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Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas
Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch, and Surendra Bahadur Shahi
The product of eighteen years of fieldwork in Nepal, *Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas* is an unusually ambitious attempt to document a living tradition where shamanic and tantric practice still overlap in daily life. Its three authors bring complementary eyes to the material: the art historian Claudia Müller-Ebeling, the ethnopharmacologist Christian Rätsch, and the Kathmandu-born thangka painter Surendra Bahadur Shahi—image, plant lore, and insider knowledge in one project. The English edition from Inner Traditions is lavishly produced, with hundreds of illustrations and 135 color thangkas that double as visual field guides. It is part ethnography, part art book, part catalog of ritual and psychoactive plants, and it never condescends to its subject. For readers drawn to Himalayan religion, ethnobotany, or the places where healing and the sacred meet, it is a rich and serious resource.
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The authors
The book is a genuine collaboration across disciplines. Claudia Müller-Ebeling is an art historian and anthropologist; Christian Rätsch (1957–2022) was a well-known anthropologist and ethnopharmacologist who specialized in the shamanic uses of plants and wrote widely on psychoactive flora; and Surendra Bahadur Shahi, born in Kathmandu, is an accomplished thangka painter whose insider knowledge grounds the fieldwork.
The book
Drawing on eighteen years of research, it offers a comprehensive overview of Nepalese shamanism and its entanglement with tantric practice—a culture where both techniques remain alive and practiced. The volume is dense with material: original statements from the various ethnic groups, more than twenty psychoactive plants said to be documented here for the first time, and 135 color thangkas that serve as visual keys to specific rites.
How to read it
Approach it as reference and art book at once rather than a single continuous argument. Its strength is breadth and primary documentation; readers should keep in mind that it presents practitioners' own accounts sympathetically, from within the tradition.
For more context
It pairs naturally with Rätsch's Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants and with broader reading on Himalayan Buddhism and Bön.
Sources - Inner Traditions / Simon & Schuster - Amazon listing
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch, and Surendra Bahadur Shahi
- Publisher
- Inner Traditions
- Place of publication
- Rochester, Vermont
- Year
- 2002
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Spirituality & Philosophy
- Location
- Colorado
Places