NOEL, DANIEL C.

(1936–2002)

A scholar of the psychology of religion and myth (particularlyCelticandNative American), religion and the arts, andJungianstudies, Noel taught and lectured widely in the United States and overseas, most recently as professor emeritus in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, California, and visiting professor of liberal studies in religion and culture at Vermont College, Norwich University, Montpelier, Vermont. Recognized as an authority on Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, he is the author ofPaths to the Power of Myth:JosephCampbell and the Study of Religion(1990), and he wrote a critical response toCarlosCastaneda’s fictional anthropology entitledSeeingCastaneda:Reactions to the“Don Juan”Writings(1976). Noel’s neo-Jungian approach to shamanism, as exemplified inThe Soul ofShamanism:Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities(1997), proposed thatneo-shamanismoriginates in the works of “shamanovelists” (such asMircea Eliadeand Castaneda) and “shamanthropologists” (includingMichael Harner) and that, as such, shamanism is a Western construct. Noel argued that the figure of Merlin as shamanic psychopomp, activated by the power of the imagination (“imaginal”), offered a shamanism that was more suitable to Westerners than to indigenous practices or previous neo-shamanisms derived from these (e.g., theentheogen-based shamanism of Castaneda).