Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Mark Nelson, author of the new Shamanism. What is the relevance of shamanism today? The term shaman comes from Tungusic-speaking peoples of Siberia, which has led to criticism of the appropriation of terms like shaman and shamanism. However, we also use the termshamanism to describe cross-cultural beliefs and ritual practices, both culture-specific traditions, such as Andean Shamanism, and cross-cultural neo-shamanic traditions. Shamanism has a long history dating from at least the Upper Paleolithic era (40,000 years ago), with researchers claiming evidence from earlier. Shamanism is the oldest spiritual practice we know of, and underlies