Thursday, November 17, 2011

Book Review: The Shaman's Quest

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: The Shaman's Quest

Author: Nevill Drury

Date: 2002

Publisher: Skylight Paths

ISBN: 1-893361-68-3

Length: 195 pages

Quote: "Then, when they had seen these things, the four shamans from North, South, East and West turned their gaze to the center of the Great Lake of Spirit."

The Shaman's Quest is not a serious study of any cultural tradition. Most books about shamanism do have some anthropological validity. Many shamans, past and present, have been charlatans; really good writers like Zora Neale Hurston have been able to document both the fakery and the wisdom of the people they observed, and, at the same time, supply historical, linguistic, and artistic information.

The Shaman's Quest is not especially well written, nor is it well researched, nor does it contain useful information. This is a rather simple novel written by an urban Anglo-Australian, and while the names of plants and animals in the Australian part of the story do at least seem to match those I've found in nonfiction, the ones in the Alaskan, Japanese, and "South American" parts don't.

In fact, when words and names seem to correspond to anything I've seen in nonfiction, they mis-match. Most authors who mention "Sheela" or "Sila" in writing about Alaskan culture give this name to a spirit believed to preside over sea creatures. Some sources identify Sheela as the daughter of a father who chopped off her fingers, as she clutched at the side of his kayak, in order to escape from a predator or enemy, and suggest that songs and rituals were devised to propitiate her justifiably unfriendly ghost. Others identify Sila as a masculine sea spirit and hint that the name might be related to a Dakota name for the Great Spirit, or even to the English word for seals (certainly important to the Inuit). Since belief in Sheela or Sila was part of a local and oral folk tradition, it's entirely possible that both of these conflicting stories could have been true for different people. Nevill Drury, however, describes Sila as a masculine sky spirit...there might be a nonfiction source for that version, too, but I've never seen it.

Then there's the South American character...remarkably vague about his nationality and origins, compared to real South Americans I've met. He has a brother in Iquitos, and he is a cholo. Maybe a reader who's been there can help me out. Is cholo even the word that would be used in Iquitos?

Well, if you call a book fiction you don't have to be accurate. You can invent a parallel universe where Archimedes invented the Internet, if you can think of a plausible story that might have taken place there. So, has Drury at least written a good story? Well, not very. Four shamans meet in an imaginary place, possibly located inside a hollow Earth, and although they don't speak a common language they sing together. Lynn Andrews might have made a good story of their journey and meeting, but Drury is not up to Andrews' standard, and his vision of their journey is hardly more of a story than this summary of it. There is no plot. In some way they believe their singing has healed the planet, but none of them even tries to imagine how.

So, does this book have any value at all? The publisher's "aim is to remind people of the sacredness of human life, and to reinforce appreciation of the earth and its gifts." My opinion is that several thousand other books do this more successfully than The Shaman's Quest...I reopened the book in search of an image of anthropological interest, and it fell open to a page on which the Japanese character is appreciating his "fine catalpa bow, made of elm-wood." I have no problem with the image of the early American who bought a little red wagon (just like the other little red wagons at the store) and painted it blue, in the song "Skip to My Lou," but I cannot imagine how a catalpa bow could be made of any kind of wood except catalpa. Possibly Drury was under the impression that "catalpa" was a Japanese word meaning "elm." It's not.

That settles it. This book does have something to teach readers. It teaches us, specifically, that when we pay serious money for "shamanic teaching" in this age and time, we're likely to be paying for nonsense. (When this review appeared on Associated Content, Michael Segers protested that better books on shamanism are available, like The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This is true; in fact The Hero with a Thousand Faces is another Book You Can Buy From Me. However, buying it from me costs only $10 and will teach you as much as the average self-styled shamanic teacher knows.) This may turn out to be a very valuable lesson. So, buy this book (click here), and give it to a friend who takes "The New Age" a little too seriously.

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