As mystics, healers, and travelers to the netherworld, female shamans continue to impact the spiritual lives of the Bhutanese. These divine messengers act as mediums for local spirits, cure diseases through prayer, and travel to the realm of the dead. They are sometimes referred to as "sky-goers," "reincarnations," or "returners from the beyond," and their stories are intimately connected with the Buddhist ideas of karma and rebirth.

Journalist Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and anthropologist Francoise Pommaret traveled to the Himalayas to meet seven living Bhutanese female shamans and to help make their stories known. Stephanie and Francoise offer an intimate narrative of these shamans' spiritual experiences and important roles in society. This book also provides an overview of the history of this tradition and a translation of an autobiography of the famous eighteenth-century divine messenger, Sangay Choezom. This insightful and sensitive account is a rare look inside the world of these brave women.

Divine Messengers: The Untold Story of Bhutan's Female Shamans, Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and Francoise Pommaret, Shambhala Publications, Paperback, 192 pages, $18.95

Stephanie Guyer-Stevens is an award-winning journalist and executive producer of Outer Voices, a multimedia organization that focuses on women leaders from remote parts of the globe. In this capacity she has produced or co-produced nine radio documentaries, broadcast on American public radio stations and internationally, and produced dozens of features for NPR. Additionally she has produced numerous audio-centric multimedia presentations for exhibitions in across the world.

Francoise Pommaret is a French anthropologist whose research focuses on Bhutan where she has worked since 1981 participating in tourism, educational, and cultural projects. She holds the position of Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Pommaret works as an adviser to the Institute of Language and Culture Studies (ILCS), Royal University of Bhutan, has been a consultant for UNESCO and is the author of Bhutan: Himalayan Mountain Kingdom and Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century: The Capital of the Dalai Lamas.

CONTENTS: Divine Messengers
Foreword by Kunzang Choden		vii
Preface		xi
Introduction		1
Part One: Those Who Return from Hell
1.	What about That Word, Shaman?	17
2.	Returning from the Dead	25
3.	Who Are Deloms?	33
4.	Delom Biographies	39
Part Two: Inhabiting a Human Body: Modern Divine Messengers in Bhutan
5.	Naming Names	49
6.	The Sky-Goer of Paro	57
7.	The Local Deities' Spokesperson	61
8.	The Story of a Father and His Rizam Daughter	75
9.	The Rizam of the Monastery	83
10.	Madness and Retribution	97
11.	Return to Paro	103
12.	The Divine Messenger of Thimphu	107
Part Three: A Delom Biography in Translation
The Life Story of Sangay Choezom		113
Afterword by Francoise Pommaret		165
Acknowledgments		169
Notes		171
Bibliography		173
About the Authors		175