Shaman and Sage: The Roots of "Spiritual But Not Religious" in Antiquity

“Michael Horton illuminates our contemporary spiritual restlessness by examining its earliest roots in Western antiquity. Certain to become the authoritative history of our age-old quest to encounter ‘the divine self,’ Shaman and Sage explains how the most creative moments in our collective spiritual journeys did not come through contrite obedience to a power ruling from above. They emerged instead from the hunger to experience a power pulsing from within.”

“Professor Horton might not be a shaman but he is certainly a sage. His is a book of immense learning and vaulting ambition, ranging from Bronze Age civilizations to Greek philosophers. While Charles Taylor and Carl Trueman recounted the rise of modern selfhood, Horton engages antiquity. In this copiously documented first volume, Horton offers a Plato and a Platonism that our college professors never told us about (and perhaps didn’t know about)—not luminously rational but darkly mysterious. He links ancient humanism less to logical arguments than to incommunicable ecstatic experiences. Horton’s readers will grow in understanding of the archaic roots of today’s esoteric and New Age religions—centered not on faith, nor on reason, but on individual and private gnosis. Impatiently I await the forthcoming volumes to learn how ideas of selfhood continued to evolve, and what that might mean for us today.”