The Quest for the Shaman:Shape-Shifters, Sorcerers and Spirit-healers of Ancient Europe (Thames and Hudson)

Here is an exciting, innovative study of ancient European religious practice and practitioners.The Aldhouse-Greens’ entertaining and informative book represents a search, a voyage of discovery in which evidence is sought that there were individuals living in Europe from the Stone Age to the early post-Roman period who believed they were able to liaise with the spirit-world through the medium of trance and who perceived themselves to be part-human and part-animal. The authors support their argument with diverse and rich evidence, including the 30,000-year-old lion-human ivory figurines found in south-western Germany, which may represent monsters seen by shamans in altered states of consciousness; the newly discovered and spectacular Nebra sky-disc, which depicts the sun, moon and the Pleiades, indicating that Bronze Age shamans were using highly sophisticated objects to explore the heavens; and the ‘Doctor’s Grave’ from southeast England, which suggests that a Late Iron Age chieftain, who may have been a shaman, was sent to the Otherworld equipped with hallucinogens, medical kit and divining tools.