“Wouldn’t it be great to be back … when there were shamans – spiritual leaders – who could plug us into ‘the realm of the magical,’ show us ‘the reality behind apparent reality,’ and thus lead us to understand ‘how the universe really works’? … What I do doubt is that these earnest, selfless spiritual leaders were any more common in the heyday of shamanism than today, or that the spiritual quest was any less corrupted by manipulation and outright charlatanism than today, or that there was a coherent philosophy of shamanism that makes more sense than the average religion of today.”