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40 A Journal of Contemporary Shamanism VOLUME 6 ISSUE 2 FALL 2013 R E V I E W Reflections on Michael Harners Cave and Cosmos by Tom Cowan SSP Board Member Reading Michael Harners new book Cave and Cosmos Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality is like listening to a very old man which is how he describes himself several times in the book who has spent many years practic- ing and studying shamanism and listening to others shamanic experiences. You feel like you are sitting with a wise storyteller who has a wealth of wisdom tales to share with you. If you were trained by Harner you will have heard some of these stories before and hearing them again reminds you how they once energized your longing to know the mysteries of shamanism however many years ago. But the book is rich with new stories some personal accounts from his own life and many insights passed on to him by indigenous shamans and other anthropologists as well as his own students who have shared their journeys and healing experiences with Harner over the last thirty- plus years. In fact one of the values of this book is that Harner thoroughly honors the shamanic knowledge that his students have acquired in their own shamanic journeys and demonstrates as his own mission in life has demonstrated that Westerners are fully capable of discovering the other realities that traditional shamans have known about for centuries. I enjoyed the chapters in which Harner recounts his early experiences in South America and elsewhere as he learned first- hand about the various doorways into shamanism and how he discovered and created core-shamanism out of his experiences and years of study. People trained either by him or teachers in his Foundation for Shamanic Studies will appreciate the account of how he was first awed by the power of the drum at a Zuni Pueblo in 1948 and then through the 1950s 1960s and into the 1970s rediscovered as he says what shamans the world over have long known that the repetitive sonic driving of a steady drumbeat can bring the shaman into the altered state of consciousness that Harner eventually called the shamanic state of consciousness. This book reveals the truth of what the Sami people of northern Scandinavia say about the drum and what Harner has encouraged thousands of people to discover for themselves It is a thing out of which pictures come. Cave and Cosmos demonstrates with many examples of shamanic journeys from Harners students that spirits really do exist and they want us to know that they exist. He reminds us how scientists have never disproved the existence of spirits and that Alfred Russel Wallace who developed the theory of natu- ral selection simultaneously with Darwin actually noted that if the most scientific theory is the one that explains a whole series of phenomena then as Wallace stated the spirit-hypothesis is the most scientific since even those who oppose it most strenuously often admit that it does explain all the facts which cannot be said for any other hypoth- esis. Shamanic practitioners will readily concur. The section in the book on the bound shaman is an example of how an almost impossible phenomenon can occur through the mediation of spirits. In ordinary reality the shaman is bound with tightly tied ropes and then set free by the intervention of spirits. Harner reminds those of us who have personally experienced this how there really seems to be no other explanation for it. When the knotted ropes and twisted bindings fall from our bodies and we are freed its spiritsand nothing elsethat have done it. Cave and Cosmos focuses mainly on upper-world journeys reported by Harners students which will be very familiar to seasoned practitioners. His treatment of lower-world jour- neys is thinner as he seems to want to focus on the realm most commonly thought of as heaven. One of Harners major goals in the book is to show that shamanism is an alternative to organized religion and that shamanic journeying allows each practitioner to discover a heaven that is perfect for him or her. Nevertheless he points out that some Westerners encountered quite heavenly realms below in the lower world.