A distinguished anthropologist-who is also an initiated shaman-reveals the long-hidden female roots of the world's oldest form of religion and medicine. Here is a fascinating expedition into this ancient tradition, from its prehistoric beginnings to the work of women shamans across the globe today.
Shamanism was not only humankind's first spiritual and healing practice, it was originally the domain of women. This is the claim of Barbara Tedlock's provocative and myth-shattering book. Reinterpreting generations of scholarship, Tedlock-herself an expert in dreamwork, divination, and healing-explains how and why the role of women in shamanism was misinterpreted and suppressed, and offers a dazzling array of evidence, from prehistoric African rock art to modern Mongolian ceremonies, for women's shamanic powers.
Tedlock combines firsthand accounts of her own training among the Maya of Guatemala with the rich record of women warriors and hunters, spiritual guides, and prophets from many cultures and times. Probing the practices that distinguish female shamanism from the much better known male traditions, she reveals:
- The key role of body wisdom and women's eroticism in shamanic trance and ecstasy
- The female forms of dream witnessing, vision questing, and use of hallucinogenic drugs
- Shamanic midwifery and the spiritual powers released in childbirth and monthly female cycles
- Shamanic symbolism in weaving and other feminine arts
- Gender shifting and male-female partnership in shamanic practice
Filled with illuminating stories and illustrations, The Woman in the Shaman's Body restores women to their essential place in the history of spirituality and celebrates their continuing role in the worldwide resurgence of shamanism today.

"From the Hardcover edition."

The ten contributors to this book-anthropologists and psychologists-explore the ways in which dreams are remembered, recounted, shared (or not shared), interpreted, and used by people from New Guinea to the Andes. The authors take a major step toward moving the study of dreaming from the margins to the mainstream of anthropological thought.

Based on over twenty years' research at Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, this honest and respectful book takes us into the heart of one Zuni family and allows us to witness the world through its members' eyes. We see the joys of love, marriage, and childbirth and the tragedies of illness, alcoholism, and death. We rediscover the South-western landscape, its plants and wildlife, in light of traditional Zuni teachings. 'The Beautiful and the Dangerous' was originally published in 1992.

Described as a landmark in the ethnographic study of the Maya, this study of ritual and cosmology among the contemporary QuichA(c) Indians of highland Guatemala has now been updated to address changes that have occurred in the last decade.

The Classic Mayan obsession with time has never been better known. Here, Barbara Tedlock redirects our attention to the present-day keepers of the ancient calendar. Combining anthropology with formal apprenticeship to a diviner, she refutes long-held ethnographic assumptions and opens a door to the order of the Mayan cosmos and its daily ritual.

Unable to visit the region for over ten years, Tedlock returned in 1989 to find that observance of the traditional calendar and religion is stronger than ever, despite a brutal civil war.

a. . . a well-written, highly readable, and deeply convincing contribution. . . .aaMichael Coe

This collection of writings is from authors who are either Indians who have tried to make themselves heard, or whites who have tried to hear Indians. The first part of the book emphasizes the practical and includes Isaac Tens's "Career of the Medicine Man." The second section concentrates on the theoretical and contains Benjamin Lee Whorf's "American Indian Model of the Universe" and chapters on Indian metaphysics, among other things. In addition to an introductory essay on the Indian's stance towards reality, the editors have contributed chapters entitled "The Clown's Way" and "An American Indian View of Death."