European Traditions of Shamanism Described in Three Fascinating Books

Posted by Joanne E. Brannan Aug 12, 2009

I remember being enchanted by Brian Bates’ novel about the spiritual beliefs of the historical Anglo-Saxons, The Way of Wyrd when I first read it a few years back. I was all the more moved as the novel is based on historical facts from the people who lived in my own region of England, East Anglia.

Visiting the reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village of West Stow is a wonderfully evocative experience, imagining these fearless people feasting, drinking and enjoying the magical tales of travelling storytellers. But to learn that their spirituality was very closely related to shamanic traditions, involving fantastic imagery which inspired Tolkien’s Middle Earth was a wonderful discovery. The historical Anglo-Saxons were far from being barbarians!

I was fortunate enough to spend some time studying in Corsica, the Mediterranean island known as the Ile de Beauté, the beautiful isle in French. The beauty of the island is surpassed only by the genuine welcome that I received from the charming Corsicans, a people who have retained their traditional culture in a way I have only very rarely encountered elsewhere in Europe, the Maramures Mountains of Romania http://romania-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/marmures being the only other example that springs to mind. I am reading Dorothy Carrington’s book The Dream Hunters about the contemporary mazzeris, the death-prophesiers of Corsica, a strange phenomenon that has many parallels with shamanism. I will write more when I have finished her book!

And closer still to my home in England, and the present time. Could anything have prepared me for reading Simon Buxton’s extraordinary book The Shamanic Way of the Bee, describing an unbelievably ancient Shamanic Tradition that has survived in England, and around the world, until the present day? Of course, as my own experiences of inner worlds develops, I am less surprised that these traditions exist, but I am always enchanted to read that people all the way around the world have known of and worked with the wonders of parallel shamanic realms since time immemorial, and continue to do so to the present day.