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.

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.

In a Tirio village deep in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, the shaman Nahtahlah has a place of honor in his tribe. Young Kamanya wants to learn the healing secrets of the forest plants--he hopes that he, too, will become the tribe’s shaman, so that he can cure his people. When the villagers fall sick with an illness that Nahtahlah cannot cure, many lose faith in the shaman’s wisdom--until a foreign woman helps them understand its value while giving Kamanya an opportunity to realize his dream. Lynne Cherry returns to the rain forest with ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin to tell an important story about the healing plants of the earth-and why we must protect them.

Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon tells the life story of Mandu da Silva, the last living jaguar shaman among the Baniwa people in the northwest Amazon. In this original and engaging work, Robin M. Wright, who has known and worked with da Silva for more than thirty years, weaves the story of da Silva’s life together with the Baniwas’ society, history, mythology, cosmology, and jaguar shaman traditions. The jaguar shamans are key players in what Wright calls “a nexus of religious power and knowledge” in which healers, sorcerers, priestly chanters, and dance-leaders exercise complementary functions that link living specialists with the deities and great spirits of the cosmos. By exploring in depth the apprenticeship of the shaman, Wright shows how jaguar shamans acquire the knowledge and power of the deities in several stages of instruction and practice. This volume is the first mapping of the sacred geography (“mythscape”) of the Northern Arawak–speaking people of the northwest Amazon, demonstrating direct connections between petroglyphs and other inscriptions and Baniwa sacred narratives as a whole. In eloquent and inviting analytic prose, Wright links biographic and ethnographic elements in elevating anthropological writing to a new standard of theoretically aware storytelling and analytic power.

Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar offer an in-depth exploration of how Amerindian epistemology and ontology concerning indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon have spread to Western societies, and of how indigenous, mestizo, and cosmopolitan cultures have engaged with and transformed these forest traditions. The volume focuses on the use of ayahuasca, a psychoactive drink essential in many indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon. Ayahuasca use has spread to countries far beyond its Amazonian origin, spurring a wide variety of legal and cultural responses. The essays in this volume look at how these responses have influenced ritual design and performance in traditional and non-traditional contexts, how displaced indigenous people and rubber tappers are engaged in the creative reinvention of rituals, and how these rituals help build ethnic alliances and cultural and political strategies. These essays explore important classic and contemporary issues in anthropology, including the relationship between the expansion of ecotourism and ethnic tourism and recent indigenous cultural revival and the emergence of new ethnic identities. The volume also examines trends in the commodification of indigenous cultures in post-colonial contexts, the combination of shamanism with a network of health and spiritually related services, and identity hybridization in global societies. The rich ethnographies and extensive analysis of these essays will allow deeper understanding of the role of ritual in mediating the encounter between indigenous traditions and modern societies.

Ostapenko goes from Canada to Peru to Mexico on a journey of spiritual discovery. He enters deep into the secret world of spirits and magic and experiences things which he never thought were possible. This intimate and often humorous account offers an insider's view of Amazonian shamanism and radical Christianity.