Chronicles the first modern ethnomycological and historically documented look at certain species of fungi and their past and present use as a source of healing, both body and mind as in ancient primitive archaic rituals; and also as an aphrodisiac. Modern day use of these fungi originating from seven personal documented exchanges of communication between author John Allen and Sasha Shulgin, and Jochen Gartz that describe--in detail and photographs--the effects of both the ludible use of psilocybian fungi throughout the ages to produce intense sexual euphoric unions. Other families of fungi that produce similar effects but contain different chemicals can result in timeless hours of pure orgasmic pleasure. The aphrodisiac effects of mushrooms were first reported around the time of the conquest of Nueva Espana. Francisco Flores, Diego Duran and Bernardo de Sahagun described mushrooms used by Aztecs priests and their followers to produce "provoked lust". In the mid-20th Century several noted scholars, like R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Weston LaBarre, Maria Sabina, Florence Cowan, Eunice Pike, Tim Leary, Richard Alpert and Aldous Huxley reported experiencing erotic euphoric effects and observing erotic sensuality in others while they were under the influence psilocybine. Many claimed they had found the perfect sexual aphrodisiac. In some of these modern anecdotal materials we have been taught that the majority of Mazatec Indian shamans, curanderas, brujos, sabios/sabias, and their Indian participants of mushroom vigils and Velada's, all refrain from sexual activity 4 days before and 4 days after a mushroom ceremony. To do so, as many of the medicine men and woman all seem to agree on, is that it, "would bring about a lasting madness." Yet some Indians have been reported to regularly participate in sexual activities while on mushrooms as well as on peyote. In the Florentine Codex, Sahagun, a devout catholic, said that the mushrooms "aun provocan a lujuria," i.e., that they "even provoke lust." Wasson believed that Sahagun may have been responsible for adding these words, and wondered why they were inserted. He inquired if they were meant to either excite the sixteenth century readers seeking always the Fountain of Youth and new aphrodisiacs, or to incite his pious readers against the mushrooms? Allen shares with the reader, a chronicle embellished from notes in his personal files and memories of his experiences with sacred mushrooms and sexual erotica. He features pre---historical evidence of such sexual activities between humans, animals, sex and mushrooms, and phallic symbolism, rites of spring and fertility festivals.

Filled with beautiful color photographs, "Divine Mushrooms and Fungi" is a must-have for anyone who wants to step into the magic mushroom field of ethnomycology. With detailed information on how to distinguish magic mushrooms from potentially dangerous lookalikes, this guide also features a detailed history of the ritual use of magic mushrooms among pre-Columbian inhabitants of the New World and the evolution of the use of psychedelic fungi from sacred rituals to today's recreational use. Common epithets used for naming mushrooms around the world are accompanied by photographs and descriptions of both magic mushrooms and their poisonous lookalikes. An ideal companion for mushroom-gathering forays, "Divine Mushrooms and Fungi" provides readers with the sacred knowledge that can lead to a visionary experience.

A haunting, post-structuralist view of romance and the existential "Dasein."

Evocative poems from an aesthetic and intellectual sensibility that is constantly in a state of perpetual movement.

This study investigates the US Army after the end of the Cold War, specifically how the "Victory Disease" resulting from winning the Cold War caused complacency in the US Army which eventually led to the development of a flawed operational concept. This operational concept and its effects on the US Army are examined with respect to recent developments in US Army doctrine, weapons procurement, and force structure. The US Army is compared to the Israeli Army between 1967 and 1973 to draw very interesting and close parallels concerning how the victory disease affected the Israeli Army after its victory over the Arab allies in 1967 and how complacency in the post-1967 Israeli Army also led to a flawed operational concept, which, in turn, resulted in vulnerabilities that Israel's enemies were able to capitalize on at the onset of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. This study explains how fundamental shifts in how armies prepare for future conflicts can cause vulnerabilities that an enemy can exploit.

In this tightly argued work, Dr. Wallen draws out the similarities and connections which exist between T.S. Eliot and several writers of the nineteen-thirties. Given the influence, novelty and (in the early years of the decade at least) notoriety of Eliot's poetry throughout this period, it is natural to expect his influence to be, in some ways, very direct and observable. The author chooses to single out five poets and one novelist of the period for special and detailed attention. This is due to his belief that Eliot's creative influence on the nineteen-thirties can be best demonstrated in all its complexity by reference to a number of specific writers. In other words, the connections between Eliot and these six writers typifies the nature of Eliot's influence on the decade as a whole. This influence moves from virtual plagiarism in Ronald Bottrall's case to a smart but derivative stylishness in the works of Auden and Spender-and finally through to a more intelligent and indirect debt in the case of William Empson and Evelyn Waugh.

The present work examines the way in which the travels and journeys in Arabia and other Muslim lands of Richard Francis Burton, the nineteenth-century explorer and writer have, since the influential work of Edward W. Said on Orientalism, been somewhat undervalued by contemporaries. It aims to offer a re-evaluation of those works and their contribution to Victorian knowledge. It also offers a challenge to Said's account of Burton and, particularly in the second part of the book, looks at the negative ways in which Burton has been viewed more generally by post-colonial theorists since Said's influential work. A further aim of the book is to bring together the viewpoints on Burton of the biographers and postcolonial critics who appear to have previously worked largely in isolation from one another. It is the author's belief that such a union will lead to a mutually beneficial process of cross-fertilisation that will reveal a more complicated-and also more accurate-Burton for detailed future consideration and discussion.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

New Perspectives on Sir Richard Burton by Dr. John Wallen provides exactly that: a fresh perspective from which to view one of the leading explorers and writers of the Victorian age. Burton has frequently been vilified by postcolonial writers as somehow an archetypal representative of the colonial mentality that reached out to grab an often unknown world with its all-encompassing ""imperial eyes"". On the other hand, hardly any figure of the period has proved so enduringly popular with average readers and enthusiasts of the Victorian age. In this scholarly book, Dr. Wallen seeks to understand this dichotomy, tracing it back to Burton's creation of his own popular myth in his life and writings: a process of self aggrandizement that has been complicated by Edward Said's more recent ambiguity on the figure of Burton in his seminal work Orientalism. In this new and improved second edition of New Perspectives, prominence is given to Burton's own myth making and his little known activities as a member of the secretive Victorian men's club known as the ""Cannibal Club"". A Foreword is provided by Professor Dane Kennedy of George Washington University.

A research monograph on the mid-Victorian rise of Sir Richard Burton, Orientalism and the phenomenon of the Cannibal Club is overdue as, although it has been dealt with superficially many times, there has never been a book length treatment which focuses clearly on the whole arc of its historical development and its relevance to the undercutting of the standard view of the Victorians as almost exclusively prudish and deeply moralistic about sex and pornography. Furthermore, the importance of the Cannibal Club extends beyond the subject of sexuality and into the fields of race and gender. This book length treatment gives the opportunity to examine the ways in which this secretive men's club both reflected and helped to create some extreme Victorian ideas about race, sex and gender which, although a background theme to the more acceptable moral righteousness of the period, nevertheless has reverberated with powerful emphasis, even down to the present day. The result of this has been to create an ambiguous, but overlapping, secret place where normally "respectable" citizens might indulge their taste for extreme and elitist views in "deviant" but socially permitted ways. This is an interest that grew out of Dr.Wallen's research on Richard Burton who was a prominent member and leading light of the club. The Cannibal Club was founded in 1863 and grew out of the split between monogenists and polygenists in the Ethnological Society which had been formed in London in 1843. The monogenists, following Darwin's lead, believed that man, in spite of certain differences, constituted a single species and they tended towards liberal politics. The polygenists, on the other hand, believed in a multiple genesis of man and were a strongly conservative group with racist tendencies. The victory of the monogenists in the Ethnological Society led James Hunt and Richard Burton to set up a rival organisation called "The Anthropological Society of London" with polygenist theories and a strong belief in the minute collection of data as a means of proving the differences between races. The Society was a supporter of such pseudo-scientific practices as phrenology and the measurement of skull size and shape with craniometers and other instruments of anatomical measurement. During the American Civil War, the Anthropological Society was a strong supporter of the Confederacy and its pro-slavery policies. An off-shoot of the Anthropological Society was the Cannibal Club which promoted the beliefs of the Society in a more personal and Dionysian way (as with most men's clubs of the Victorian period, large quantities of alcohol were imbibed during the club's meetings). The basic idea was that a group of intelligent and intellectually advanced English gentlemen should celebrate their innate superiority over other racial and social groups through the discussion of topics that were normally off-bounds in academic circles. The topics for debate included sex, pornography, religion and race. Prominent members included Hunt, Burton, Swinburne and Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) . The style and tenor of the club's meetings can be gauged by the fact that its symbol was a mace carved to resemble an African head chewing on a thigh bone. Swinburne even wrote a Cannibal Catechism which was thought of as a kind of club anthem.