In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. 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.

These spiritual lessons are based on Native American shamanism but fit a wide range of interests from yoga and alternative medicine to Bible study and nature hiking. Hands-on exercises, step-by-step instructions for ceremonies, and sketches by the author's wife explain how to clear spaces of unwanted energy, create simple ceremonies, connect with spirit guides and angels, and interpret symbols. An extended discussion tells how to make a medicine wheel that resembles a labyrinth and use it as an engine for distance healing. Additional ceremonies for daily living, healing the earth, and soul retrieval are also described, and the spiritual quest itself is shown to follow the process of choosing a sacred place in nature, finding a sacred place within oneself, and connecting to the inner and outer worlds. Readers are encouraged to keep a notebook about their spiritual growth and refer to the key words and suggestions for internet research that are included.

Out of the Forest of Time come two Gods for the Twenty-First Century. Join Andrew Anderson as he makes a pilgrimage to discover more about the ancient Celtic Bear Gods. Weaving together archaeology, folklore and spiritual practice, this book pieces together the evidence to create a clearer picture of who Artio and Artaois were and how they can be honoured today. The journey will take the reader from the medieval city of Bern to the depths of an English forest, from the Rothar Mountains in Germany to the Highlands of Scotland, from the slopes of Glastonbury Tor to the rocky headland of Tintagel. With voices from an array of practitioners and experts, this is a journey back to the very beginning of human belief.

This title is a highly illustrated manual that offers a range of practical techniques that can help bring love into being through the tools of magic. These tools include: ritual, natural magic, crystals, herbs, spices, the elements and heavenly bodies.

A revealing window into the secret and seductive world of Santeria.

- A Santeria priest discloses information never before revealed to outsiders.

- Removes the veil of occultism from Santeria to show it as a highly spiritual, thriving religion.

Initiated into the Santeria priesthood at the age of seven, Raul Canizares unveils in "Cuban Santeria" the secret and seductive world of this rapidly growing, yet largely misunderstood, Afro-Cuban religion. With the knowledge of an insider and the insight of a scholar, Canizares astutely examines the practice of Santeria, revealing many of its hidden dimensions while simultaneously providing a fascinating account of its unique textured mix of African, Cuban, and Catholic traditions.

The Cuban-born author describes the practices and rituals of the followers of Santeria--from magical herbal prescription and healing to spiritism and animal sacrifice--and explains how for many years the religion has been maintained under the guise of Catholicism to avoid religious persecution. Most initiates are sworn to a code of silence, but Canizares believes that the time has come to move Santeria, a religion of beauty and resilience, out of the darkness and into the light so that a more accurate picture of this rich tradition can emerge.

Throughout history, humans have always been fascinated by drugs and altered states. Despite the risk of addiction, many have used drugs as technologies to induce moments of meaning-making transcendence. This book traces the quest for transcendence and meaning through drugs in the modern West. Starting with the Romantic fascination with opium, it goes on to chronicle the discovery of anesthetics, psychiatric and religious interest in hashish, the bewitching power of mescaline and hallucinogenic fungi, as well as the more recent uses of LSD. It fills a major gap in our understanding of contemporary alternative and in the study of countercultures and popular culture. Today we are seeing increased social and scientific attention to both the positive and the negative effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly following the legalization of marijuana for medicinal and/or recreational use in some US states, as well as court cases involving the sacramental use of drugs. This fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of the controversial relationship between drugs and spirituality could not be more timely.

In the early 11th century, the Kashmiri philosopher Abhinavagupta proposed panentheism-seeing the divine as both immanent in the world and at the same time as transcendent-as a way to reclaim the material world as something real, something solid. His theology understood the world itself, with its manifold inhabitants-from gods to humans to insects down to the merest rock-as part of the unfolding of a single conscious reality, Siva. This conscious singularity-the word "god" here does not quite do it justice-with its capacity to choose and will, pervades all through, top to bottom; as Abhinavagupta writes, "even down to a worm - when they do their own deeds, that which is to be done first stirs in the heart." His panentheism proposed an answer to a familiar conundrum, one we still grapple with today: Consciousness is so unlike matter. How does consciousness actually connect to the materiality of our world? To put this in more familar twenty-first-century terms, how does mind connect to body? These questions drive Loriliai Biernacki's The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and New Materialism. Biernacki draws on Abhinavagupta's thought-and particularly his yet-untranslated, philosophical magnum opus, the Isvara Pratyabhijna Vivrti Vimarsini-to think through contemporary issues such as the looming prospect of machine AI, ideas about information, and our ecological crises. She argues that Abhinavagupta's panentheism can help us understand our current world and can contribute to a New Materialist re-envisioning of the relationship that humans have with matter.

Pantheism is the idea that God and the world are identical-that the creator, sustainer, destroyer, and transformer of all things is the universe itself. From a monotheistic perspective, this notion is irremediably heretical since it suggests divinity might be material, mutable, and multiple. Since the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, Western thought has therefore demonized what it calls pantheism, accusing it of incoherence, absurdity, and-with striking regularity-monstrosity. In this book, Mary-Jane Rubenstein investigates this perennial repugnance through a conceptual genealogy of pantheisms. What makes pantheism "monstrous"-at once repellent and seductive-is that it scrambles the raced and gendered distinctions that Western philosophy and theology insist on drawing between activity and passivity, spirit and matter, animacy and inanimacy, and creator and created. By rejecting the fundamental difference between God and world, pantheism threatens all the other oppositions that stem from it: light versus darkness, male versus female, and humans versus every other organism. If the panic over pantheism has to do with a fear of crossed boundaries and demolished hierarchies, then the question becomes what a present-day pantheism might disrupt and what it might reconfigure. Cobbling together heterogeneous sources-medieval heresies, their pre- and anti-Socratic forebears, general relativity, quantum mechanics, nonlinear biologies, multiverse and indigenous cosmologies, ecofeminism, animal and vegetal studies, and new and old materialisms-Rubenstein assembles possible pluralist pantheisms. By mobilizing this monstrous mixture of unintentional God-worlds, Pantheologies gives an old heresy the chance to renew our thinking.

The New World came into being in the Europeans' encounter with the indigenous religions and cultures of Central and South America. Yet these religions remain little known or are filtered through inadequate categories such as "animism," "superstition," or "syncretism." In this volume, an international group of the finest authorities working on the subject provide rich descriptions and provocative interpretations of religious ideas rarely gathered in one place. Since an exhaustive treatment would be impossible (it is estimated that there could be as many as fifteen thousand different South American languages living or extinct), the aim is to illustrate something of the range of religious beliefs and practices through cases that are exemplary. The first part of the book describes the religious views of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, dating from the time prior to contact with Europeans. The rest of the book treats contemporary cases from the major cultural and geographical areas of Central and South America. Whether the focus is on myth, architecture, ritual celebrations, or shamanic practice, each essay provides a distinctive profile of the culture in question.Contributors include David Carrasco, Edgardo J. Cordeu, Mercedes de la Garza, Alfredo Lopez Austin, Juan Ossia Acuna, Alejandra Siffredi, Lawrence E. Sullivan, Terence Turner, Peter van der Loo, Robin M. Wright, and Reiner Tom Zuidema.

When people think of fairies they often picture beings who dwell in the wilderness, solidly anchored in the past. Yet the truth is that fairies are as present and active in the world today as ever, found as easily in cities as they are in wild places. 21st Century Fairy explores fairy beliefs and encounters in the modern world, framed by folklore, modern fiction and personal experience, to show readers the possibilities that are out there. Learn whether fairies evolve and what a modern city in the fairy world might be like. Be open to the possibility of tech fairies existing alongside fairies in nature and learn how they interact with human technology. Much like the human world, the fairy world is stunningly diverse and constantly changing. 21st Century Fairy is a guide to seekers who want a modern context for these ancient beings.

Ask a random American what springs to mind about Sedona, Arizona, and they will almost certainly mention New Age spirituality. Nestled among stunning sandstone formations, Sedona has built an identity completely intertwined with that of the permanent residents and throngs of visitors who insist it is home to powerful vortexes-sites of spiraling energy where meditation, clairvoyance, and channeling are enhanced. It is in this uniquely American town that Susannah Crockford took up residence for two years to make sense of spirituality, religion, race, and class. Many people move to Sedona because, they claim, they are called there by its special energy. But they are also often escaping job loss, family breakdown, or foreclosure. Spirituality, Crockford shows, offers a way for people to distance themselves from and critique current political and economic norms in America. Yet they still find themselves monetizing their spiritual practice as a way to both "raise their vibration" and meet their basic needs. Through an analysis of spirituality in Sedona, Crockford gives shape to the failures and frustrations of middle- and working-class people living in contemporary America, describing how spirituality infuses their everyday lives. Exploring millenarianism, conversion, nature, food, and conspiracy theories, Ripples of the Universe combines captivating vignettes with astute analysis to produce a unique take on the myriad ways class and spirituality are linked in contemporary America.

Deeply rooted in environmentalism and activism, Honoring the Wild answers crucially pertinent questions while driving at lasting change. From political demonstrations to personal calls, Irisanya Moon offers a collection of stories and lessons, as told by Reclaiming Witches from around the world, about the facts and fears, the confessions and collaborations within the Reclaiming tradition's own timeline of activism. Honoring the Wild inspires and informs creativity and purpose while reminding us of all that has come and of all that is left to do. May the wild be blessed and healed by this spell of intention and inspiration.

The Temple Priestesses of Antiquity tells the story of the Oracles and Sibyls, Seers, Psychics, Sacred Dancers and Healers of ancient civilizations. They were empowered women who enthralled those who sought their advice and served the Goddess they revered. Tales about ancient Priestesses and the Sacred Temples where they lived, prayed and worked thousands of years ago, have fascinated archaeologists and historians for decades. Living in complex temple structures above ground and in underground cavernous tunnels, they shared vows of chastity and lived a dutiful and respected life. The Temple Priestesses of Antiquity is a story of these women, some well known and others forgotten to the centuries.

The Gauls were the ancient Celtic people of continental Europe. Deep in the Black Forest, they worshiped Abnoba, the goddess of the wilds. In this book you will learn of the connections that Abnoba has to the forests, rivers, springs and wildlife and explore what we know of the historical record, before looking to similar goddesses. Explore a year of festivals along with tips for building an altar, a discussion of prayers and meditations and a Gaulish dedication ritual. Uncover what Abnoba can bring to your life and the many ways that she can enrich it.

Among the topics considered in this classic study are world origins and supernatural powers, attitudes toward the dead, the medicine man and shaman, hunting and gathering rituals, war and planting ceremonies, and newer religions, such as the Ghost Dance and the Peyote Religion.
"The distinctive contribution of ["Red Man's Religion"] is the treatment of topics, the insight and the perspective of the author, and her ability to transmit these to the reader. . . . Trais and aspects of religion are not treated as abstract entitites, to be enumerated and summated, assigned a geographic distribution, and then abandoned. No page is a dry recital; each is an illumination. Insight and wisdom are framed in poetic prose. An offering of information in such a medium merits gratitude."--"American Anthropologist"

In Europe and North and South America during the early modern period, people believed that their dreams might be, variously, messages from God, the machinations of demons, visits from the dead, or visions of the future. Interpreting their dreams in much the same ways as their ancient and medieval forebears had done-and often using the dream-guides their predecessors had written-dreamers rejoiced in heralds of good fortune and consulted physicians, clerics, or practitioners of magic when their visions waxed ominous. Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions traces the role of dreams and related visionary experiences in the cultures within the Atlantic world from the late thirteenth to early seventeenth centuries, examining an era of cultural encounters and transitions through this unique lens. In the wake of Reformation-era battles over religious authority and colonial expansion into Asia, Africa, and the Americas, questions about truth and knowledge became particularly urgent and debate over the meaning and reliability of dreams became all the more relevant. Exploring both indigenous and European methods of understanding dream phenomena, this volume argues that visions were central to struggles over spiritual and political authority. Featuring eleven original essays, Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions explores the ways in which reports and interpretations of dreams played a significant role in reflecting cultural shifts and structuring historic change. Contributors: Emma Anderson, Mary Baine Campbell, Luis Corteguera, Matthew Dennis, Carla Gerona, Maria V Jordan, Luis Filipe Silverio Lima, Phyllis Mack, Ann Marie Plane, Andrew Redden, Janine Riviere, Leslie Tuttle, Anthony F. C. Wallace.

In Practically Pagan - An Alternative Guide to Planet Friendly Living, Mabh Savage brings Pagan paths and green living together. Mabh Savage explores the connections between environmentalism and paganism, shedding light on the small but powerful changes individuals can make to live a planet-friendly lifestyle.

Pantheon - The Norse explores the beliefs and practices found within Heathenry including a look at cosmology and various celebrations. It also discusses the gods and spirits that are acknowledged within the belief system giving brief descriptions of each and how they were and are understood. Designed as an introduction to the Norse pantheon, this book will guide beginners into a basic understanding of the beliefs and offer further suggested resources for those who want to dive deeper.

In the mid-1970s, A Course in Miracles was published. It is a self-study course designed to help you undo your conscious and unconscious beliefs that you are separate from God, so that you can return to your natural State of Boundless Love, Peace, and Joy. Since then, it has become the 'Holy Book' of millions of people worldwide who have experienced a loving transformation to a more peaceful experience. Practicing A Course in Miracles and The Way of A Course in Miracles are practical companions to The Message of A Course in Miracles, the first volume of the Plain Language A Course in Miracles. Where MACIM lays out the theoretical foundation of the Course, PACIM provides a year of practical lessons to transform your experience to peace, and WACIM provides answers to common questions. These volumes also contain mentoring notes from the translator, a student and teacher of the Course since 1984. Together, these books offer a clear means for attaining lasting inner peace.

Despite modern Paganism being one of the fastest growing new religious movements in Britain and the USA, there is no up-to-date straightforward and informed introduction to modern Paganism from a Christian perspective. The Shaken Path addresses that gap.

In this volume Levi-Strauss explores the mythologies of the Americas, with occasional incursions into European and Japanese folklore, tales of sloths and squirrels interweave with discussions of Freud, Saussure, "signification," and plays by Sophocles and Labiche. The author also critiques psychoanalytic interpretation and defends the interpretive powers of structuralism.

Belonging to the Earth is a collection of personal insights, stories of journeys and rituals, community events and conversations between activists, First Nations community leaders, and those practicing nature spirituality. Each part of the book offers thoughtful and personal perspectives about connecting with the land, paying respect to ancestral traditions, Indigenous cultures and First Nations people, and finding ways to practice nature spirituality with integrity. Each part of the journey of the book explores how we can all come together to work for a better future and develop a greater understanding of how we belong to the Earth.