Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality - Michael Harner 2013

About The Author

Internationally renowned anthropologist Michael Harner pioneered the return of shamanism to the West and is the originator of core shamanism, a methodology founded on practices and principles shared by shamans across cultures worldwide. In 1979, he and his wife, Sandra Harner, established the Center for Shamanic Studies (which later became the nonprofit Foundation for Shamanic Studies) in order to return the lost knowledge of shamanism to contemporary life and to preserve the knowledge still practiced by remaining indigenous shamans. Harner has practiced shamanism since 1961, and the famed Siberian Buryat shaman Bo Bair Rinchinov once said of him “Michael Harner is a great shaman. He also proves that a person can be both a scientist and shaman.”

Harner received his doctorate in anthropology in 1963 from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught there, at Columbia and Yale, and at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, where he chaired the anthropology department. His many honors include the 2009 Pioneers in Integrative Medicine Award from California Pacific Medical Center’s Institute for Health & Healing, an honorary doctorate in shamanic studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and special academic recognition at the 2009 meeting of the American Anthropological Association, at which he was honored for his role in the exponential growth of the anthropological study of shamanism. His classic book The Way of the Shaman has long been considered the premier text on modern shamanism.

Panel of the Horses, Chauvet Cave, France. Aurignacian period, Upper Paleolithic, circa 31,000 years old. (Courtesy of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, Regional Direction for Cultural Affairs, Rhône-Alpes region, Regional Department of Archaeology.)

Altai (Siberia) shaman. (From the collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia. Collector M. P. Gryaznov, 1930s.)

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Amazonian Shuar (Jívaro) shaman, Natem Anank Nunink Nunkai, playing musical bow. (Photo by Catherine R. Nunkai, 2007.)

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Drawing of probable shaman, merged with Bison Spirit, playing musical bow. Trois Frères Cave in southwestern France. Upper Paleolithic, circa 15,000 years old. (From Abbé Henri Breuil, Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art [Montignac, France: Centre d’Etudes et Documentation Prehistoriques, 1952]: 164–69.)

Daur shaman with eye curtain, Inner Mongolia, China. (Photo by Meng Huiying, 2010.)

Sami shaman’s drum showing the three worlds. Pre-1801, northern Samiland (Torne Lappmark). The black-and-white rendition below the photograph clarifies the images on the drum. The shaman’s map of the nonordinary universe is drawn on the drum face, with horizontal lines dividing the worlds. The reindeer figure at the top right pulls a sled carrying a god or shaman toward the Upper World. The Upper World includes several god–spirit figures in human form. (State Museum of Ethnology, Munich, Germany. Photo by Marietta Weidner.)

Shaman’s drum of the Khakas people (Siberia). The Upper World, separated from the Middle World by a chain of triangles representing mountains, portrays various spirits, the sun, and other heavenly bodies. The spirits and gods of the Lower World are shown at the bottom of the drum. (From the collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia. Collector A. V. Adrianov, 1909. © B&C Alexander/Arcticphoto.)

Map of the three worlds. Details discovered and recorded by Celestia Study contributor Carol Faulkner Swim. (From the Western collection of the Shamanic Knowledge Conservatory of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.)

Map of the three worlds. Details discovered and recorded by Roger Keith Swim, also a Celestia Study contributor. (From the Western collection of the Shamanic Knowledge Conservatory of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.)

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