Reveals the striking parallels between indigenous cultures of the Americas and the ancient Homeric world as well as Tolkien’s Middle Earth • Explores the shamanic use of healing songs, psychoactive plants, and vision quests at the heart of the Odyssey and the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien • Examines Odysseus’s encounters with plant divinities, altered consciousness, animal shapeshifting, and sacred topography--all concepts vital to shamanism • Reveals how the Odyssey emerged precisely at the rupture between modern and primal consciousness Indigenous, shamanic ways of healing and prophecy are not foreign to the West. The native way of viewing the world--that is, understanding our cosmos as living, sentient, and interconnected--can be found hidden throughout Western literature, beginning with the very origin of the European literary tradition: Homer’s Odyssey. Weaving together the narrative traditions of the ancient Greeks and Celts, the mythopoetic work of J. R. R. Tolkien, and the voices of plant medicine healers in North and South America, the authors explore the use of healing songs, psychoactive plants, and vision quests at the heart of the Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Tolkien’s final novella, Smith of Wootton Major. The authors examine Odysseus’s encounters with plant divinities, altered consciousness, animal shapeshifting, and sacred topography--all concepts vital to shamanism. They show the deep affinities between the healing powers of ancient bardic song and the icaros of the shamans of the Amazon rain forest, how Odysseus’s battle with Circe--wielder of narcotic plants and Mistress of Animals--follows the traditional method of negotiating with a plant ally, and how Odysseus’s journey to the land of the dead signifies the universal practice of the vision quest, a key part of shamanic initiation. Emerging precisely at the rupture between modern and primal consciousness, Homer’s work represents a window into the lost native mind of the Western world. In this way, the Odyssey as well as Tolkien’s work can be seen as an awakening and healing song to return us to our native minds and bring our disconnected souls back into harmony with the living cosmos.

When experiential journalist Razam sets out to document the booming business of Amazonian shamanism in the 21st century, he quickly finds himself caught up in a culture clash between the old world and the new.

Experiential journalist Rak Razam sets out to document the thriving business of 21st-century hallucinogenic shamanism starting with a trip to the annual Amazonian Shaman Conference in Iquitos, Peru, where he meets a motley crew of "spiritual tourists," rogue scientists, black magicians, and indigenous and Western healers and guides, all in town to partake of the ritual--and the medicine--of ayahuasca, "the vine of souls." Combining his personal story with the history of Amazonian shamanism, Razam takes the reader along on an entertaining, enlightening adventure. In areas of Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru, the traditional herbal brew known as ayahuasca or yajé is legally used to heal physical ailments and to cleanse and purify the spirit by connecting it to the web of life. Sting and Tori Amos have admitted sampling it in Latin America, as has Paul Simon, who chronicled the experience in his song "Spirit Voices." Aya Awakenings works as a cautionary tale, a travelogue, and a memoir, but primarily acts as a portal through which readers are able to gain more information about the perils and the promise of spiritual reconnection through ayahuasca. "A memorable--and deeply personal--journey into the hearts and minds of those who carry on the shamanic traditions of ayahuasca."--Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Contents Foreword by Dennis McKenna Preface by Rak Razam Departure 1 Seekers of the Mystery; 2 Wheel of Fortune; 3 Jungle Fever; 4 Space Cadets; 5 Cosmovision; 6 Hamburger Universe; 7 Surfing; 8 Ayahuasca Disco; 9 Logos; 10 Night of the Black Puma; 11 Downtime; 12 Seeds; 13 Beasts Initiation; 14 Shaman School; 15 Snakes and Ladders; 16 Heart of Darkness; 17 Return to the Source; 18 The Love Creek Session; 19 The High Frontier; 20 Stairway to Heaven; 21 Going Down to the River to Pray; 22 The Hero's Journey Return 23 Secret Women's Business; 24 The Prime Directive; 25 One River; 26 When Stones Dream; 27 Paying the Earth; 28 Talking with Kevin; 29 Illuminated; 30 Final Flight Index Bibliography Author's Note

Follow the fantastic odyssey of one woman as she explores shamanic realms, encountering spirit animals and other teachers who answer her deepest questions and provide her with life-changing guidance and healing. Widowed, childless, and alone, 60-year-old Ema bravely decides to expand her self-knowledge by embarking on a spiritual adventure. She meets with author Sandra Harner, who leads her through five sessions of Harner Shamanic Counseling (HSC), a highly effective system of personal problem-solving in which counselors help clients enter a shamanic state of consciousness using a specific sonic rhythm. While in this state, clients seek out helping spirits, who offer insight, wisdom, and healing. By the end of her sessions with Harner, Ema has discovered her own innate ability to find answers to pervasive personal questions, overcome inhibitory fears, and acquire self-confidence and wisdom. She has found a sense of personal empowerment and a newfound joy in existence--and decides she wants to continue her journeys independently. From 1999 to 2011, Ema ventures on a total of 64 journeys, each one chronicled in this book, thanks to taped recordings of her simultaneous narration. In addition to serving as an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of shamanism, psychology, and alternative modalities of therapy, Ema's Odyssey enchants us with its lyrical poetry and unique wisdom, and inspires us with its demonstration of courage, curiosity, persistence, and humility. Perhaps most importantly, we come away with the added assurance that we are not alone, that there are oft-untapped resources we all can access, given the tools and trust in our own experience.

A journey into the deeper workings of indigenous healing in the Amazon • Explores the three pillars of Amazonian shamanism: purging, psychoactive plants, and diet • Shares the experiences of apprenticing with an Ashaninca master shaman • Reveals the intimate relationship between shamans and plant spirits The Jaguar that Roams the Mind is a journey into the vanishing world of Amazonian shamanism--an adventure of initiation and return--that explores the unique reality at the heart of the Amazonian healing system. Robert Tindall shares his journeys through the inner and outer landscape of the churches of ayahuasca and with the Kaxinawa Indians in Brazil; his experiences at the pioneering center for the treatment of addiction, Takiwasi, in Peru; and his studies with an Ashaninca master shaman deep in the rainforest jungle. Moving beyond the scientific approach to medicinal plants, which seeks to reduce them to their chemical constituents, Tindall illustrates the shamans’ intimate relationships with plant spirits. He explores the three pillars of Amazonian shamanism: purging (drawing disease out of the body), psychoactive plants (including the ritual use of ayahuasca), and diet (communing with the innate intelligence of teacher plants). Through trials and revelations, the subtle inner logic of indigenous healing unfolds for him, including the “miraculous” healing of a woman suffering from a brain tumor. Culminating in a ceremony fraught with terror yet ultimately enlightening, Tindall’s journey reveals the crucial component missing from the metaphysics of the West: the understanding and appreciation of the sentience of nature itself.

Nothing in James Hall's life prepared him for what happened. When he was in Africa writing about the legendary singer Miriam Makeba, she perceived he had the rare gift to see both into the future and into people's souls. At her urging, Hall consulted a sangoma, a traditional healer, who told him he was possessed by ancestral spirits. Hall could receive the power to heal others and to become a sangoma himself ... if he was willing to take the risk. He did - embracing an uncertain future and undergoing a two-year spiritual and physical ordeal. What he experienced shook his grasp of reality to the core as he surrendered himself to souls from the spirit world, learned to read messages in divination bones and attained a lifetime's worth of knowledge about collecting and preparing the plants used in traditional medicine. James Hall has written a candid, dramatically personal account of his unique spiritual journey.

An in-depth look at the role of plant spirits in shamanic rituals from around the world • Shows how shamans heal using their knowledge of plant spirits as well as the plant’s “medical properties” • Explores the core methods of plant shamanism--soul retrieval, spirit extraction, and sin eating--and includes techniques for connecting with plant spirits • Includes extensive field interviews with master shamans of all traditions In Plant Spirit Shamanism, Ross Heaven and Howard G. 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.

An insider’s account of the journey to become an ayahuasquero, a shaman who heals with the visionary vine ayahuasca • Details the author’s training and life as a curandero using ayahuasca medicine, San Pedro cactus, tobacco purges, psychedelic mushrooms, and other visionary plants • Offers first-hand accounts of miraculous healing where ayahuasca revealed the cause of the illness, including how the author healed his mother from liver cancer • Shows how “ayahuasca tourism” symbolizes the Western world’s reawakening need to connect with the universal life force For more than 20 years American-born Alan Shoemaker has apprenticed and worked with shamans in Ecuador and Peru, learning the traditional methods of ayahuasca preparation, the ceremonial rituals for its use, and how to commune with the healing spirit of this sacred plant as well as the spirit of the San Pedro cactus and other sacred plant allies. Now a recognized and practicing ayahuasquero, or ayahuasca shaman, in Peru, he offers an insider’s account of the ayahuasca tradition and of its use for expanding consciousness and achieving healing through access to other dimensions of being. Shoemaker details his training and his own curandero practice using ayahuasca medicine, tobacco purges, psychedelic mushrooms, and other visionary plants. He discusses the different traditions of his two foremost teachers and mentors, Don Juan in the Peruvian Amazon, an ayahuasquero, and Valentin in Ecuador, a San Pedro shaman. He reveals the indispensable role played by icaros, the healing songs of the plant shaman, and offers firsthand accounts of miraculous healing resulting from ayahuasca’s ability to reveal the cause of an illness, including how he healed his mother from liver cancer. The author also addresses the rising popularity of Northerners traveling to the Amazon to seek healing and mind expansion through ayahuasca and shows how this fascination is triggered by humanity’s reawakening need to connect to the universal life force.

This is the first comprehensive overview of the Native people of Puget Sound, who speak a Coast Salishan language called Lushootseed. They originally lived in communal cedar plank houses clustered along rivers and bays. Their complex, continually evolving religious attitudes and rituals were woven into daily life, the cycle of seasons, and long-term activities. Despite changes brought on by modern influences and Christianity, traditional beliefs still infuse Lushootseed life. Drawing on established written sources and his own two decades of fieldwork, Miller depicts the Lushootseed people in an innovative way, building his cultural representation around the grand ritual known as the Shamanic Odyssey. In this ritual cooperating shamans journeyed together to the land of the dead to recover some kind of vitality stolen from the living. Miller sees the Shamanic Odyssey as a central lens on Lushootseed culture, epitomizing and validating in a public setting many of its important concerns and themes. In particular, the rite brought together a number of distinct aspects or "vehicles" of culture, including the cosmos, canoe, house, body, and the network of social relations radiating across the Lushootseed waterscape.