This is one of the more nonsensical discussions of shamanism I've ever come across. It's as if the author read some New Age semi-cultural appropriation nonsens

This is one of the more nonsensical discussions of shamanism I've ever come across. It's as if the author read some New Age semi-cultural appropriation nonsense by some LA guru and based the article on that. Maybe some Carlos Castaneda material was added for good measure. If you want to understand traditional shamanic practices as seen in both the New and the Old Worlds, you probably want to start with the ethnobotanical work of Richard Evans Schultes and similar work - not the work by the cultural anthropologists and sociologists, but that done by the experts in plant phylogeny and pharmacological activity who worked with native shamans around the world to characterize the plants they were using. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Evans_Schultes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Evans_Schultes It's true that the shamanic practitioners had a cultural-religious tradition, but the basis of their activities was using plants and plant extracts for various purposes - wound treatment, psychological treatments, etc. It's also true that the psychoactive plants get the most interest in the shamanic context in western societies these days, but that was just one part of the native biological pharmacopia. The practitioners certainly didn't have knowledge of infectious disease or anything like that, but their use was based on experiment and observation, just as with modern scientific development. At the very least, if you're going to write about the topic, start with the plants. Do a Google Scholar search (or Internet Archive Scholar) to filter out most of the woo, using a phrase like: ethnobotany psychological psychoactive That at least will give you a sample of some of the more reputable research in the general field, as well as some accurate historical narratives.