As mystics, healers, and travelers to the netherworld, female shamans continue to impact the spiritual lives of the Bhutanese. These divine messengers act as mediums for local spirits, cure diseases through prayer, and travel to the realm of the dead. They are sometimes referred to as “sky-goers,” “reincarnations,” or “returners from the beyond,” and their stories are intimately connected with the Buddhist ideas of karma and rebirth.
Journalist Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and anthropologist Françoise Pommaret traveled to the Himalayas to meet seven living Bhutanese female shamans and to help make their stories known. Stephanie and Françoise offer an intimate narrative of these shamans’ spiritual experiences and important roles in society. This book also provides an overview of the history of this tradition and a translation of an autobiography of the famous eighteenth-century divine messenger, Sangay Choezom. This insightful and sensitive account is a rare look inside the world of these brave women.
“This beautiful book celebrates those rarest of women in Bhutan, powerful mediums who employ multiple techniques of ecstasy to soar away on the wings of trance to distant metaphysical realms where they can work their deeds of medical, mystical, and magical rescue. They are the living embodiment of a tradition in which actual communication with spirits is the norm, an ongoing dialogue essential to the maintenance of peace and harmony between humans and the divine.”—Wade Davis, author of Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
“An insightful study of the delom, or ‘returner from the dead,’ this book captures the fascinating stories of intermediaries between the human and hell realms. It unravels the dying culture that coalesces Himalayan shaman practice with Buddhist cosmology and eschatology.”—Karma Phuntsho, author of The History of Bhutan
“Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and Françoise Pommaret are subtle and receptive guides who bring their encounters with female shamans to life in evocative detail. They make you feel as if you’re there with them, privileged to experience a fascinating practice that’s so little known or understood in the West.”—Cathy Fitzgerald, radio producer and documentary-maker for the BBC
“I love and admire the book and the great work both Françoise and Stephanie did in tracking down and relating with all the khandroms and deloms and divine messengers all over Bhutan, and the clear and sensitive thought and writing that went into the fascinating book . . . Just amazing.”—Robert Thurman
“Those interested in the relationships between Buddhism and shamanism will relish this eye-opening account.”—Publishers Weekly
