The Gift of Life - Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru (Paperback, New)

In this uniquely personal account of the lives and healing arts of female shamans in northern Peru, the author alternates diaristic writings about her own experiences with ethnographic description. Her analytical essays explore the concepts of sorcery, shamanism, and witchcraft, case studies of Peruvian women and their ritual healing techniques, the healers' religious and symbolic space, and the healing attributes unique to women. They alternate with chapters in which Glass-Coffin describes her introduction to Peru as a high school student, the traditional roles she adopted in her host family, the crisis that rocked her identity, her first ritual contact with a female healer, and her own tumultuous but ultimately rewarding healing journey under two female shamans. Male shamans, she concludes, sally forth into the spirit world to do individual combat with the sources of spiritual illness, whereas female shamans try to involve their patients more directly in their own healing.

General

Imprint:	University of New Mexico Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	March 1998
First published:	March 1998
Authors:	Bonnie Glass-Coffin
Dimensions:	215 x 150 x 16mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	246
Edition:	New
ISBN-13:	978-0-8263-1893-0
Categories:	Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Customs & folklore > Customs Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > General
LSN:	0-8263-1893-2
Barcode:	9780826318930

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