Customer Reviews

Anastasia (The Ringing Cedars, Book 1)

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I have read many spiritual and different types of books in the past, everything from the pillars of Buddhism & books on Atlantis, to Sungazing & Quantum Physics, and none of them could really compare to the feeling of peace and love that I have felt from reading the Ringing Cedars series. It expounds on truths that have been present since the beginning of time, in a simple and easy to understand format. Its words truly paint a picture of paradise in my mind and have changed me forever.

Many people comment on the author, on his tone and writing style. Vladimir is Vladimir, and you will learn to love him. He is very rough in the first few books, but that is really not the point of why I read the books. I wasn't reading them to marvel at his personality, or his artistic writing style, or lack of, I was reading the series to learn how to reconnect, learn how to laugh and love, and understand what has been hidden for so long. In doing so I have come to appreciate Vladimir so much.

Some people have commented on reading the book and saying that it doesn't provide anything new, as far as spiritual insight. I beg to differ. Many people go through spiritual books faster then they change their socks, just so they can chalk it up as another one read, and then it goes on their bookshelf. My question is, how many live it? If this isn't new information, then let me challenge you and ask how many readers have already purchased land and started to create their Space of Love all around them. How many have planted their family tree. How many are moving away from the technocratic world and started to project their own beam of light, searching near and far to help heal others. I would dare say that the number is pretty low, at least in the US. Is there something to learn from this series, YES! I say it will change your life if you let it. I disagree with a comment that was made that you have to have some sort of previous spiritual knowledge to understand this book. Granted, some things might take a stretch of the imagination if you have never heard them before, but overall the words and ideas portrayed are very simple and are meant to pierce the heart. They are all based on love, which we can all understand if we choose. I mean kids in Russia 12 - 17 years old are building schools and teaching each other by themselves... how can you put an age restriction or previous experience needed restriction on that. I believe that the information presented in these books is what the world needs right now.

Many also have commented on whether Anastasia is real or not. She even comments and says "She exists for those whom she exists." As for me, I know she is real, because for me she is. Her dream has now become my dream, and I will direct my thoughts and actions to bringing that to come to pass, not just in Russia, but also in the US.

May peace and love be with you, and ENJOY!

Easy to read, light and thoroughly enjoyable.
Anastasia, a young Siberian sage relates divine insights into the nature and purpose of life on Earth to a Russian entrepreneur.
The subjects she discusses are wide ranging but all ultimately interconnect and reflect wo/man's long lost connection to the vastness & beauty of simple living.
I found her insights into growing food to be superior to anything I have ever read on the subject. I put this method into practice and the value her words added to my communion with living edible plants pre and post consumption was and continues to be monumental.
There is much, much more....from plants to pain free childbirth.
If you are bewildered by a technocratic loveless world, and are perhaps feeling '" this can't be what it's about, there must be something more" then this is the book for you.
Unlike many philosophers who bat about 'ideas' and 'problems' intellectually, Anastasia tenderly bangs problems over the head with simple solutions.

A word of warning once you have read the first book its highly likely you will go on to read the whole series (5 books+ 4 to be translated) so check out bulk deals. I wish I had.

From my Western and modernized perspective this is a book of wonders. Anastasia, the central character in the book, lives a life of health and harmony with nature and herself. She employs human's full potential and capacities. Skills most of us have long ignored, forgotten and substituted by technical gadgets. She can communicate with any living creature, using language only if necessary. With her imagination she models any situation or creation existing in the world. She uses her 'beam', ligt emanating from the top of the head, to look into and support anybody's situation. And this is just a short summary.

Reading this book gives a ring of what we humans are capable of. It reinforces a deep feeling of how we could live our lives more healthily. In tune with our own nature and the environment we live in. Deeply connected and grateful for simply being.

The story keeps me wondering whether it is fictional or not. Maybe that is irrelevant. It does bring a smile to my face and follows me around in my daily beings. Surprisingly my reaction is exactly as the book's own forecast on the final pages.

If you have learned about this book, and you are now reading reviews on it at Amazon, you must be a spiritual seeker with a mind that is looking for some kind of answer to 'the question'. What question? I am not sure either, but you keep reading spiritual books looking for some truth or something. Anyway, if you are broadly well read on the subject of spirituality, and have pretty much heard it all....or read it all.... get this book. If you are simply a newbie, a curious george type, kind of interested in spirituality, not really sure, I would not recommend this book to you. There are too many 'questions' that this book DOES NOT answer for a spiritual seeker who has just started walking the path. But, if you are many books, many experiences and so on, walking the path of spirituality...this book is great. Why? One simple reason. I thought I had heard it all, that my imagination was without boundaries. Anastasia changed all that. Her character in the book showed me how 'what I thought' despite way out there compared to the mainstream, was still far short of the possibilities for all of us, starting with 'me'. I was truly stunned to find how closed off my imagination was. She simply expanded my spiritual conciousness yet again. By the way, the writer of this book, will annoy you for a time, until you get to the third book. The first book stands on its own. The 2nd book is pretty weak until the very end. The Third book is hard to put down.
As for the question, is Anastasia real? I dont knkow if it matters. But the answer I give, is I dont know. And I dont care. The book says she is real. And it even provides one picture. Of course, the providing of a single picture to me is more lame than if they had not provided a picture. Why? The author visits her on a number of occasions after she has been made famous by his book, and yet he still does not take a bunch of pictures of her with a digital camera. Whatever.
It is not important if she is real or not. What is important is the truth she speaks.

The lifestyle this very real woman lives is just natural, pure and simple. The philosophy she puts forth is one that I have shared all of my life. How wonderful to receive confirmation and support. Think about it. Isn't it better to live in harmony with nature? Don't you feel protected by all of God's Creation and in turn feel protective of it? And doesn't it make more sense to live as a family with animals instead of abusing them and then murdering them? C'mon, did you really think God wanted you to kill His precious creatures? For me, loving animals and this beautiful earth has always seemed the right and natural way to be. And I don't know about you but I was much happier before I got into the habit of sitting in front of a computer all day. Not that there isn't a use for it. It's just every minute in front of the screen is another minute not out there with my fur friends and my trees.

And look at TV. They don't call it programming for nothing. Look at all the sex and violence they're hawking. Look at society. Who's babysitting the children? The TV that's who. And what is the "babysitter" teaching these innocent sponge-like minds? Violence, sexual objectification, poisonous 'food' packed in boxes, etc. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see something is very very wrong here.

Back to basics. That is what Anastasia is showing. A natural life in a natural world. These 'powers' that she posseses are there for all of us. Jeshua said that. Just disengage from the machine-like technocratic world. Don't be a bio-robot, a zombie. Go within and think for yourself. I think you'll agree that what she proposes is not at all out there. It's natural.

I can tell you from experience that many times an animal, a wild animal that is supposed to be deathly afraid of humans, has come up to me and conversed and communed with me. I'm not at all special, just an ordinary human being. If these animals have befriended me, they can befriend anyone. Of course I don't eat them so maybe that has something to do with it.

Reading these books has filled me with such hope for the future of mankind. I know I want to help Anastasia hold this vision and turn it into a concrete reality here in the material world of form. It's nature that heals me. It's nature that fills me with peace. Nature is well, natural. Yes? How this all comes about is a great mystery, a fascinating adventure, a story well-worth reading and even better, living. Let's all do this together.

Now step away from the computer... go outside... and kiss the sky as Jimi Hendrix used to say. She's been waiting a long time. :)

After selling over 10 million copies in Russian alone and translations into 20 languages, "Anastasia", Book 1 in the Ringing Cedars Series by a Russian author Vladimir Megre, has now been released in English translation by Ringing Cedars Press of Columbia, Missouri, USA. The book tells a real-life story of entrepreneur Vladimir Megre's trade trip to the Siberian taiga in 1995, where he witnessed spiritual phenomena that compelled him to abandon his business and write this book on the spiritual connection between humanity and nature. "Anastasia" has already sparked a massive back-to-the-Earth / eco-village movement in Russia and beyond.


THE BOOK: On a trade trip to the Siberian taiga in search for the lost technique of pressing virgin cedar nut oil, a Russian entrepreneur Vladimir Megre witnessed incredible spiritual phenomena that compelled him to write a book. The run-away success of his first volume, "Anastasia", self-published in 1996, made him into one of Russia's most widely read authors. The seven books of the Ringing Cedars Series published to date have sold over 10 million copies in Russian alone, and „ź translated into 20 languages „ź are believed to be a most significant masterpiece of Russian literature and one of the most important revelations in the history of humanity.
The Ringing Cedars books have stirred the hearts and minds of countless people, showing a way to understand ourselves and to heal our planet. They possess a tremendous, unprecedented power of transforming the life on our whole Earth for the better. Inspired by the Ringing Cedars, thousands of people are now planting trees, changing their lifestyle and, in search for a spiritual re-connection with the Earth, relocating to new eco-villages that are sprouting all over Russia and beyond. Thousands of people reading the Ringing Cedars books have felt a huge creative upsurge and started writing poetry and songs and even doing paintings. Numerous readers' conferences have taken place in Russia and throughout Europe. The publication of the first volume, "Anastasia", which appeared in the original Russian only eight years ago, marked just the beginning of these developments. Every day new people join in to help bring about a radiant reality for ourselves and our children.

THE AUTHOR, Vladimir Megre, born in 1950, was a well-known entrepreneur from a Siberian city of Novosibirsk. In 1994, having heard a fascinating story about the power of "ringing cedars" from a Siberian elder, he undertook extensive research and was one of the first businessmen to realize the commercial potential of Siberian cedar nuts and cedar nut oil. In 1995 he organized a trade expedition into the Siberian taiga to rediscover the lost technique of pressing virgin cedar nut oil containing high curative powers. However, his encounter with a Siberian woman Anastasia on this trip transformed him so deeply that he neglected his business and went to Moscow to write a book about the spiritual insights she shared with him. Vladimir Megre now lives near the city of Vladimir, Russia, 150 miles (240 km) east of Moscow, devoting himself to writing and finishing the eighth book in the Ringing Cedars Series.

THE TRANSLATOR, John Woodsworth, has forty years of experience in Russian-English translation, from classical poetry to modern short stories. For the past twenty-three years he has been associated with the University of Ottawa in Canada as a Russian-language teacher, translator and editor, as well as Research Associate and Administrative Assistant of the University's Slavic Research Group. A published Russian-language poet himself, and a director of the Sasquatch Literary Arts Performance Series in Ottawa, he is now working on translating Vladimir Megre's second book, "The Ringing Cedars of Russia", scheduled for release on 18 May 2005. In his Translator's Preface he calls Megre's book "a tremendous new insight into the whole interrelationship of God, Man, Nature and the Universe. ...a revelation in science and religion." John Woodsworth makes his home in the Ottawa area.

THE EDITOR, Leonid Sharashkin, is writing his doctoral dissertation in Forestry at the University of Missouri-Columbia, researching the implications of the ideas revealed in the Ringing Cedars Series for disciplines as diverse as agriculture, forestry, sociology, economics, philosophy and environmental ethics. "These books are bringing about a global-scale revolution in our perception of the link between humanity and nature. It is not by chance that Dr. Viktor Medikov, an economist and former member of Russian parliament, wrote an entire book entitled "Putin, Megre and Russia's Future", claiming that The Ringing Cedars have become Russia's new national idea that will shape the country's future. In Russia and other countries where these books have been published, they have already produced a greater impact than Rachel Carlson's 'Silent Spring' or Aldo Leopold's 'Sand County Almanac' have in the U.S.," Sharashkin said.

This is the most life-changing series I have ever read, by a long shot. And browsing spiritual literature is my main hobby and pastime. Only one other book I've read even comes close, and that is the one that got me started on the spiritual path in the first place.

I am a private soul, consequently I have never written a review before and probubly never will again, but my feelings for this series are forcing me out of the musty corners to say:

If you are interested in life, in why our society is poisoning and brainwashing it's children, in why you have that maddening, unnameable itch in your brain that Morpheus talks about in The Matrix; if you want to be inspired and uplifted and shown a viable, practical path out of this mess we've created for ourselves as a society, and as individuals, then you will probably like this book.

The official website for the English translations [...], which has a lot more information on what the books are about, and many more embarrassingly gushy reviews. I seriously can't help it people. I know it sounds goofy but... How else do I describe a book that completely changes your life for the better? Wouldn't YOU gush in your description of it?

As for the people who sniff and sneer and poo-poo it as fake: I could say many angry words at them, for similar reasons to why I would yell at someone who had just insulted my mother, but it's not worth my energy, and they are entitled to there opinions. Read the books for yourself, and come to your own damn conclusions, don't accept your opinions second-hand.

Myself, I had my doubts as I started reading, but eventually, the quality of the "story" and insights, the effect it had on me, and the prophetic nature of Anastasia's declarations, not to mention the shear volume of the work and number of details touching real people and places that could not be faked, ended up dispelling my doubts. Though whether I believe she exists or not, the wisdom in the books rings true nonetheless. Also, they have a 2nd edition of the English translation out now that has non-weird covers (I personally like the old covers, but they do get strange looks) and some word changes to try and make the translation more accurate.

I have only just finished the first book of the series and was quite taken by it. Everything written in this book we all already know, though it is quite a great reminder. : ) I naturally read all the bad reviews of something as opposed to the good, because I like to look at things from all sides. All the reviews with a low rating seem to come from cynical people who don't have anything positive to say...I did some research and read other reviews by the bad reviewers...everyone that gave negative feedback only had a list of other negative reviews...what does that tell you? This validity of this book goes along with other series like Mary Summer Rain(highly possible) and the Messages of Don Juan(probably not true) whether true or not these writing comes from somewhere and there message is of great value for those open to these new(ancient) ideas. Take from these books what rings true for you, and those ideas which can created a happier healthier planet. Since reading these books I have started to feel the presence if Anastasia in my sub-conscious mind...as with many books being written today they bring hope for a brave new world!

This first book will resonate or it won't. Though I can't imagine how it's possible to earnestly read this book and not "feel" something shift inside. I read a review that stated confidently that other books on life, the universe and God seem like a waste of paper after reading this book. I would have to agree.

The author is not a writer. He's a ship's captain who may well have read a few books but unlikely to have spent time studying physics, history, politics, archeology, religion, nature, math & science, childbirth, supernatural phenomena, or the cosmos. If he made this whole story up, he is brilliant. It seems unlikely to me that he had such broad knowledge.

Anastasia has a powerful story to tell. Once you hear the story you will not look at the blade of grass reaching up through the cement side walk in the same way. The blue sky will radiate with new meaning. The animals who call earth their home will no longer seem like artifacts of the background noise. In fact, the background noise will suddenly narrow to all the superficial gadgets, social artifice, political posturing, historical manipulation, economic fallacy, physical disfiguration, and the ever increasing "data cloud" of distraction that we call our lives...

Since reading the first book, and even more since reading all 9 books, I am obsessed with getting back to the land. I am designing our family's "space of love" or domain in my head until I am able to find the physical place. I am planning our future gardens. In the meantime, I am buying only organic, biodynamic foods that are not poisoned by chemicals and genetic monkey business so that my family can have a chance at healing. The incredible relevance of these simple acts becomes crystal clear upon reading these books. Farming has never had the revolutionary potential it has today.

Buy this book. Read this book. Read them all. Share this with everyone you love. With everyone you know. They will thank you. My friends have already thanked me.

PS: There are over 100 eco-villages setting up in Russia as a result of these books. There are a handful in the United States and Canada already forming. [...]

Some of my friends are into this book series and told me to read it because I live on a farm. I interact with nature spirits and facilitate healing for other people and am really into the Woo Woo, just to give you my credentials.

That being said, this book is awful. The author himself tipped me off to his scam when he writes about the healing properties of pine nuts. So I went to his website and sure enough he is selling pine nut oil for $25. oo 3.5 oz. The author's writing style is style-less. He comes off as a womanizer out to make money.

Anastasia's character is a completely different story. She comes off as arrogant, not magical or even spiritual.
Anastasia is all into telling us what is good and bad. How can you be enlightened when you see in black and white?
Anastasia is all about telling you what is Right. I am not looking for a preacher, are you?
Personally I felt like I was at a cult meeting. And if you really want to be healthy, you'll buy all the Siberian Cedar products available at the author's website.

If you want to know what is True, Go Meditate! It is that simple, you don't need a book to figure out your own Soul.

Anastasia talks often about the 'dark forces' and what They do to screw up humanity [sounds like the devil's influence to me (sarcasm)]. If she knows everything at once, as is claimed, then why doesn't she specifically expose these Dark Forces? I am sure all the conspiracy theorists out there would love to know who THEY really are (I guess we have to leave that to David Icke).

She also talks about how women shouldn't dress in revealing clothing. Even though she runs around in a sheer slip or just plain nude in front of a man she just met and then has sex with him so they will have a son together. I am not kidding. Women who are concerned with their appearance and have sex for reasons other than procreation will never be happy according to Anastasia. Seriously, did I just go to a fundamentalist church?

Next up, go suck on some seeds, and then don't water them for three days. Good luck with that. Apparently,you have to do this with your garden seeds or they won't 'know' you enough to heal you. Oh, also, go to the Ringing Cedars website and buy the dvd sets on how to mix your spit with the seeds. Go ahead, spend more money.

Plant spirits always want to help, they just need to be asked. All you have to do is call the spirit of the plant that you are sowing and ask it for guidance. Being quiet in your mind will lead to you to YOUR truth.

If you must read a book on the subject of gardening, Peralandra's Garden Workbook is much more informative than this poorly written novel.

Some people like to be told what do to and to think, its easier than actually finding the still point inside of yourself that leads you right to your own Soul.

Bless you all.
If this series resonates with you, joy to you. Don't pay me no mind.