100 Best Shamanism Books of All Time
We've ranked the best shamanism books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
2The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
3The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Radio Presenter/The Breakfast Club
These are the books I recommend people to listen to on @applebooks. [source]
Co-Founder/Twitter
Question: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! [source]
I just think it’s got a lot of great principles and ideas. [source]
4Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
5Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation
- How the original practice of shamanism shaped the world's spiritual traditions and why it is still relevant today
- The art of the shamanic journey--a time-tested meditative method for experiencing important spiritual lessons and truths
- Guidance for avoiding common pitfalls of shamanic practice
- Instruction for working with your dreams, connecting to your spirit guides, healing yourself and your environment
- A CD of drumming to facilitate your shamanic journeys
6Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner's Guide
With Shamanic Journeying, readers join world-renowned teacher Sandra Ingerman to learn the core teachings of this ancient practice and apply these skills in their own journey. Includes drumming for three shamanic journeys.
Animal Speak: The Spiritual & Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small
Animal Speak provides techniques for recognizing and interpreting the signs and omens of nature. Meet and work with animals as totems and spirit guides by learning the language of their behaviors within the physical world.
Animal Speak shows you how to:
Identify, meet, and attune to your spirit animals
Discover the power and spiritual significance of more than 100 different animals, birds, insects, and reptiles
Call upon the protective powers of your animal totem
Create and use five magical animal rites, including shapeshifting and sacred dance
This beloved, bestselling guide has become a classic reference for anyone wishing to forge a spiritual connection with the majesty and mystery of the animal world.
8Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas
Villoldo explains that central to shamanic healing is the concept of the Luminous Energy Field that is believed to surround our material bodies. His book teaches us to see and influence the imprints that disease leaves on this field and thereby to heal ourselves and others, as well as prevent illness.
Villoldo weaves wonderful teaching stories throughout about the healing power of the energy medicine of the Americas. In one story, Villoldo comes down with pneumonia while in Peru. When antibiotics fail to control the infection, his mentor, the shaman Don Antonio, uses the process of Illumination to remove the toxins that had invaded Villoldo's body. These same shamanic techniques later allowed Villoldo to remove stagnant energy from a young woman whose marriage was suffering due to her past experience with abandonment. With the aid of shamanic work, the woman regained her trust in others, and her marriage was revitalized.
This book is rich with ancient wisdom and contemporary techniques we can use to help ourselves and others, as well as with the more advanced methods of master shamans, which are being brought to a wide audience for the first time.
9A Separate Reality
In 1961 a young anthropologist subjected himself to an extraordinary apprenticeship to bring back a fascinating glimpse of a Yaqui Indian's world of "non-ordinary reality" and the difficult and dangerous road a man must travel to become "a man of knowledge." Yet on the bring of that world, challenging to all that we believe, he drew back.
Then in 1968, Carlos Castaneda returned to Mexico, to don Juan and his hallucinogenic drugs, and to a world of experience no man from our Western civilization had ever entered before.
10Journey to Ixtlan
Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, bestselling author Carlos Castaneda immersed himself in the sorcerer’s magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew all along—that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one’s own.
11Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self
Tales of Power
13The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
Amazing for me. [source]
14Shamanism as a Spiritual Practice for Daily Life
15The Art of Dreaming
16Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
For the first time in paperback, the critically acclaimed counterculture manifesto by the wildly popular McKenna. "Deserves to be a modern classic on mind-altering drugs & hallucinogens."--The Washington Post. Photos & illustrations.
17Fire in the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit
Tom Cowan is the author of 'How to Top Into Your Own Genius' and coauthor of 'Power of the Witch and Love Magic'.
"An engrossing, intelligent, and shamanically well-informed work that is an important gift to all those Westerners seeking a knowledge of Celtic shamanism"
MICHAEL HARNER, PH. D., author of 'The Way of the Shaman'
"An important and fascinating work on Celtic shamanism. Highly recommended"
SERGE KAHILI KING, author of 'Urban Shaman'
"A fascinating and entertaining study…(illuminating) glimpses of an original Celtic shamanism that appears in British and Irish folklore and literary remains. 'Fire in the Head' also offers an account of Celtic supernaturalism in general, and unveils the mysterious background of certain folk heroes, such as Robin Hood"
AKE HULTKRANTZ, author of 'Native Religions of North America'
"A remarkable exploration of shamanism (using) cross-cultural myths to explain the history and roots of the Celtic spirit"
SANDRA INGERMAN, author of 'Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self'
18Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of a Shamanic Life
19Urban Shaman
20Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman
21Second Ring of Power
Back from the abyss, Castaneda encounter his greatest test on the journey towards impeccability and freedom: to outwit and overpower the sorcery of Doña Soledad, herself transformed from a defeated and meaningless life to a warrior, a hunter and a "stalker of power."
Now the combat will begin. Now the journey will continue. Till the last danger is faced...the final paradox embraced.
By Oak, Ash, & Thorn: Modern Celtic Shamanism
23Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon, to the Mazatecs of Mexico, these plants are sacred because they awaken the mind to other levels of awareness--to a holographic vision of the universe.
Breaking Open the Head is a passionate, multilayered, and sometimes rashly personal inquiry into this deep division. On one level, Daniel Pinchbeck tells the story of the encounters between the modern consciousness of the West and these sacramental substances, including such thinkers as Allen Ginsberg, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, and Terence McKenna, and a new underground of present-day ethnobotanists, chemists, psychonauts, and philosophers. It is also a scrupulous recording of the author's wide-ranging investigation with these outlaw compounds, including a thirty-hour tribal initiation in West Africa; an all-night encounter with the master shamans of the South American rain forest; and a report from a psychedelic utopia in the Black Rock Desert that is the Burning Man Festival.
Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.
Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality
Drawing from a lifetime of personal shamanic experiences and more than 2,500 reports of Westerners’ experiences during shamanic ascension, Harner highlights the striking similarities between their discoveries, indicating that the heavens and spirits they’ve encountered do indeed exist. He also provides instructions on his innovative core-shamanism techniques, so that readers too can ascend to heavenly realms, seek spirit teachers, and return later at will for additional healing and advice.
Written by the leading authority on shamanism, Cave and Cosmos is a must-read not only for those interested in shamanism, but also for those interested in spirituality, comparative religion, near-death experiences, healing, consciousness, anthropology, and the nature of reality.
Praise for Michael Harner and The Way of the Shaman
“What Yogananda did for Hinduism and D. T. Suzuki did for Zen, Michael Harner has done for shamanism—namely, bring the tradition and its richness to Western awareness.”
—from Higher Wisdom, by Roger Walsh and Charles S. Grob
“Wonderful, fascinating.… Harner really knows what he’s talking about.”
—Carlos Castaneda, best-selling author of The Teachings of Don Juan and The Active Side of Infinity
“An intimate and practical guide to the art of shamanic healing and the technology of the sacred. Michael Harner is not just an anthropologist who has studied shamanism; he is an authentic white shaman.”
—Stanislav Grof, author of The Adventure of Self-Discovery
“Harner has impeccable credentials, both as an academic and as a practicing shaman. Without doubt (since the recent death of Mircea Eliade) the world’s leading authority on shamanism.”
—Nevill Drury, author of The Elements of Shamanism
“Michael Harner is a great shaman. He also proves that a person can be both a scientist and a shaman.”
—Bo Bair Rinchinov, Siberian Buryat shaman
25Eagle's Gift
His landscape is full of terrors and mysterious forces, as sharply etched as a flash of lightning on the deserts and mountains where don Juan takes him to pursue the sorcerer’s knowledge—the knowledge that it is the Eagle that gives us, at our births, a spark of awareness, that it expects to reclaim at the end of our lives and which the sorcerer, through his discipline, fights to retain. Castaneda describes how don Juan and his party, left thisworld—"the warriors of don Juan’s party had caught me for an eternal instant, before they vanished into the total light, before the Eagle let them go through"—and how he, himself, upon witnessing such a sight, jumped into the abyss.
Power of Silence
The Power of Silence is Castaneda's most astonishing book to date -- a brilliant flash of knowledge that illuminates the far reaches of the human mind. Through don Juan's mesmerizing stories, the true meaning of sorcery and magic is finally revealed. Honed in the desert of Sonora, the visions of don Juan give us the vital secrets of belief and self-realization that are transcendental and valid for us all. It is Castaneda's unique genius to show us that all wisdom, strength, and power lie within ourselves -- unleashed with marvelous energy and imaginative force in the teachings of don Juan -- and in the writings of his famous pupil, Carlos Castaneda
27The Fire from Within
28Animal Spirit Guides: An Easy-to-Use Handbook for Identifying and Understanding Your Power Animals and Animal Spirit Helpers
29The Woman in the Shaman's Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine
Shamanism was not only humankind’s first spiritual and healing practice, it was originally the domain of women. This is the claim of Barbara Tedlock’s provocative and myth-shattering book. Reinterpreting generations of scholarship, Tedlock–herself an expert in dreamwork, divination, and healing–explains how and why the role of women in shamanism was misinterpreted and suppressed, and offers a dazzling array of evidence, from prehistoric African rock art to modern Mongolian ceremonies, for women’s shamanic powers.
Tedlock combines firsthand accounts of her own training among the Maya of Guatemala with the rich record of women warriors and hunters, spiritual guides, and prophets from many cultures and times. Probing the practices that distinguish female shamanism from the much better known male traditions, she reveals:
• The key role of body wisdom and women’s eroticism in shamanic trance and ecstasy
• The female forms of dream witnessing, vision questing, and use of hallucinogenic drugs
• Shamanic midwifery and the spiritual powers released in childbirth and monthly female cycles
• Shamanic symbolism in weaving and other feminine arts
• Gender shifting and male-female partnership in shamanic practice
Filled with illuminating stories and illustrations, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body restores women to their essential place in the history of spirituality and celebrates their continuing role in the worldwide resurgence of shamanism today.
From the Hardcover edition.
30Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind
Acknowledgements
Part 1: Visions
1: Plant that enables men to see the dead
2: Greatest riddle of archeology
3: Vine of souls
Part 2: Caves
4: Therianthropy
5: Riddles of the caves
6: Shabby academy
7: Searching for a Rosetta Stone
8: Code in the mind
9: Serpents of the Drakensberg
10: Wounded healer
Part 3: Beings
11: Voyage into the supernatural
12: Shamans in the sky
13: Spirit love
14: Secret commonwealth
15: Here is a thing that will carry me away
16: Dancers between worlds
Part 4: Codes
17: Turning in to channel DMT
18: Amongst the machine elves
19: Ancient teachers in our DNA?
20: Hurricane in the junkyard
Part 5: Religions
21: Hidden Shamans
22: Flesh of the Gods
Part 6: Mysteries
23: Doors leading to another world
Appendices
Critics & criticisms of David Lewis-Williams' Neuropsychological theory of rock & cave art
Psilocybe semilanceata-a hallucinogenic mushroom native to Europe / Roy Watlng
Interview with Rick Strassman
References
Index
The Active Side of Infinity
32Plant Spirit Shamanism: Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul
• 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.
33Singing the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Wisdom for Every Day
This refreshing and inspiring book will set you on the right track, and show how you can bring the rich wisdom of the shaman into your daily life, whatever your creed or religion. Caitlin Matthews teaches you to explore your inner space, journey between the everyday world and the spiritual realm of the shaman, and find your spirit voice and true destiny. Fresh new approach, ideal for everyone, regardless of creed or religion. Packed with clear, practical exercises and comprehensive instruction. Shows how to harness your creative imagination and innate healing powers, and discover your real place in life.
34The World of Shamanism: New Views of an Ancient Tradition
Praise:
"As if on cue, just when I am beginning to think that shamanism is the ground from which all religions spring, along comes this book. 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 Healing
"Quite 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
35Healing with Form, Energy, and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen
36The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts about Life, Death and the Universe
Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, bestselling author Carlos Castaneda soon immersed himself in the sorcerer’s magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew all along—that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one’s own. In Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda introduces readers to this new approach for the first time and explores, as he comes to experience it himself, his own final voyage into the teachings of don Juan, sharing with us what it is like to truly “stop the world” and perceive reality on his own terms.
37Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
38Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest
39Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers
• Numerous new and rare color photographs complement the completely revised and updated text.
• Explores the uses of hallucinogenic plants in shamanic rituals throughout the world.
• Cross-referenced by plant, illness, preparation, season of collection, and chemical constituents.
Three scientific titans join forces to completely revise the classic text on the ritual uses of psychoactive plants. They provide a fascinating testimony of these "plants of the gods," tracing their uses throughout the world and their significance in shaping culture and history. In the traditions of every culture, plants have been highly valued for their nourishing, healing, and transformative properties. The most powerful of those plants, which are known to transport the human mind into other dimensions of consciousness, have always been regarded as sacred. The authors detail the uses of hallucinogens in sacred shamanic rites while providing lucid explanations of the biochemistry of these plants and the cultural prayers, songs, and dances associated with them. The text is lavishly illustrated with 400 rare photographs of plants, people, ceremonies, and art related to the ritual use of the world's sacred psychoactive flora.
40The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals Ceremonies for Personal Transformation
Now, in this exciting and practical book, Toltec shaman and New York Times best-selling author don Jose Ruiz introduces and explains a wealth of these shamanic rituals and ceremonies, and provides a detailed and accessible guide to performing them on your own.
This book will teach you how to:::
Choose and create power objects
Build a personal altar and medicine wheel
Align your life with the cycles of nature
Find and work with your spirit animals
Honor your ancestors, undertake power journeys, and much more
Like the medicine bag itself, this book is a potent tool kit of spiritual practices meant to open you to a world of beauty, exploration, and transformation. By offering step-by-step instructions in each chapter, don Jose Ruiz has made these rituals and ceremonies accessible to everyone who feels called to travel the shamanic path.
41Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life
In The Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us About Love and Life, Toltec shaman and master storyteller don Jose Ruiz shares some of the most popular stories from his family's oral tradition and offers corresponding lessons that illustrate the larger ideas within each story.
Ruiz begins by explaining that contrary to the stereotypical image of "witch doctor," the ancient shamans were men and women who fulfilled several roles within their communities: philosopher, spiritual guide, medical doctor, psychologist, and friend.
According to Ruiz, their teachings are not primitive or reserved for a chosen few initiates but are instead a powerful series of lessons on love and life that are available to us all. To that aim, he has included exercises, meditations, and shamanic rituals to help you experience the personal transformation these stories offer.
The shamans taught that the truth you seek is inside of you. Let these stories, lessons, and tools be your guide to finding the innate wisdom that lives within.
42Mending The Past Healing The Future With Soul Retrieval
43Hallucinogens and Shamanism
44Spirit Walking: A Course in Shamanic Power
45Medicine for the Earth: How to Transform Personal and Environmental Toxins
For twenty years, Sandra Ingerman has studied alternative ways to reverse environmental pollution. In this book, Ingerman takes us on a remarkable journey through the history of transmutation, teaching us how we can use this forgotten technique to change ourselves and our environment. She provides us with creative visualizations, ceremonies, rituals, and chants derived from ancient healing practices that produce miraculous, scientifically proven results. In one dramatic illustration of what can be accomplished when consciousness and awareness fuel our actions, Ingerman describes her own success in transforming the nature of chemically polluted water.
46True Hallucinations
Preface
1 The Call of the Secret
2 Into the Devil's Paradise
3 Along a Ghostly Trail
4 Camped by a Doorway
5 A Brush with the Other
6 Kathmandu Interlude
7 A Violet Psychofluid
8 The Opus Clarified
9 A Conversation Over Saucers
10 More on the Opus
11 The Experiment at La Chorrera
12 In the Vortex
13 At Play in the Fields of the Lord
14 Looking Backward
15 A Saucer Full of Secrets
16 Return
17 Waltzing the Enigma
18 Say What Does It Mean?
19 The Coming of the Strophariad
20 The Hawaiian Connection
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Further Reading
This is one of my favourite books. [source]
Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals
48Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole
The greatest contribution of the ancient shamans to modern healing is the understanding that in the course of any life we are liable to suffer soul loss — the loss of parts of our vital energy and identity — and that to be whole and well, we must find the means of soul recovery. Moss teaches that our dreams give us maps we can use to find and bring home our lost or stolen soul parts. He shows how to recover animal spirits and ride the windhorse of spirit to places of healing and adventure in the larger reality. We discover how to heal ancestral wounds and open the way for cultural soul recovery.
You’ll learn how to enter past lives, future lives, and the life experiences of parallel selves and bring back lessons and gifts. “It’s not just about keeping soul in the body,” Moss writes. “It’s about growing soul, becoming more than we ever were before.” With fierce joy, he incites us to take the creator’s leap and bring something new into our world.
49Earth Magic: Ancient Shamanic Wisdom for Healing Yourself, Others, and the Planet
Although the foundation for Earth Magic is universal shamanic wisdom, you don’t need to have an interest in shamanism to benefit from its contents, as it expands beyond this topic to incorporate processes that are useful for all those with the sincere intention to heal themselves, others, and our planet.
50The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers
Included in this book are the wisdom teachings that have been protected by secret societies of Eartkeepers, the medicine men and women of the Americas. The four insights state that all of creation- humans, whales, and even stars- is made from light manifested through the power of intention. The Earthkeepers used the insights to heal disease, eliminate emotional suffering, and even grow new bodies that age and heal differently.
The first insight teaches you how to shed the emotional wounds from your past in the same way that a snake sheds her skin: all at once. It teaches you that you aren't your story or your history, but the hero of your own life. The second insight instructs you how to move beyond fear and anger to live and practice grace. The third insight shows you how to step outside of time and into infinity, to fix things before they're born and to heal destiny. And the fourth insight details how to dream the world into being by waking up from the cultural trance that you've been educated into in order to create joy, abundance, and meaning in your life.
51The Bowl of Light: Ancestral Wisdom from a Hawaiian Shaman
The "Bowl of Light" --the vessel for our divine essence and how we must care for it to sustain our natural radiance
The three directives of the spiritual warrior love with humility, live with reverence, and know with self-discipline
Rare descriptions of rituals used by Hale Makua for communing with nature, receiving wisdom from the spirit world, purifying our consciousness, and more
The Ancestral Grand Plan exploring the path our ancestors set in motion millennia ago and how the Plan is playing out across the world today.
In the oceanic islands where the flow of primal energies has created unparalleled natural beauty, one of the world's most advanced spiritual cultures remains largely unknown to the West. With The Bowl of Light, Hank Wesselman offers a privileged and intimate view into the mind of an authentic Hawaiian kahuna for the time has finally come for the world to hear the wisdom that this profound tradition offers.
52Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Storyteller, rebel, medicine man, Lame Deer was born almost a century ago on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. A full-blooded Sioux, he was many things in the white man's world -- rodeo clown, painter, prisioner. But, above all, he was a holy man of the Lakota tribe.
Seeker of Vision
The story he tells is one of harsh youth and reckless manhood, shotgun marriage and divorce, history and folklore as rich today as ever -- and of his fierce struggle to keep pride alive, though living as a stranger in his own ancestral land.
53Gift of the Dreamtime - Awakening to the Divinity of Trauma
Medicinemaker: Mystic Encounters on the Shaman's Path
Dr. Wesselman's inspiring quest began with a dramatic encounter on the island of Hawaii. Though he had feared his connection to Nainoa, a kahuna initiate and fellow mystic traveler, would be severed when he moved to San Diego, Wesselman would continue to merge minds with Nainoa. Over the next five years, the true purpose of their profound yet cryptic contact took shape. Wesselman had gained access to some inner doorway, putting him in the presence of a transcendent life force and intelligence. On the threshold of a dazzling new understanding of nature, he was a shaman in training, an initiate into the sacred, secret healing powers of the spirit world.
This remarkable book gives us an unprecedented glimpse into the origin and the destiny of our species. Hank Wesselman has brought back from his extraordinary travels an extraordinary message: the keys to personal power and to the healing of all humankind.
55Magical Passes: The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico
56Reiki Shamanism: A Guide to Out-of-Body Healing
57Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World into Being
Alberto Villoldo reveals ancient wisdom teachings that explain how to birth reality from the invisible matrix of creation; and reveals how we can interact with this matrix to dream a life of peace, health, and abundance. He shows us that courage is all that is required to create the joy we desire!
58Cunning-Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic
59The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft: Shadows, Spirits and the Healing Journey (Temple of Witchcraft, #3)
Penczak's third volume of witchcraft teachings corresponds to the water element--guiding the reader into this realm of emotion, reflection, and healing. The twelve formal lessons cover shamanic cosmologies, journeying, dreamwork, animal/plant/stone medicine, totems, soul retrieval, and psychic surgery. Each lesson includes exercises (using modern techniques and materials), assignments, and helpful tips. The training ends with a ritual for self-initiation into the art of the shamanic witch--culminating in an act of healing, rebirth, and transformation.
COVR Award Winner
60Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
• Reveals a model of a society built on trust, patience, and joy rather than anxiety, hurry, and acquisition.
• Shows how we can reconnect with the ancient intuitive awareness of the world's original people.
Deep in the mountainous jungle of Malaysia the aboriginal Sng'oi exist on the edge of extinction, though their way of living may ultimately be the kind of existence that will allow us all to survive. The Sng'oi--pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, semi-nomadic--live without cars or cell phones, without clocks or schedules in a lush green place where worry and hurry, competition and suspicion are not known. Yet these indigenous people--as do many other aboriginal groups--possess an acute and uncanny sense of the energies, emotions, and intentions of their place and the living beings who populate it, and trustingly follow this intuition, using it to make decisions about their actions each day.
Psychologist Robert Wolff lived with the Sng'oi, learned their language, shared their food, slept in their huts, and came to love and admire these people who respect silence, trust time to reveal and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of joy. Even more, he came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these basic qualities of life. Much more than a document of a disappearing people, Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing holds a mirror to our own existence, allowing us to see how far we have wandered from the ways of the intuitive and trusting Sng'oi, and challenges us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover this humanity within ourselves.
61The Shamanic Journey: A Practical Guide to Therapeutic Shamanism
Many people feel a growing disenchantment with modern life; that something fundamental is missing or 'wrong'. Our increased material wealth is making us less happy, not more. Mental health issues are on the rise, and we face an environmental crisis. Somehow, we have lost our way. People long for a deeper sense of connection, a greater purpose, and a more sustainable and natural way of living. Yet people are often unsure as to what they can do to find this.
If you are ready, the practice of shamanism holds the answers. As the oldest healing and spiritual practice known to humankind, it can help us to retrieve that which feels lost. In shamanism, we find a journey that can lead us to true fulfilment and purpose, and to a right way of living and being in the world.
In The Shamanic Journey, shamanic practitioner, teacher and psychotherapist, Paul Francis, offers an apprenticeship for our times. By building upon the work of Michael Harner, author of 1980's classic 'The Way of the Shaman', Francis has created a practical, ethical and experiential guide; from what shamanism is, right through to giving a shamanic healing to another person. It includes: a full introduction to the lower, middle and upper shamanic realms; an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to doing your first shamanic journey; guidance on how to connect and nurture a life-long relationship with your Power Animal; instruction on how do a basic shamanic healing; practical know-how for interpreting the meaning and symbolism contained within your journeys.
Moreover, this book looks at how to place the ancient art of shamanism at the centre of our modern lives, in order to be able to experience that longed-for connection with our true selves and with Spirit. For we are no longer the same kind of people as our hunter-gatherer ancestors were, and we live in very different times and face many different challenges. So the book explores how to bring shamanism up-to-date, to make it fully and directly relevant to modern-day life. This includes exploring how modern 'civilisation' has changed us mentally, emotionally and spiritually; how it has domesticated us and tamed us, and how this has led to many of the problems that we now face. In understanding these changes in us, and what has caused them, the book explores the vital and central role that shamanism can play in our recovery. The book also explores the ways though in which shamanism will need to be adapt and changed in order to do this. This includes examining the connections between ancient shamanism and modern psychotherapy, understanding the differences between them, but also by understanding what they can (and need to) learn from each other.
To help with your journeying, contained within this book is a code that gives you access to free shamanic drumming audios from the author's own website.
The Shamanic Journey is the first in a series of books that will cover the full spectrum of Therapeutic Shamanism, including: The Medicine Wheel; Soul Loss and Soul Retrieval; Healing the Mother and Father Wounds; Healing Ancestral and Family Wounds; The Inner Totem Pole; Plant-Spirit Shamanism; Shamanic Activism; Shamanic Counselling and Psychotherapy.
62Animal-Wise: Understanding the Language of Animal Messengers and Companions
63Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon
"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.
64Ayahuasca in My Blood: 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming
"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.
65The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar
67Nature-Speak: Signs, Omens and Messages in Nature
68Traveling between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans
69The Celtic Shaman: A Handbook (Earth Quest)
70Spiritwalker: Messages from the Future
The astonishing true story of an anthropologist's quest into a spiritual world of magic, mysticism, and meaning.
Not since Castaneda's tutelage under the Yacqui Indian guide Don Juan has there been a spiritual autobiography quite like Spiritwalker.
Hank Wesselman's incredible story of a series of encounters that would forever change his life began with what he at first tried to explain away as particularly vivid dreams, but which grew increasingly intense and insistent, ultimately propelling him on twelve fantastic journeys across time and space. Over the next three years, his journeys proved to be far more important than mere reason could explain. Eventually, Dr. Wesselman became convinced that he'd been granted a visionary encounter with what tribal people from millennia past have called the "spirit world."
During his epic travels, Dr. Wesselman met shape-shifting entities, spirit helpers, and guardians, and found himself traversing a mental, physical, and
spiritual landscape on a path intersecting that of a fellow traveler, a Hawai'ian kahuna mystic named Nainoa. Five thousand years into the future, Nainoa had been sent by his Chief on a journey into what used to be America, a once-powerful land of machines and magic, from which no previous voyagers had ever returned. What did Nainoa seek from Dr. Wesselman? What did the anthropologist have to learn about his own world from this exotic traveler from another time and place? Together, scientist and mystic are initiated into knowledge of non-ordinary levels of reality and given foreshadowings of imminent environmental, political, and spiritual challenges to their civilization. Without abandoning his scientific objectivity, Dr. Wesselman abandoned himself to the mystical, sometimes frightening, yet always luminous experiences that brought him beyond the boundaries of ordinary consciousness. The result is a fascinating and suspenseful adventure, an exciting and important archeological discovery, and the story of how a hard-headed scientific-realist stumbled on an important piece of the puzzle of human evolution.
Socially urgent and disturbingly prophetic, Spiritwalker has a universal mythic resonance and an undeniable relevance for today as it challenges our
perceptions of our world, our reality, and our future.
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens & the I Ching
72Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation
The New York Times bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man documents John Perkins’ extraordinary career as a globe-trotting economic hit man. Perkins’ insider’s view leads him to crisis of conscience--to the realization that he must devote himself to work which will foster a world-wide awareness of the sanctity of indigenous peoples, their cultures, and their environments. Perkins’ books demonstrate how the age-old shamanic techniques of some of the world’s most primitive peoples have sparked a revolution in modern concepts about healing, the subconscious, and the powers each of us has to alter individual and communal reality.
Many indigenous cultures practice shapeshifting. Native American hunters take on the spirit of their prey to ensure a successful hunt; Asian medicine men “ingest” a sickness to heal the one afflicted; Amazon warriors become jaguars to soundlessly travel the jungle. Those who shapeshift understand that all of life is energy and that by focusing your intent you can change energetic patterns, rendering a new form. Shapeshifting can occur on three levels: cellular--transforming from human to plant or animal; personal--becoming a new self or leaving an addiction behind; and institutional--creating a new business or cultural identity.
Since 1968, master shamans in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas have been training John Perkins to teach the industrial world about the powerful techniques involved in shapeshifting. His groundbreaking book takes you to deserts and jungles, mountains and oceans, medical research centers and corporate board rooms to learn the step-by-step methods of this practice that integrates ancient and modern techniques to bring about profound healing.
73Chosen by the Spirits: Following Your Shamanic Calling
• Includes complete directions for traditional Siberian rituals, meditations, and divination techniques never before published.
• Shows how to recognize and acknowledge a call from the spirits.
• Offers traditional wisdom for nurturing a working relationship with personal spirit helpers to promote healing and balance in a community.
The shaman's purpose is to heal and restore balance to his or her community by developing a working relationship with the spirit world. Mongolian shamanic tradition maintains that all true shamans are called by the spirits--but those who are not from shamanic cultures may have difficulty recognizing the call or nurturing the essential shamanic relationship with their helper spirits.
Buryat shamaness Sarangerel has written Chosen by the Spirits as a guide for both the beginning shaman and the advanced practitioner. Although raised in the United States, she was drawn to the shamanic tradition, and in 1991 returned to her ancestral homeland in the Tunken region of southern Siberia to study with traditional Buryat shamans. Her first book, Riding Windhorses, provided an introduction to the shamanic world of Siberia. Chosen by the Spirits delves more deeply into the personal relationship between the shamanic student and his or her "spirit family." Sarangerel recounts her own journey into shamanic practice and provides the serious student with practical advice and hands-on techniques for recognizing and acknowledging a shamanic calling, welcoming and embodying the spirits, journeying to the spirit world, and healing both people and places.
74Mystical Shaman Oracle Cards
Now, three master teachers and healers—Alberto Villoldo, Colette Baron-Reid, and Marcela Lobos—have brought their wisdom and talents together to offer a doorway into the realm of the sacred symbols with the Mystical Shaman Oracle. When you consult the oracle, you summon power and insight that can help you understand the present, heal the past, and influence the course of your future.
We can become our own prophets and visionaries. We can converse directly with Spirit, dialogue with the forces of nature, speak with the great archetypes—the ancient gods—without intermediaries. No one needs to stand between the Creator and you, or between you and the great powers of nature.
75The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More
At her core, the green witch is a naturalist, an herbalist, a wise woman, and a healer. She embraces the power of nature; she draws energy from the Earth and the Universe; she relies on natural objects like stones and gems to commune with the land she lives off of; she uses plants, flowers, oils, and herbs for healing; she calls on nature for guidance; and she respects every living being no matter how small.
In The Green Witch, you will learn the way of the green witch, from how to use herbs, plants, and flowers to make potions and oils for everyday healing as well as how crystals, gems, stones, and even twigs can help you find balance within. You’ll discover how to find harmony in Earth’s great elements and connect your soul to every living creature. This guide also contains directions for herbal blends and potions, ritual suggestions, recipes for sacred foods, and information on how to listen to and commune with nature. Embrace the world of the green witch and discover what the power of nature has in store for you.
Way of Wyrd
This addresses the relationship between magic and Christianity. Bates is a Professor of Sociology at Sussex University. Middle-Earth, and the world of Tolkien, fascinates him. The church wiped it out in the sixth and seventh centuries, but Bates wanted to understand what paganism was really like. He didn’t find any direct descriptions. But he came across some wonderful books, written by monks around the tenth century, telling of cures for the effects of Anglo-Saxon magic. By coming at it from the position of the victim, so to speak, Bates works out what magicians at that time could actually do. [source]
Plant Spirit Medicine: The Healing Power of Plants
78Ritual: Power, Healing and Community
79Dreamtime and Inner Space
80Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men
81The Wind Is My Mother
82Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing, 2nd Edition
All of these questions--and many more--are answered in Shamanism, Second Edition: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing. This text contains crosscultural examinations of the nature of shamanism, biological perspectives on alterations of consciousness, mechanisms of shamanistic healing, as well as the evolutionary origins of shamanism. It presents the shamanic paradigm within a biopsychosocial framework for explaining successful human evolution through group rituals. In the final chapter,"the author compares shamanistic rituals with chimpanzee displays to identify homologies that point to the ritual dynamics of our ancient hominid ancestors.
83Dancing with the Wheel
Dancing with the Wheel teaches you how to apply this philosophy to your daily life through many practical exercises and ceremonies. These exercises will help you gain energy from the spirits, which can heal both humans and the earth.
Through Dancing with the Wheel, the second book specifically devoted to the Medicine Wheel, those familiar with this vision will gain an increased understanding of the wheel and its developments over the last ten years. Those new to the Medicine Wheel will be ushered into the teachings and technique of what has come to be a source of comfort and direction for thousands of people around the world. Whether you are in the middle of the wilderness or the middle of a city, this book and its exercises will help you center yourself and establish peace with the earth and other beings.
84DMT: The Spirit Molecule
A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT: A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research.
From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted US DEA-approved clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected 60 volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical that is also manufactured by the human brain, consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many volunteers reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, especially "aliens." Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives.
Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by René Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that alien abduction experiences are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.
85The Shaman & Ayahuasca: Journeys To Sacred Realms
In The Shaman & Ayahuasca, internationally respected Peruvian shaman Don Jose´ Campos illuminates the practices and benefits of Ayahuasca with grace and gentleness, while expressing respect and gratitude for the gifts Ayahuasca has bestowed on him throughout the 25 years he has been a practicing shaman. He takes the reader on a journey through his own discovery of other worlds, other dimensions, ‘alien’ entities and ‘plant teachers.’ The Shaman & Ayahuasca gives an overview of an entire cosmology with the potential to benefit all of mankind. It is the perfect book to introduce readers to the profound experiences of Ayahuasca.
86The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.
For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?
In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.
87The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom
88Medicine Woman
Join her as she is initiated into the Sisterhood and creates her own shield, which will show her the nature of her spiritual path (Spirit Woman). Follow her to the Yucatan, where the medicine wheel leads her, and she is faced with the terrifying reality of the butterfly tree (Jaguar Woman). Enter the Dreamtime with her, where she emerges in medieval England as Catherine, and encounters the Grandmother, who offers to show Andrews how to make her life one of goodness, power, adventure, and love (The Woman of Wyrrd).
Not all these stories describe the author's own spiritual experiences. Meet Sin Coraz?n, an initiate into the Sisterhood, whose husband abandons her. She nearly succumbs to her inner dark power and unleashes her rage on men and the Sisterhood (Dark Sister). Andrews also writes about the elder women of the Sisterhood: their loves, their lives, their losses (Tree of Dreams).
Andrews shows us how to channel our own spiritual and intellectual energy and balance the need for love with the desire for power (Love and Power). She takes the reader on numerous spiritual journeys that inevitably uplift.
89The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature
• Explores the techniques used by indigenous and Western peoples to learn directly from the plants themselves, including those of Henry David Thoreau, Goethe, and Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One Straw Revolution
• Contains leading-edge information on the heart as an organ of perception
All ancient and indigenous peoples insisted their knowledge of plant medicines came from the plants themselves and not through trial-and-error experimentation. Less well known is that many Western peoples made this same assertion. There are, in fact, two modes of cognition available to all human beings--the brain-based linear and the heart-based holistic. The heart-centered mode of perception can be exceptionally accurate and detailed in its information gathering capacities if, as indigenous and ancient peoples asserted, the heart’s ability as an organ of perception is developed.
Author Stephen Harrod Buhner explores this second mode of perception in great detail through the work of numerous remarkable people, from Luther Burbank, who cultivated the majority of food plants we now take for granted, to the great German poet and scientist Goethe and his studies of the metamorphosis of plants. Buhner explores the commonalities among these individuals in their approach to learning from the plant world and outlines the specific steps involved. Readers will gain the tools necessary to gather information directly from the heart of Nature, to directly learn the medicinal uses of plants, to engage in diagnosis of disease, and to understand the soul-making process that such deep connection with the world engenders.
90Reindeer people: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia
Russia has 5,000 miles of Arctic territory, more than any other country, and there are 20 different peoples living there, most of whom are reindeer people, clinging to the shreds of what they once were. Vitebsky lives with and studies the Eveny people. He is an anthropologist and he’s writing about acculturation, but it’s not full of the platitudes and clichés you normally read. It is an in-depth portrait of reindeer herders living at minus 50˚. [source]
91The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom: A Celtic Shaman's Sourcebook
92Weather Shamanism: Harmonizing Our Connection with the Elements
• Reveals that, intentionally or not, we affect the weather not only through our actions but also through our thoughts and emotions
• Explains shamanic techniques for working with the spiritual nature of weather
• Special section on “weather dancing” details both its ceremonial and therapeutic aspects
With the growing consensus that global warming is a fact comes the realization that the increasingly violent weather we are experiencing is its chief manifestation. Each storm, each flood, each blizzard seems to break 100-year-old records for both intensity and damage. Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases may be too little, too late.
Through a unique blend of anthropological research, shamanic journeys, and personal stories and anecdotes, Moss and Corbin show how humans and weather have always affected each other, and how it is possible to influence the weather. They present teachings directly from the spirits of weather that show how our thoughts and emotions affect weather energetics. They also reveal the ceremonial and therapeutic aspects of “weather dancing,” a practice used to communicate with the weather spirits.
Weather Shamanism is about transformation--of ourselves, and thus our world. It is about how we can develop an expanded worldview that honors spiritual realities in order to create a working partnership with the spirits of weather and thereby help to restore well-being and harmony to Earth.
93Welcome Home: Following Your Soul's Journey Home
94Healing States: A Journey Into the World of Spiritual Healing and Shamanism
95Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life
96Earth Quest - Earth Medicine: Revealing Hidden Treasures of the Native American Medicine Wheel - a Shamanic Way to Self-discovery
97Rewilding Yourself: Discover Your Soul’s Deep Roots Through Shamanic Practices (Therapeutic Shamanism #2)
For many centuries, earth-based spiritual practices have been persecuted and suppressed all over the world. They have been replaced by materialism, the myth of human supremacy, and with ungrounded religions. We have lost our connection with nature, our spiritual connection with the natural world. We have tamed most of the Earth to the extent that little true wilderness is left. We have destroyed indigenous cultures who lived in harmony with the environment for thousands of years. We have domesticated not only the world around us but ourselves too. In doing so, we have lost our way. We have become uprooted and adrift and are killing the ecosystems to which we belong.
The ancient practice of shamanism cultivates a deep spiritual connection to the Earth. It is not a religion. There is no dogma, and no belief is required. Instead, it offers practical methods that can heal our sense of disconnection, and provides a template for living in a healthy relationship with the Earth. Therapeutic Shamanism is rooted in these ancient practices and shows us how we can take them forward and make them relevant to modern-day life.
Following on from the highly-acclaimed first volume in this series, “Rewilding Yourself”, Volume 2 in the Therapeutic Shamanism Series is an in-depth and comprehensive guide, uniquely dedicated to shamanic lower-world practices. Eye-opening and full of life-changing insights, it also provides a practical, step-by-step guide to reconnecting to the sacredness of the earth and to rediscovering the deep, wild and connected roots of your own, true soul.
Praise for “The Shamanic Journey”, the first book in this series...
“The best book about shamanism that I have ever read”. “Practical, compassionate and wise”. “Clearly and intelligently written from a firm foundation of knowledge and experience”. “Intelligent and 'down to earth”. “A fantastic book!”. “Absorbing and fascinating”. “A very special and important book”. “Un-put-down-able”. “Life-changing”. “A clear map to an ethical, peaceful, grounded way of being”. “Very relevant and necessary for contemporary society”. “Full of profound wisdom and practical guidance”. “An instant classic”. “A beautifully crafted book”. “Thoughtful, accessible and practical”. “Warm, grounded and encouraging”. “Intelligent, beautifully written, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and deeply engaging.”.
98Spirits of the Earth: A Guide to Native American Nature Symbols, Stories, and Ceremonies
What does it mean if a hawk appears in a dream? What are the symbolic interpretations of a deer, a skunk, a raccoon? Lake-Thom, who has studied with the elders of many tribes, explains the significance of animal figures as manifestations of good or evil, and shows how we can develop our own powers of awareness and intuition. The first book of its kind, this practical and enlightening resource includes dozens of fashinating animal myths and legends, as well as exercises and activities that draw upon animal powers for guidance, healing, wisdom, and the expansion of spiritual influences in our lifes. You'll discover here:
How animals, birds, and insects act as signs and omens
The significance of vision quests
How to make and use a medicine wheel
The role of spirit symbols—and how they affect the unconscious
Excercises for creative dreaming
The power of the earth-healing ceremony
How to increase your spiritual strength and create sacred spaces
And more
99The Medicine Way: A Shamanic Path to Self Mastery (The "Earth Quest" Series)
100The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Explaining man's role in the universe as a unique expression of the total universe, and interdependent on it, Alan Watts offers a new understanding of personal identity. It reveals the mystery of existence, presenting and alternative to the feelings of alienation that is prevalent in Western society, and a vision of how we can come to understand the cosmic self that is within every living thing.
Not a business book, but *The Book* is one that I can say shines out among the other stars. It's hard to pick a book that's had the most impact on me, because they always have some effect. But there was something so calming, so reassuring about *The Book* that really helped me in a time of lots of self-doubt. I know this is supposed to focus on less "spiritual" books, and I'm not a religious guy, but I really enjoyed the notions put forth by *The Book*. Watts, the author, has some really profound thinking, and his writing guides you through Eastern thought for Western thinkers. I highly recommend this book for anyone searching for answers to the unknown. [source]
Book 20 Lesson: Distinction is not separation. To understand something, you must also understand its relationships with other parts of the environment or context around it. https://t.co/DB453aY565 [source]