Short description
Bradford Keeney details his initiation into the shamanic tradition of the Kalahari Bushmen, regarded by some scholars as the oldest living culture on earth. Keeney sought out the Bushmen whilst in South Africa as a visiting professor of psychotherapy.
Long description
Bradford Keeney details his initiation into the shamanic tradition of the Kalahari Bushmen, regarded by some scholars as the oldest living culture on earth. Keeney sought out the Bushmen whilst in South Africa as a visiting professor of psychotherapy. He had known of the Kalahari trance dance , wherein the dancers' bodies shake uncontrollably as part of the healing ceremony. Keeney was drawn to this tradition in the hope it may explain and provide a forum for his own ecstatic shaking which he had first experienced at the age of 19 and had tried to suppress throughout his adult life.
Review
?There is no question in the minds of the Bushman healers that Keeney's strength and purposes are coterminous with theirs. I know this from talking myself with some of the Kalahari shamans who danced with him. They affirmed his power as a healer and their enjoyment of dancing with him. . . . He knows whereof he writes, having traveled ?ropes to God? himself for much of his life, in many places in addition to the Kalahari.?