Lux Ferre

Brain Chemistry : Western science views the brain as the source of human consciousness, and increasingly sophisticated understandings of brain chemistry have prompted some researchers on shamanism to consider brain chemistry and

Bön-Po – A Tibetan form of Buddhism that is likely to have originated as a pre-Buddhist animism with shamanic leaders. Some interpreters try to maintain a distinction between Bön and Buddhism, but

Franz Boas (1858–1942) – German anthropologist who spent most of his life in the United States and is known as a “founding father” of American (i.e., cultural) anthropology, at Columbia University heading

Blood – In discussing Amazonian shamanism, Carlos Fausto notes that to many specialists “the most noticeable fact about this myriad of neoshamanic sites and rites is not its profusion but rather the

Blain, Jenny (1949– ) – Senior lecturer in applied social sciences in the Faculty of Development and Society at Sheffield Hallam University, where she leads the master’s program in social science research

Black Shamanism – Caroline Humphrey cites the 19th-century Buryat scholar Dorji Banzarov as saying that there was no indigenous term for shamanism, but that a recognizable complex of practices and cosmology had

Black Elk, Wallace (1921–2004) – An Oglala Lakota who conducted healing and shamanic rituals both for Native and non-Native Americans. His conversations with William Lyon (beginning in 1978) led to the publication

Black Elk, Nicholas (1863–1950) Also known as Hehaka Sapa. An Oglala Lakota whose childhood visions and training enabled him to work as a holy man or medicine man: a healer, leader, and

Bird-David, Nurit (1951– ) Anthropologist at the University of Haifa, Israel, whose article “Animism Revisited” is of considerable importance in understanding animism, the worldview and lifeways of shamans and their communities. Her