A lively exploration of the Indigenous traditions of shamanism in the Far North of Eurasia and North America.

In this book, Charles Stépanoff draws on ethnographic literature and his fieldwork in Siberia to reveal the immense contribution to human imagination made by shamans and the cognitive techniques they developed over the centuries.

Indigenous shamans are certain men and women who are able to travel in spirit in ways that appear mysterious to Westerners but which rely on the human capacity of imagination. They perceive themselves simultaneously in two types of space—one visible, the other virtual—putting them in contact and establishing links with nonhuman beings in their surroundings. Shamans share their experience of spirit travel with their patients, families, or the wider community, allowing them to experience this odyssey through the invisible together.

This work will appeal to anthropologists and to anyone with an interest in learning about the power of imagination from the masters of the invisible, the shamans of the Far North.

Charles Stépanoff is director of studies and professor in the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Social at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has done ethnographic research in Siberia and France on human relations with the nonhuman, including animals, spirits, and plants. Catherine V. Howard is an independent translator and editor specializing in cultural anthropology and history.