This book brings a timely breath of fresh air into the labyrinth of material now available on shamanism involving the Amazon River Basin. The Second Edition of Amazon Shamans: Healing traditions from South America (first published in 2003), catches a moment in time when the ancient knowledge of the Amazon shamans was already changing rapidly. Through Michael Peter Langevin's journey together with his family, we get to take part of this fascinating region, and it's inherent ancient mysteries and miracles. Michael Peter Langevin has been on the shamanic path since 1973, and traveled extensively in Latin America. Over the years he has met and studied with many shamans in the Amazon River Basin and the Andean Mountain region. In this down-to-earth book he intersperses his own and his family’s journeys through the many countries surrounding the Amazon River Basin, inviting the reader to feel part of adventurous meetings with shamans, whose knowledge and wisdom stretches the mind to what is possible. Meetings that are often humorously conveyed, but there are also serious encounters when the peaceful life of remote villages clashes with modern life. Michael tells what it is like to see life from the eyes of someone else in a healing ceremony; about a Calling the Dead Ritual where he could actually see their spirits with his physical eyes; what it is like to experience the intensity of Ayahuasca ritual, and having your life revisited; but also about the strain of traveling with your children being far away from so-called civilization when they fall ill. The story of this book moves between Michael's shamanic initiations, and his joys and challenges of traveling as a family, coming together in the fearful situation of his sick children, which turns into a miraculous healing. This book is an exiting inroad to the mysteries of the Amazon shaman way, based on real life meetings and experiences. The Amazon shamans and healers hold libraries of knowledge that has been built through thousands of years of experimentation. Michael has an uncanny ability to translate the mysterious knowledge of Amazon shamanism into magical everyday practice, that is understandable and approachable. Throughout the book we are presented with basic Amazon shaman principles, procedures and rituals, adapted to work in any setting. These principles, procedures and rituals can be used to enhance the richness of life, to heal and even to question basic assumptions on how the world is connected and what is possible. In the words of Michael, “An invisible web of life connects everything in existence. Westerners often loose sight of this, but in the Amazon it's easy to remember, because it's presence is so visceral. Amazon shamans know that while reason is a useful tool, intuition and magic surpass it in most every way.” The journal-like, warm, free-flowing writing style adds to the intimacy and charm of this book. Michael is a convincing proponent of the Amazon way of spirituality and mysticism. He conveys a sense of urgency to change our direction in life and become more connected to nature, and to each other. In the concluding chapter of The Amazon Shamans: Healing traditions from South America he writes, “You must begin to speak with the plants, the wind and the stars. Only in these ways will you fully understand and appreciate your own inherent healing abilities as a natural part of the world.” As a handbook for Amazon shamanic healing and rituals, this volume is packed with powerful knowledge and practical techniques.

Reveals the existence of the 'Grand Medicine Society', a virtually unknown brotherhood of Shamans who share secrets of magical practices and healing techniques. The knowledge of this brotherhood has been preserved in pictographic scrolls.

Insights into Maya religious symbolism ; based on recent archaeological findings and the most up-to-date decodings of Maya hieroglyphics.

RIDMARK ARBAN was once an honored Swordbearer. Now he is a disgraced exile, outcast and alone. To redeem himself, he seeks the secret of the return of the Frostborn, and at last he has come to the grim citadel ruled by the Elder Shamans. But the Elder Shamans do not part with their secrets willingly. And their most dangerous secret might mean Ridmark's death...

The shaman is an enigmatic figure – a healer, magician and visionary who moves between the everyday world and the realm of gods and spirits. "The Shamans Quest" describes the spiritual journeys of four shamans from different corners of the world – the arctic snows of Canada, the central Australian desert, the sacred mountains of Japan, and the forests of north-western South America. From the North comes a tale of the Inuit shaman Enoyuk and his magical adventures with different gods and spirit-helpers. In the South we enter the world of the Aboriginal elder Kalu, with his sacred desert Dreamings, and in the East we meet Saimei, a Japanese shamaness who lives in a world of kami spirits. And in the West we encounter Baiya, a shaman from the Amazonian forest who undertakes visionary journeys so he may perform tasks of spiritual healing. In "The Shamans Quest" these four shamans finally come together at the mythic centre of the world, and it is a very special purpose which has brought them here – for they have come to witness the healing of the Earth. Exploring universal themes of spiritual renewal, "The Shamans Quest" shows us how we can find the Great Song of Life and learn to value the sacred qualities of Nature and the Universe. ,

This book offers an in-depth insight into post-socialist rural shamans in Mongolia thereby making a rare but important contribution to the ethnography of both Inner Asia and Southern Siberia. It examines the social making of shamans, in particular those of the Shishget depression of the northernmost borders of Mongolia. By analysing practices, discourses and performances in local and national arenas, the author traces the social constitution of the shamans’ inspirational power, examines the shamans’ performance of power during the seance, discusses the economy of reputation of successful shamans and scrutinizes their legitimizing practices. The study will be welcomed by students of social/cultural anthropology and religious studies with a particular interest in shamanism or ritual studies.

Long before any European ever set foot in North America, a young boy was about to enter manhood in his powerful tribe located in the Ohio Valley. It was 250 A.D. There was only one problem: the boy had been determined by tribal members to be the cause of bad luck. His efforts to redeem himself by participating in dangerous tribal ceremonies ultimately backfire making matters much much worse. With his very life now at stake, he is magically reborn and transformed against his will into a shamans apprentice. He starts the process of learning his new role with his new family and gradually begins to understand the magic in all of nature and in the parallel universe of the spirit world. He is acquiring the profound and crucial powers of a shaman of a mighty people; but also the humility and responsibility that comes with such power. The story is replete with descriptions of the daily activities of an early eastern woodland culture together with the native plant and wild animal interactions that often occurred to a people living in such close proximity to nature on a daily basis.

Shamanism can be defined as the practice of initiated shamans who are distinguished by their mastery of a range of altered states of consciousness. Shamanism arises from the actions the shaman takes in non-ordinary reality and the results of those actions in ordinary reality. It is not a religion, yet it demands spiritual discipline and personal sacrifice from the mature shaman who seeks the highest stages of mystical development.

Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this will be the definitive presentation of Dick's brilliant, and epic, final work. In The Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called "2-3-74", a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe "transformed into information". In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit, adding to, revising, and discarding theory after theory, mixing in dreams and visionary experiences as they occurred, and pulling it all together in three late novels known as the VALIS trilogy. In this abridgment, Jackson and Lethem serve as guides, taking the reader through the Exegesis and establishing connections with moments in Dick's life and work.