In addition to telling the story of Bradford Keeney, the first non-African to be inducted as a shaman in both the Kung Bushman and Zulu cultures, the authors present applications of indigenous shamanistic concepts to the practice of helping and healing.

Magical healings, ghostly encounters, and alternate realities have been a part of American society since the first colonial settlements. Author Jack Montgomery provides ample historical and personal material to reveal a largely hidden world, primarily influenced by African, Celtic and German roots, that still exists today. It is a spiritual journey into the depths of American folk religion, shamanism and applied mysticism that spans over three decades of research.

Written for therapists, scholars, clergy, students, and those with an interest in non-traditional healing practices, this book tells the story of Bradford Keeney, the first non-African to be inducted as a shaman in the Kung Bushman and Zulu cultures.

A biography of Victor H. Anderson, a leading figure in American witchcraft, paganism and the Feri tradition.

The fascinating account of a pioneering ethnobotanist’s travels in the Amazon—at once a gripping adventure story, a passionate argument for conservationism, and an investigation into the healing power of plants, by the author of The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know For thousands of years, healers have used plants to cure illness. Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet—as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest. For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment—and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest.