3 Review(s)

The shamans of the Changpa-nomads of the Ladakhi highlands of Changthang belong to the Tibetan culture. Modernity has reached even their remote world and challenges their life basis in a dramatic way. Their traditional healers, the shamans, recognize the \"disease\" of modernity the clearest. They envision the presence and future in trance and devine possession. Listening to their prayers and songs in trance, which bewail so much more violence in our times (\"more blood than ever before flows down the valleys\"), their admonitions get a remarkable actuality. (The manuscript of this book was finished shortly after the 11th of September 2001). Hermetic amnesia follows the trance of the Changpa shamans. In the present book the author shows how one can understand them despite amnesia, how one can decipher their bridging of old a modern times and, in this way, bring their message also to the modern world.