Reviews for Deerdancer

The average rating for Deerdancer based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-27 00:00:00 Bogdan Honciuc I was confused when I read the back cover of Deerdancer. The book promises to retell some of the myths of shapeshifting from across the world but proclaims across the top "THE POWER OF THE ANIMAL ALLY." It goes on to explain the book will explore the qualities of the various animals and help the reader find direction, strength and insight using visualizations and a shapeshifting ritual. There are twelve chapters. Ten of the chapters discuss a different animal and the last two discuss shapeshifting into trees as well as a deity. I found the most interesting sections of this book to be the personal stories. Many of the stories come from either the author herself or her friends. She tells of a yogi who scared his students while on retreat by becoming a bear and the shop owner who not only dresses as a wolf for Samhain but is convinced he may have wolf blood somewhere in his background after meeting relatives in a small town in Germany. There is also the story of a Native American guide who let his animal allies speak through him leading a guided tour at a museum and the woman who was said to turn into a cat. The book falls a bit short when it comes to practical info. The book is also as contradictory as the back cover. The guided visualizations, in my opinion, are not useful at all. They read like the stories that preceded them, instead of leading the reader into discovering any real info for themselves. While there are numerous accounts of people encountering shapeshifters, the exercises have the tone of "Oh yeah, sure those things happened but you know it's really just all visualization, fantasy and mental exercise." Perhaps this is also why the author seems to think shapeshifters and animal allies are the same thing. The last chapter is particularly bad. It spends nearly a page and a half on keeping a journal about your experiences and another on having fantasies about what animal the reader may shift into if they could. Yet, there are two exercises that were the point of the entire book yet the author barely devoted two paragraphs each. I would have thought a book on shapeshifting would devote at least ten or twelve pages if not entire chapters on skin walking or doing a shapeshifting ritual. This is not a book I'd recommend to someone looking to learn about shapeshifting or animal allies. I'd much rather recommend they start with Caitlin Matthews' Singing the Soul Back Home, and Michael Harner's Way of the Shaman.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-07 00:00:00 Todd Leblanc What I like about this book besides its marriage of anthropology, history, and literary studies is its form. Clifford argues that collage is a more representative form of culture than a linear, cohesive narrative. And then he does it.