Description: North Castle Books are designed to bring the global variety of knowledge to a broader audience. Primarily aimed at the general reader through bookstore distribution, North Castle Books makes available, in handsomely bound paper editions, titles of literary and cultural significance that our editors have found to be of lasting importance. Spanning the range of fields from Asian Studies to American Studies, from short stories to scholarly treatises, from myth to memoirs, from Economics to Government, from Russian Politics to Recent History, North Castle Books will occupy an important place on bookshelves. Each edition will be reasonably priced, affording students, scholars, and serious readers the means to expand their horizons and broaden their aesthetic understanding.

Siberia, the ancient heartland of shamanism, is no longer forbidden territory -- to travelers or to the spirits. But the spirits never left, as these writings from Russia reveal. Russian and native experts, and an American cultural anthropologist who has done fieldwork in Siberia, introduce us to Siberian shamans as the poets, therapists, and even leaders of their communities. Among the special features of this collection are remarkable transcriptions of shamanic exhortations and a path-breaking study of shamanic tales and rituals.

"Well-chosen selections, with an outstandingly knowledgeable introduction by anthropologist Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, one of the few Americans to have done ethnographic research in Siberia. A welcome addition to the library of anyone seriously interested in shamanism". -- Michael Harner, author of The Way of the Shaman

Please Wait