able to make YOU a shaman.

Kalweit traces in great detail and with admirable sympathy the rich textures of the shamanic tradition, across the globe and throughout recorded ethnological histories. Particularly interesting and useful is the comparsion with contemporary near-death experiences (no doubt due to Kubler-Ross' influence) and more importantly, his development of a new, apolitical, model of human consciousness, within which the ecstatic state is given equal consideration alongside rational, affective, and other socially construed 'normative' states of awareness. In my opinion, Kalweit's work is both more interesting and relevant than Elidae's now outdated period piece, and I can only hope that it will become the new standard in shamanic studies.