Shamanism

'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 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.

ENTER THE SOUL OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

The Shaman's Guide to Power Animals is a cross-cultural journey into the mystical symbolism and stories of almost 200 birds, fish, insects, and mammals drawn from ancient and indigenous cultures worldwide. It is a spiritual tool for understanding omens when an animal crosses your path or appears in a dream, or to apply in situations where you need protection or want to chart a course or locate resources. Incorporating channeled messages from the Power Animals, it explains:

• What Power Animals are and how to identify yours.
• Rituals, prayers, and affirmations you can use to ask a Power Animal for its help.
• Archetypal powers associated with different Power Animals and ways to activate them.
• How a Power Animal can act as your go-between to the spirit world to communicate with the dead and ancestral spirits or help you to recruit a multidimensional support team.
• Why you never need feel alone once you know you belong to the kinship of nature.
• Crystals, colors, and physical energy centers that correspond to each Power Animal.

Whether you live in a mountain cabin or a city loft, plant spirits present themselves to us everywhere. Since its first printing in 1995, Plant Spirit Medicine has passed hand-to-hand among countless readers drawn to indigenous spirituality and all things alive and green. In this updated edition, Eliot Cowan invites us to discover the healing power of plants--not merely their physical medicinal properties, but the deeper wisdom and gifts that they offer.

Enriched by many new insights, this guide unfolds as a series of chapters on how plant spirit medicine helped Cowan resolve specific challenges in his own healing journey and in his work with others. In the telling, we learn how plant spirits can directly communicate with and aid all of us, including:

Plant spirit medicine's five-element view of healing
- Ways to assess our own states of health and balance
- Receiving guidance from plants, including those found within herbal preparations
- New passages on community and sacred plants such as peyote, marijuana, and tobacco
- Additional interviews with plant shamans across diverse traditions, and more

A shaman can serve as a healer, storyteller, and a keeper of wisdom-but most of all, teaches Sandra Ingerman, Shamans radiate a light that uplifts everybody. In our culture, we tend to focus on methods and forget that the greatest way we can offer healing to the world is to become a vessel of love. With Walking in Light, this renowned teacher offers a complete guide for living in a shamanic way-empowered by purpose, focus, and a deep connection to the spiritual dimensions.

Walking in Light is a resource filled with practical techniques, indigenous wisdom, and invaluable guidance for both new and experienced shamanic practitioners. Most importantly, Sandra Ingerman illuminates the meaning behind the practices-revealing our universe as a place where spirit is the ultimate reality, where our intentions shape our world, and where unseen allies support us on every step of our journey.

Shamanism begins as a personal revelation and inner healing, then evolves into a striving for balance and healing into the Earth itself. Many spiritual seekers are interested in shamanism because it is a spiritual path that can be followed in conjunction with any religion or other spiritual belief without conflict. Shamanism has not only been practiced by Native Americans and African cultures - for centuries, it was practiced by the Europeans, including the Celts.

This text presents a workable, modern form of Celtic shamanism that should help raise the reader's spiritual awareness. The book offers specific exercises and techniques to develop spiritual awareness and ties with the natural world: shape-shifting; divination by the Celtic Ogham alphabet; Celtic shamanic tools; travelling to and using magick in the three realms of the Celtic otherworlds; empowering the self; and journeying through meditation.

This classic on shamanism pioneered the modern shamanic renaissance. It is the foremost resource and reference on shamanism. Now, with a new introduction and a guide to current resources, anthropologist Michael Harner provides the definitive handbook on practical shamanism – what it is, where it came from, how you can participate.

Anniversary (10th ed.)

Paperback, 208 pages

Wizard of the Four Winds: A Shaman's Story is the text that introduced the outside world to shamanic healing in northern Peru. The story of don Eduardo Calder n (who was elevated to almost legendary status as a result of Sharon's research), this book inspired a generation of academics and shamanic seekers alike. Back, finally and by popular demand, this long-awaited and completely revised second edition presents a detailed discussion of Sharon's own experiences as the curandero's apprentice as well as summaries of more than 40 years of scholarship (including Sharon's own extensive work) into the lives and healing arts of other Peruvian shamanic practitioners.

After the publication of his best-selling book "Power Animals," many people inquired about the meaning of spirit animals that were not contained in that work. In "Animal Spirit Guides, " Dr. Farmer provides concise, relevant details about the significance of more than 200 animals that may come to you in physical or symbolic form as guides and teachers. With each animal listed, you'll find general meanings of the visitation; practical ways that they can help you as spirit guides; and how, as your power animal, they reflect characteristics that you possess. You'll also find a "whom-to-call-on" section that will tell you which animal spirit guide to call on for any specific purpose.

Drawing on a global survey of ethnographic reports, direct teachings from shamans of many continents, and experiences from his own shamanic practice, the author presents a wealth of useful ways that shamans have developed, around the world and across the ages, to connect with ancestors in both our realm and theirs. These include spirit-plates; effigies; pilgrimages; walkabouts; and trips with plant-spirits.

In this comprehensive cross-cultural survey, Dr. David Kowalewski, scholar and practicing shaman, offers several techniques for engaging the Old Ones the old-fashioned way. Although modern people have largely lost this tradition, the ancestors are coming back strong, along with the shamans-a welcome happening that may reverse our ancestor-deficit disorder.

A distinguished anthropologist–who is also an initiated shaman–reveals the long-hidden female roots of the world’s oldest form of religion and medicine. Here is a fascinating expedition into this ancient tradition, from its prehistoric beginnings to the work of women shamans across the globe today. Shamanism was not only humankind’s first spiritual and healing practice, it was originally the domain of women. This is the claim of Barbara Tedlock’s provocative and myth-shattering book. Reinterpreting generations of scholarship, Tedlock–herself an expert in dreamwork, divination, and healing–explains how and why the role of women in shamanism was misinterpreted and suppressed, and offers a dazzling array of evidence, from prehistoric African rock art to modern Mongolian ceremonies, for women’s shamanic powers.

Experience the Primal Spiritual Path of Ancient Egypt. The spiritual traditions of Ancient Egypt are well documented and are at the forefront of the Western Mystery and Magical Tradition. But they are a gloss over a more primal "shamanic" tradition which gets to the essence of Nature and its relationship with humanity, life and death. This book is a practical manual for those who wish to explore that primal spirituality using Egyptian symbolism. As Egypt was one of the village cultures, so Egyptian shamanism was one of the first to operate in an urban environment, making its techniques suitable for modern times.

Egyptian Shaman paints the picture of what it was like to be a village priest in ancient Egypt before describing the practical techniques which would have been employed during those times. These techniques, which have never been revealed before, have been adapted for modern minds with the intention of making this a practical spiritual path. The book controversially contains a chapter on exorcism and dealing with the dead, which many have claimed are subjects which should not be published. It shows how later Egyptian texts, such as the Book of the Dead, were Shamanic guide books to the Underworld. This is a book containing the keys to transmute, not only the self, but the whole planet.

Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture--how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, "Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses." 

Prechtel explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural, and individual maladies that we are currently experiencing. According to Prechtel, "When you have two centuries of people who have not properly grieved the things that they have lost, the grief shows up as ghosts that inhabit their grandchildren." These "ghosts," he says, can also manifest as disease in the form of tumors, which the Maya refer to as "solidified tears," or in the form of behavioral issues and depression. He goes on to show how this collective, unexpressed energy is the long-held grief of our ancestors manifesting itself, and the work that can be done to liberate this energy so we can heal from the trauma of loss, war, and suffering.

At base, this "little book," as the author calls it, can be seen as a companion of encouragement, a little extra light for those deep and noble parts in all of us.s.

This book is a practical how-to guide for living your own unique conscious and awakened life, and becoming the powerful manifestor that you are. It is a map leading to the doorway opening to the other side. Awakening and becoming a Spiritual R-Evolutionary is the most powerful personal and political act. Individually, we can change the planet. You may laugh, you may cry: you will come away transformed.

In this guide to sacred plant initiations, medical herbalist and shamanic practitioner Carole Guyett explains how to commune with plants and their spirits through the traditional shamanic method of plant dieting. A plant diet involves ingesting a particular plant over a period of time so you regularly receive the plant s vibratory energy as well as its medicinal actions.

Adding a ceremonial element to plant dieting offers a sacred initiation by the plant world, allowing you to connect deeply with all aspects of a plant, receive its sacred teachings, and forge a relationship for guidance and healing, benefitting both yourself and others.

A Yaqui way of knowledge.

The Teachings of Don Juan is the story of a remarkable journey: the first awesome steps on the road to becoming a "man of knowledge" -- the road that continues with "A Separate Reality" and "Journey to Ixtlan.

~

"For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking, breathlessly." -- Don Juan

Offering a practical guide to understanding and navigating relationships with the spirits of those who have passed, Daniel Foor, Ph.D., details how to relate safely and effectively with your ancestors for personal, family, and cultural healing.

He provides exercises and rituals, grounded in ancient wisdom traditions, to help you initiate contact with your ancestors, find supportive ancestral guides, cultivate forgiveness and gratitude, harmonize your bloodlines, and assist the dead who are not yet at peace. He explains how to safely engage in lineage repair work by connecting with your more ancient ancestors before relating with the recently deceased. He shows how, by working with spiritually vibrant ancestors, individuals and families can understand and transform intergenerational patterns of pain and abuse and reclaim the full blessings and gifts of their bloodlines.

Ancestral repair work can also catalyze healing breakthroughs among living family members and help children and future generations to live free from ancestral burdens. The author provides detailed instructions for ways to honor the ancestors of a place, address dream visits from the dead, and work with ancestor shrines and altars. The author offers guidance on preparing for death, funeral rites, handling the body after death, and joining the ancestors. He also explains how ancestor work can help us to transform problems such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious persecution

By learning the fundamentals of ancestor reverence and ritual, you will discover how to draw on the wisdom of supportive ancestral guides, heal family troubles, maintain connections with beloved family after their death, and better understand the complex and interconnected relationship between the living and the dead.