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Books > Mind, Body & Spirit > The Occult > General
Directed toward healing and personal development, 'Just Add Blood'
is an introduction to the use of the Anglo-Saxon runes. It serves
as both a point of reference and a guide in how to use the runes
and offers a fresh, contemporary look at the magical approach to
rune usage within Anglo-Saxon culture and spirituality.
A beautifully evocative account of one man's odyssey to discover
authentic and unbroken magical traditions in the East and reawaken
them in the West * Shares the similarities he discovered between
the teachings of the Indian tradition and the Western traditions of
magic, alchemy, and pagan pantheons * Introduces a wide cast of
characters, including Goa Gil, the world-renowned guru of the Goa
techno-trance scene, and Mahant Amar Bharti Ji, a "raised-arm
Baba," who for more than 40 years has held up one arm in devotion
to Shiva Beautifully detailing his spiritual pilgrimage from West
to East and back again, in the age of strife known as the Kali
Yuga, Aki Cederberg shares the authentic and unbroken magical
traditions he experienced in India and Nepal and how his search for
a spiritual homeland ultimately led him back to his native Europe.
Cederberg explains how his odyssey began as a search for spiritual
roots, something missing in the spiritually disconnected life of
the Western world. Traveling to India, he encounters the ancient
esoteric order of mystic, wild, naked holy men known as the Naga
Babas. Immersing himself in the teachings of the tradition, he
receives an initiation and partakes in the Kumbh Mela, the largest
spiritual gathering on Earth. He starts to glimpse resemblances and
analogies between the teachings of the Indian tradition and the
Western traditions of magic, alchemy, and pagan pantheons. After
extensive traveling and immersing himself in the extraordinary
world of India, Cederberg returns to his native soil of Europe.
Traveling to holy places where old pagan divinities still linger in
the shadows of the modern world, he dreams of forgotten gods and
contemplates how they might be awakened yet again, reconnecting the
West with its own pre-Christian spiritual traditions, sacred
landscapes, and soul.
"The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook" provides a practical guide to
ayahuasca use, aiding seekers in making right--and safe--decisions
about where to go, who to drink with, and what to expect.
Ayahuasca, the Amazonian psychoactive plant brew, has become
vastly popular. Once the sole purview of shamans and indigenous
native people in the great Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca is now
becoming well known--and widely used--around the globe. Today,
foreigners from all over the world flock in ever-burgeoning numbers
to the steamy Amazon, drinking bitter ayahuasca with shamans and
curanderos in order to access its potent healing and
spirit-enlivening effects. What began as a mere trickle of visitors
in the 1980s has become a surging riptide of seekers.
Chris Kilham (Fox News's "Medicine Hunter") has worked closely
with South American shamans for two decades and has sat in
ayahuasca ceremonies with at least 20 different shamans. Through
his "Ayahuasca Test Pilots" program, Kilham has brought numerous
people to the Amazon to engage in ceremonies with maestro
ayahuasceros. Clear, concise, straightforward, and well informed,
"The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook" is an indispensable guide for
anyone curious about this unusual plant medicine.
Unicorns have appeared in mythological and religious texts for
thousands of years. Often the case of a mistranslation, or mistaken
identity, these mystical creatures have built a legendary history
that now revels in the landscapes of modern fantasy fiction, novels
and popular culture in general. This beautiful new book contains a
huge range of gorgeous unicorns, painted in many different styles
by modern artists, but all treated with the respect and wonder such
a creature deserves. See the magical forests, and the life-giving
rivers of the elven realms, the flowing tresses of the princesses
and white witches who tend the unicorn, see the young and the old,
the white and the black unicorns, and submit to this joyful
celebration of a mythology brought to life.
It has been said that poetry can be a marker of where a poet has
been, or a way for a poet to point to places where we, the reader,
can go. Both types of poems appear in The School of Soft-Attention.
Not corralled to any one poetic style, the heart-mind-river that
forms this flowing collection has been shaped by the author's
diverse cross-cultural experiences, spiritual tutelage with a New
Mexican wisewoman and wilderness guide, and fueled by such
practices as meditation in the Zen tradition, mountain pilgrimages,
fasting in the deserts of New Mexico, and intensive dreamwork. At
every point along the way, the poems in The School of
Soft-Attention invite the reader to turn to a new way of seeing, a
new way of paying attention to the life within and around us.
As our relationship with the world unravels and needs to take a new
form, The Wanton Green presents a collection of inspiring,
provoking and engaging essays by modern pagans about their own
deep, passionate and wanton relationships with the earth. "Where do
we locate the sacred? In a place, a meeting, memory, a momentary
glimpse? The Wanton Green provides no easy answers and instead,
offers a multitude of perspectives on how our relationships with
the earth, the sacred, the world through which we move are forged
and remade." Phil Hine. Contents: Foreword (Graham Harvey) ,"She
said: 'You have to lose your way'"(Maria van Daalen), Fumbling in
the landscape (Runic John), Finding the space, finding the words
(Rufus Harrington),Stone in my bones (Sarah Males), A Heathen in
place: working with Mugwort (Robert Wallis),Wild, wild water (Lou
Hart), Facing the waves (Gordon MacLellan),The dragon waters of
place: a journey to the source (Susan Greenwood), Catching the
Rainbow Lizard (Maria van Daalen), The rite to roam (Julian Vayne),
Places of Power (Jan Fries), Natural magic is art (Greg Humphries),
Pagan Ecology: on our perception of nature, ancestry and home (Emma
Restall Orr), Because we have no imagination, (Susan Cross), The
crossroads of perception, (Shani Oates), Devon, Faeries and me,
(Woody Fox), Lud's Church, (Gordon MacLellan), Places of spirit and
spirits of place: of Fairy and other folk, and my Cumbrian bones
(Melissa Montgomery), A life in the woods: protest site paganism,
(Adrian Harris) We first met in the north, (Barry Patterson),
Museum or Mausoleum (Mogg Morgan), Hills of the ancestors,
townscapes of artisans (Jenny Blain), Smoke and mirrors (Stephen
Grasso), America (Maria van Daalen), Standing at the crossroads,
Meet the authors . About the editors Gordon MacLellan is a shaman,
storyteller and artist whose work sets out to find ways of
celebrating the relationships between people, place and wildlife.
Gordon's books include Talking to the Earth, Sacred Animals and
Celebrating Nature (all with Capall Bann), StarMatter and the
Piatkus Guide to Shamanism Susan Cross is a poet, heritage and
environmental interpretation consultant and occasional pirate.
About a decade ago she realised that she has probably always been
some kind of animist mystic and since then has endeavoured to make
that a more conscious, clearer and brighter part of her life.
The 'Shamanic Plant Medicine' series acts as an introduction to
specific teacher plants used by shamans in a variety of cultures to
facilitate spirit communion, healing, divination and personal
discovery, and which are increasingly known, used and respected in
Western society by modern shamans as a means of connecting to
spirit. Ayahuasca is the shamanic medicine of the Amazonian
rainforest and has been used by shamans for millennia to induce
visionary states wherein they astrally travel to other locations,
see the future or carry out healings for others. It is increasingly
used in the West and is perhaps the best known of shamanic plant
teachers.
When composer and Bard College music professor, Margaret De Wys,
learned she had breast cancer, the diagnosis shattered her
comfortable life. Seized by fear, crushed by existential
loneliness, she couldn't respond when her loved ones reached out to
her. To everyone's concern, the illness propelled her away from her
family and deep into the Amazon to work with Carlos, a charismatic
Shuar shaman and master of medicina milenaria, an ancient mystical
tradition with a highly sophisticated and precise technology of
healing. In BLACK SMOKE, De Wys writes of her amazing encounter
with Carlos as he guided her into a world of potent visionary
plants, harrowing initiations, ritual purification and miraculous
healings, including the complete disappearance of her cancer. It
was, as Carlos called it, "the path of the warrior." Sharing a
journey not only through cancer, but, also, through
self-transformation, De Wys provides an intimate inside look at the
shamanic ceremonies of ayahuasca and the ways this spiritual
medicine can heal the emotional origins of disease now plaguing our
modern technological culture. Capturing her physical, emotional and
"holy voyage" through a world that differs vastly from our own, she
offers a revealing chronicle of spiritual insight and a trenchant
exploration of the limits of idealism. She not only provides a
probing look at how our society can learn and benefit from
indigenous wisdom, but, also, weaves a cautionary tale about how
potentially dangerous it is-on both sides-to try to cross those
frontiers. * Explains in vivid detail De Wys's experience of being
healed from cancer through visionary ayahuasca rituals in Ecuador *
Describes her apprenticeship and relationship with the shaman who
cured her * Explores the ways this spiritual medicine can heal the
emotional origins of disease now plaguing our modern technological
culture
'Shaman', meaning 'intermediary between spirit and the natural
world', has become a much overused word in the West. It's not a job
title one can give oneself, and in indigenous societies, a shaman
is usually born to this role. Ya'Acov Darling Khan is one of the
few westerners who have been acknowledged as shamans by indigenous
elders or teachers. After being hit by lightning, Ya'Acov took a
30-year journey into the heart of shamanism to seek his own
healing, and to learn how he could serve others with the wisdom he
acquired through his experiences. He has studied with indigenous
teachers from the Arctic Circle to the USA and South America, and
has taken part in ceremonies in such diverse locations as Welsh
caves to the depths of the Amazon rainforest. Nowadays, Ya'Acov
continues to study and regularly journeys to the Ecuadorean Amazon
to work alongside the Achuar and Sapara people. For thousands of
years, shamans helped the people in their communities remain in
balance with themselves, each other, the natural world and the
spirit world. This beautifully written book is not only a
powerfully honest, humorous and inspiring memoir, but a guidebook
for those from many cultures and walks of life wishing to return to
their indigenous roots, and be part of midwifing a more benign
human presence here on Earth as part of a new dream.
Paganism 101 is an introduction to Paganism written by 101 Pagans.
Grouped into three main sections, Who we are, What we believe and
What we do, twenty topics fundamental to the understanding of the
main Pagan traditions are each introduced by essay and then
elaborated upon by other followers and practitioners, giving the
reader a greater flavor of the variety and diversity that Paganism
offers. With introductory essays from leading writers such as Emma
Restall Orr, Mark Townsend, Brendan Myers, Jane Meredith, Alaric
Albertsson and Rachel Patterson and with supporting vignettes from
those at the heart of the Pagan community, Paganism 101 offers a
truly unique insight.
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