The Ninth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (held in Chicago in 1973) reflected these new tendencies in a publication entitled Spirits, Shamans and Stars (Browman and Schwartz 1979). Its three sections provide a good...

If ethnography across East Asia has tended to stress local differences at the expense of regional continuities, it is not surprising. Fieldwork as a methodology directs attention to very profound local differences which can exist in the midst of...

The term ‘shaman’ was taken from Russian sources in the seventeenth century, the word itself coming from the language of the Evenks (Tungus), an eastern Siberian people. A century later the derivative term ‘shamanism’ was...

The cult, found in many parts of Buddhist Asia and elsewhere, which centres round an intermediary whose psychic powers are so developed that he can link the ordinary daily world with the world of spirits. It has affinities with Bön...

Shamanism refers to a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. There are many variations of shamanism throughout the world, though there are some beliefs that are shared by all forms of...

Qitsualik, Rachel A. Indian Country Today (Lakota Times) 01-21-2004 A few years ago, I had the good fortune to visit Arctic Bay -- a peaceful community, strongly tied to its elders, and nestled at the base of a ring of hills, like the...

Early Origins of Traditional Chinese Medicine THE EARLY HISTORY OF TRADITIONAL Chinese medicine (TCM) has been fraught with speculative and often conflicting claims. One common theme is that "thousands of years" of continuous oral and written tradition have yielded a venerable system of...

The ritual sacrifice of a snow-white llama Friday symbolically marked President Evo Morales' nationalization of Bolivia's lone operating tin smelter.Swiss mining giant Glencore International AG owned the Vinto plant until last week and has threatened to seek compensation through international arbitration.Morales says his government will...

Carlos Santana's song "Game of Love" with Michelle Branch was a huge hit and even won the pair a Grammy. Still, for years, Santana wished that fans could have heard the original version _ with Tina Turner as his duet partner. In October, the guitar...