Charing explore the use of one of the major allies of shamans for healing, seeing, dreaming, and empowerment--plant spirits. After observing great similarities in the use of plants among shamans throughout the world, they discovered the reason behind these similarities: Rather than dealing with the “medical properties” of the plants or specific healing techniques, shamans commune with the spirits of the plants themselves. From their years of in-depth shamanic work in the Amazon, Haiti, and Europe, including extensive field interviews with master shamans, Heaven and Charing present the core methods of plant shamanism used in healing rituals the world over: soul retrieval, spirit extraction, sin eating, and the Amazonian tradition of pusanga (love medicine). They explain the techniques shamans use to establish connections to plant spirits and provide practical exercises as well as a directory of traditional Amazonian and Caribbean healing plants and their common North American equivalents so readers can ex-plore the world of plant spirits and make allies of their own.

    Shamans, the physical and spiritual healers who are the central figures of many tribal cultures, share eloquent testimonies including harrowing tales of initiatory rites, vivid accounts of visionary journeys, and revealing expressions of their unique position as the link between the tribe and the cosmos.

    Until recently historians often dismissed these descriptions as elaborate fictions created by judicial interrogators eager to find evidence of stereotypical pacts with the Devil. Although this paradigm is now routinely questioned, and most historians acknowledge that there was a folkloric component to familiar lore in the period, these beliefs and the experiences reportedly associated with them, remain substantially unexamined. Cunning-Folk and Familiar Spirits examines the folkloric roots of familiar lore from historical, anthropological and comparative religious perspectives. It argues that beliefs about witches' familiars were rooted in beliefs surrounding the use of fairy familiars by beneficent magical practitioners or 'cunning folk', and corroborates this through a comparative analysis of familiar beliefs found in traditional native American and Siberian shamanism. The author explores the experiential dimension of familiar lore by drawing parallels between early modern familiar encounters and visionary mysticism as it appears in both tribal shamanism and medieval European contemplative traditions. These perspectives challenge the reductionist view of popular magic in early modern British often presented by historians.

    Complemented by more than 90 photographs and illustrations. It is a compelling, panoramic adventure into a vibrant living tradition of myth, power, and magic. Black-and-white photographs and illustrations.

    The boy who became a famous naturalist was never again to see the spectacle except in his imagination. That childhood event contributed to the profound sense of time and space that marks The Invisible Pyramid. This collection of essays, first published shortly after Americans landed on the moon, explores inner and outer space, the vastness of the cosmos, and the limits of what can be known. Bringing poetic insight to scientific discipline, Eiseley makes connections between civilizations past and present, multiple universes, humankind, and nature.

    Ayahuasca in My Blood - 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming concerns his longstanding relationship with the Amazonian visionary medicine. Here's what people have said about it:"Unlike many writing about ayahuasca, Peter Gorman knows this plant and these forests long and well. Explorer, ethnobotanist, writer and raconteur - Gorman is uniquely qualified to tell this incredible tale. A wild mixture of adventure, horror, spirituality, tenderness, and insight, Ayahuasca in My Blood is most highly recommended!" -- Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D, Amazon Conservation Team "Long before ayahuasca tourism became a pastime for rich gringos, Peter Gorman was knocking around Iquitos and the Amazon. He's traveled the rivers and quaffed the brew with the best (and the worst) of them and been way, way beyond the chrysanthemum on many a dark jungle night. This is the intensely personal story of an old-school jungle rat for whom ayahuasca is not just a hobby, but a life-long quest." -- Dennis McKenna, Ph.D, noted ethnopharmacologist, "I have known and traveled with Peter for almost a decade and was present for a number of the events he included in this book as well as many others. Don Julio was the most powerful man I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Further, as a trained scientist I believe the plant medicine truly offers a doorway to a rich world that needs to be understood in our postmodern lives. This is destined to become a must read for anyone who is serious about understanding the world of the shaman." -- Lynn Chilson, Chilson Enterprises, Inc.

    Laura M. Ahearn shows that young Nepalese people are applying their newly acquired literacy skills to love-letter writing, fostering a transition that involves not only a shift in marriage rituals, but also a change in how villagers conceive of their own ability to act and attribute responsibility for events. These developments have potential ramifications that extend far beyond the realm of marriage and well past the Himalayas.The love-letter correspondences examined by Ahearn also provide a deeper understanding of the social effects of literacy. While the acquisition of literary skills may open up new opportunities for some individuals, such skills can also impose new constraints, expectations, and disappointments. The increase in female literacy rates in Junigau in the 1990s made possible the emergence of new courtship practices and facilitated self-initiated marriages, but it also reinforced certain gender ideologies and undercut some avenues to social power, especially for women. Scholars, and students in such fields as anthropology, women's studies, linguistics, development studies, and South Asian studies will find this book ethnographically rich and theoretically insightful. Laura M. Ahearn is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University.

    The readings have broad anthropological appeal, emphasizing cultural anthropology in the North American and European traditions.Thematic coverage begins with nineteenth-century foundations and forerunners, before moving on to the early and mid-twentieth century when anthropology comes of age. The last section looks at numerous late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-centurydevelopments in anthropological theory, including feminist anthropology, postmodernity, medical anthropology, and globalization. "

    A disciplined, gentle man who upheld the old ways, he was aggrieved by the social ills he saw besetting his own people and forthright in denouncing them. When he died in 1989 at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, he was widely loved and respected. Fools Crow is based on interviews conducted in the 1970s. The holy man tells Thomas E. Mails about his eventful life, from early reservation days when the Sioux were learning to farm, to later times when alcoholism, the cash economy, and World War II were fast eroding the old customs. He describes his vision quests and his becoming a medicine man. His spiritual life—the Yuwipi and sweatlodge ceremonies, the Sun Dance, and instances of physical healing—is related in memorable detail. And because Fools Crow lived joyfully in this world, he also recounts his travels abroad and with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, his happy marriages, his movie work, and his tribal leadership. He lived long enough to mediate between the U.S. government and Indian activists at Wounded Knee in 1973 and to plead before a congressional subcommittee for the return of the Black Hills to his people.

    In addition to fieldwork and traditional methods, paleoanthropologists and archaeologists now draw upon genetics and other cutting-edge scientific techniques. In fifty chapters, Prehistoric Investigations tells the story of the many thought-provoking discoveries that have transformed our understanding of the distant past.

    In a new Afterword, Evan Eisenberg shows how digital technology, file trading, and other recent developments are accelerating—or reversing—these trends. Influential and provocative, The Recording Angel is required reading for anyone who cares about the effect recording has had—and will have—on our experience of music.

    Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art. Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global culture. Once the terrain of anthropologists, it is now the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs, while ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin. "Singing to the Plants" sets forth just what this shamanism is about--what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.

    Repelled and repulsed by those who ostensibly represented the Christian faith in his juvenescence, Klaus Kenneth naturally looked elsewhere for the solution to his lonely and tortured existence. In his sincere search for escape from rejection and abuse, Klaus found himself on an odyssey that took him around the world several times, lured him into a vortex of pleasure and power, and initiated him into the great philosophies and religious traditions of our times. Having tried it all, and reaching the very brink of the abyss of despair and the desire for nonexistence, Klaus encounters the One whom he had never thought to look for, the One that he had always discounted: the great I AM, the God of Love and healing, the God of regeneration and eternal life.Klaus KennethKlaus Kenneth was born in a small village west of Prague (Czech Republic), and lives with his wife in Switzerland. In addition to German, his mother tongue, he is fluent in English and French. Desirous to share his remarkable story, Klaus spends most of his time on tour in Europe and the USA, bearing witness to his unexpected discovery of Hope and Love.Published here for the first time in English, Born to Hate, Reborn to Love is already a best seller in several other languages.

    I cannot imagine a book that would be more helpful to me in thinking through this important subject.--Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions...Unquestionably the most rounded compact introduction to shamanism, particularly the inner world of shamans, available today. A door-opening book for students of consciousness and spirituality.--Georg Feuerstein, PhD, M.Litt, author of The Yoga Tradition A splendidly clear and timely survey of shamanism.--Jean Achterberg, PhD, author of Imagery in HealingQuite simply, this book is a major step forward in understanding the vital phenomenon of shamanism. I recommend it highly.--Charles Tart, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of California at Davis, author of States of Consciousness...Eminently useful and inspiring. A brilliant integrative work that pushes the frontiers of consciousness in insightful, practical, and powerful ways.--Angeles Arrien, PhD, Cultural Anthropologist, author of The Four-Fold Way and The Second Half of Life...Unique in bringing together the full range of anthropological, psychological, and psychiatric literature on this vital subject. It does so with admirable scholarship yet still manages to be sensitive and clear.--Christie W. Kiefer, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of California at San Francisco

    An occasionally humorous and insightful look into what makes socities both similar and unique.