CONTENT: "Everything shifts in the Caucasus, blown by some of the strongest winds on earth. Even the ground moves, splintered by fault lines. In early Georgian myths, it is said that when the mountains were young, they had legs – could walk from the edges of the oceans to the deserts, flirting with the low hills, shrouding them with soft clouds of love". Michael Berman
Michael Berman
Extent: 196 pages Size: 51/2x81/2 inches 216/140mm
Paperback
World rights
First published 2009
Anthropology/Shamanism
CONTENT: Known as the “land of the mountains,” Dagestan lies immediately north of the Caucasus Mountains, and stretches for approximately 250 miles along the west shore of the Caspian Sea. With its mountainous terrain making travel and communication difficult, Daghestan is still largely tribal.
Despite over a century of Tsarist control followed by seventy years of repressive Soviet rule, there are still 32 distinct ethnic groups in Daghestan, each with its own language, making it unquestionably the most complex of the Caucasian republics. Shamanic practices are still prevalent in this country, where one of the ten lost tribes of Israel can be found, and in which the stories of the elders provide the people with evidence of who their ancient ancestors were and where their roots lie. In Daghestan, as in the neighbouring countries of Georgia, Chechnya, and Azerbaijan, these roots lie in shamanism. This book, one of only a handful available in English on the country, contains the texts of some of these stories as well as commentaries on them.
AUTHOR: Michael Berman BA, MPhil, PhD (Alternative Medicines) works as a teacher, teacher trainer, and writer. Publications include A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom and The Power of Metaphor for Crown House, and Tell us a Story for Brian Friendly Publications. Books published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing include The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story (2007), Soul Loss and the Shamanic Story (2008) and Divination and the Shamanic Story (2008). Michael has been involved in teaching and teacher training for over thirty years, has given presentations at Conferences in more than twenty countries, and hopes to have the opportunity to visit many more yet.
Although Michael originally trained as a Core Shamanic Counsellor with the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies under Jonathan Horwitz, these days his focus is more on the academic side of shamanism, with a particular interest in the folktales with shamanic themes told by and collected from the peoples of the Caucasus. For more information please visit www.Thestoryteller.org.uk
ENDORSEMENTS AND REVIEWS: By gathering and reproducing en bloc the various stories contained in this book, Michael Berman does a valuable service in that he reminds us of the rich and variegated religious-cultural heritage of the Daghestani peoples. For rendering otherwise dispersed source materials readily accessible in a single volume, this book is to be congratulated. ... I greatly enjoyed each of the stories contained in this book, just as I very much appreciated Michael Berman’s interpretation of them. I trust you will too. Dr Andrew Dawson, Lancaster University, UK
An engrossing and enlightening journey into a fascinating country and genre. The stories are skillfully narrated and critiqued in a manner that retains their original vigour while making them accessible to a reader unacquainted with the tradition. This is storytelling at its most insightful and potent. Wayne Rimmer PhD, teacher trainer & Director of Studies at International House in Moscow
Michael Berman draws upon his extensive experience as a storyteller to bring to life the fascinating shamanic traditions of the little-known Daghestani people. Bob Trubshaw, author, photographer and Commissioning Editor of Heart of Albion Press
Michael Berman understands better than most the power of the stories that make our world. In this, his latest study of shamanic narratives, he takes his skill in elucidating the unity in diversity to the mountains of Daghestan - and comes back to everyday reality with some real treasures to share. Julienne Ford PhD, formerly a lecturer at Middlesex University and the founder of the publishing company Superscript
In the shallowness of an unsettling time that equates myths with lies, and from a region, between the Black and Caspian Seas, where such a mixture of peoples hangs on to ancient traditions and the proud idiosyncracies of its own languages, Berman’s wide-reading and passion for the shamanic roots of stories (still being told) make for a disturbing vision of what the human race (in the grip of glib authoritarian pressures) no longer wants to face in itself. These stories have been hammered out of a harsh landscape, and break the bounds of all comfortable behaviour. They find their truth where reality stops; but they also expose, in the layers of their building, influences of folk-lore elsewhere. Berman is most interested in their shamanic echoes, but they are also a pared-down revelation of Daghestan itself, the rich residue of its history and culture, and a compliment to its hard-bitten, gnarled, but generous and perceptive grasp of the paradoxes of human nature. R.G. Gregory, author and founder of Word in Action, a travelling theatre company that has performed all over the world
This book will be in stock on Friday 30 October, 2009.
This book is not yet Published. Estimated date in stock on Friday 30 October, 2009.
In addition to the covers for Shananic Journeys Maka Batiashvili gave two paintings for another covers for books from two georgians writers: Nino Tarkhnishvili and Eka Qevanishvili - Tbilisi
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