That book WGal kept pushing on the Shamanism board?

Here's a couple of reviews:

"As with "Far Eastern wisdom" reinterpreted and sold by people
educated in the West, shamanism has been the target of intense
cultural appropriation. A worldwide esoteric spiritual tradition has
been diluted into self-help, with guided imagery exercises sold as
"shamanic journeying." As Vitebsky notes, "Many forms of neo-shamanism
use elements from North American native religions which I have
characterizedin this book as not strictly shamanic. In
addition...native organizations have started to criticize some of
these systems for cultural imperialism or intellectual piracy." It
would seem to be a characteristic of the empire psychology so many of
us share but do not see that we feel entitled to uproot practices and
traditions that grew up in very different societies instead of
exploring our own.

A strength of this book is its presentation of shamanism as actually
studied in its indigenous contexts. This frees it of the choking layer
of common mischaracterizations (e.g., shamanism as dark night of the
soul, self-improvement method, or spiritual path for people taking
drumming lessons). I often recommend this book in my graduate holistic
studies classes because here in California everyone and their mother
think of themselves as shamans after attending some workshops and
watching a few videos. The real shaman does not decide to become one
but is selected from a long shamanic lineage by imaginal guides
("spirits") whose manifestations vary across cultures. The selectee
then works as a shaman if he or she survives the initiatory illness
(some do not). Nobody who has lived through the illness would choose
to walk it as a spiritual path. It has nothing to do with
self-improvement, and genuine shamans sometimes report feeling wounded
by it for decades after enduring it. "

Ok, so while this guy is saying something right here, I have to ask...
initiatory illness from imaginal spirits???

The other review worth noting:

"i was assigned this book as a text for a course on shamanism at my
university. the cover is eye-grabbing and colorful. i was excited to
crack this book open.
i was horribly let down.

...first of all, it's completely disorganized. vitebsky jumps all over
the place and can't seem to make a coherent point to save his life.

secondly, the material is seriously flawed. vitebsky shows virtually
no signs of firsthand fieldwork; instead, he relies on outdated
ethnographic accounts and mircea eliade's work, which are both flawed
in and of themselves. several bits of "information" presented along
the way [a reference to the bering land bridge migration, which has
very little basis in actual fact, and a short anecdote about the
"berdache," a term that is frightfully offensive to native peoples,
among others] made my jaw drop at the ... poor scholarship shown in
preparing this text.

the only upside to this book is that it's very colorful and has lots
of nice pictures. it may make for good collage material, but as a
serious text on the subject, it's worthless. "