It is the imagination, we shall find, radically taken as beyond mere make-believe, that emerges as the driving force and validating authority of the reappearance of "shamanism" in our midst. If such a reappearance can also be called a reconstruction, a making, then modes of imagining — fantasy, fiction, fairy tale, and the like — have been its building blocks at every stage, especially as mediated through the writing and reading of books.

Daniel C. Noel, The Soul of Shamanism