Customer Reviews

The Flowers of Wiricuta: A Journey to Shamanic Power with the Huichol Indians of Mexico

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an amazing book that held me in the grip of inner exploration. The Shamanic unfolding of an East Coast kids journey for understanding and connection with his true nature. This detailed and well written account of a person dealing with the life struggles we all can relate too leads the author, Tom Pinkson Ph.D., to Mexico and several years of study with the Huichol Indians (filled with cultural insights).

For me the book is a touch stone book and reference guide that helped me to understand more of the "unusual" experiences in my life --- A story filled with instruction and meaning relevant to the larger connection and mystery of life. This book address and connects us to the human spiritual challange in life and honors the sacred mystery that binds us all. In ancient cultures you were consider healthy if you had encounters with the "para-normal", but it seems that in our culture you are considered psychotic - could there be more...

All in all, I felt very sane, refreshed and inspired after reading this work by Tom Pinkson and would encourage anyone who has unexplained occurances in their life to begin your inner exploration and journey with this book.

There is also a wonderful Forward written by Gerald Jampolsky, M.D.(author of "Love is Letting go of Fear") who has known and worked with Mr. Pinkson for years at the Center for Attitudinal Healing. Mr. Jampolsky states, "Within this book you will find many important wake-up calls."

This book brings a hidden treasure to the reader. It creates, throughout each page, a relationship with the writer where his inner journey becomes your own. This book explores with humility and strength the commitment of an young bright man who dared listening to his heart and to change the fate of his life. It opens an universe of the mysterious and brings it closer to us, seekers or just curious fellows. An explample of how by listening to the inner call one can encounter the wisdom and the beauty of life . Tom is a wonderful medicine man speaking the true voice of shamanism.

I bought this book thinking I'd learn a lot about the Huichols. I ended up learning a whole lot more about Tom Pinkson, the author of this book. This is his personal journey through juvenile delinquency, LSD, working at a drug-rehab place, going on "vision quests," and FINALLY (after about 150 pages) ending up with the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The book meanders around from one story to the next with no clear-cut chronology. I believe Mr. Pinkson is probably a very nice, spiritual guy, but I had a very hard time believing a lot of the things that go on in this book. He hears voices in his head constantly, which direct him to do things or make things fall into place in his life just a bit too conveniently for my comfort level. Yes, I know that the Huichol culture and shamanism is an alternate reality in itself compared with modern Western society, and that much of it is hard for Westerners to believe. But I came away from this book thinking that, for exam! ple, if some old Indian told him that there is a giant earwig diety named "Boobaloo" living inside Mount Rushmore, and that the way to please the earwig is to spin around 50 times and cluck like a chicken while slapping yourself in the face...well, Mr. Pinkson would probably believe it deeply and follow these "directions." While small parts of it were touching and somewhat interesting, all in all this book goes out of the realm of plausibility for me.

Dr. Pinkson's words open a window into our nearly forgotten roots in an Earth-centered spiritality. Shamanism, as still practiced by the Huichol Indians of Mexico, grows from a deeply rooted respect and reverence for the natural world. Tom Pinkson traces his own flowering into this ancient wisdom and offers the modern world some hope for an alternative future. Nature-based cultures hold "life in balance and harmony with all living things" as an essential spiritual practice. This "eco-centric" understanding offers the promise of a truly sustainable future for humans and the environment with which we remain intimately connected. Tom's journey into Huichol shamanism, provides a light for those who seek to become part of the solution to the ecological challenges which face our planet. Readers will find themselves empowered to choose their own path toward healing on each of the planes of our existence from the personal to the planetary.

Dr. Tom Pinkson's book, "Flowers of Wiricuta" is a powerful account of not only his personal tranformation but a guide to go about your own personal transformation. As Dr. Pinkson perceptively recognizes, the ways of indigenous cultures can inform and provide roadmaps for psychological growth. The "old" ways have worked for thousands of years and Dr. Pinkson re-animates through eloquent writing what we have always known and he reminds us, i.e., that Shamanic Ways are precious and necessary in our lives. This book is a must read for those interested in the the Ways of the Huichol, personal transformation, Shamanic practices, or to attain a reminder of the preciousness and miraculousness life.

In a world in which a logical positivist approach is overemphasized, it's encouraging to read about someone who listens to the wisdom of the shamans and indigenous peoples, despite having grown up in Brooklyn. It offers hope to the rest of us who have, essentially, been conditioned (programmed?) to view the world in a narrow and highly limiting way. Regardless of whether or not you believe everything in the book, it's likely to help expand the boundaries of the world that each of us uniquely occupies through our perceptions. It may be overstating it a bit, but I'd say this book has the potential to be a present-day "On the Road."

This is a well-intentioned - if a bit naive and earnest - autobiographical narrative from a perspective of a Jew raised in NYC and CA. Pinkson's early experiences suggested to him that nature can restore his self confidence and makes him feel like a man. He believes that the answers can be found with indigenous peoples, such as the Lakota and the Huichols. Pinkson makes sure the reader gets his (Pinksons) respect for the old ways and his trust in the 'Great Mystery'... yet this is somehow obscured by his white man's humility dance .... all the while what seeps through pages of FOW is self-indulgence and perhaps a bit of self-promotion.

Real humility does not advertise itself, Tom. A real student of shamanism does not "journey to shamanic power". Nor is he/she likely to, khm, write books about his experiences.

I'll admit up front that I'm a fan of Tom Pinkson. He is a true American shaman, that is, an individual who is willing to go beyond the known, beyond even the knowable, and search for healing and answers through direct contact with Spirit. Shamanism was the world's first religion - it is based on a deep knowing of oneself as a part of the Greater Interconnected Whole, sorely lacking in our current culture. The shamans in every culture are healers - they bring back knowledge and information for the benefit of individuals or the whole tribe. Tom Pinkson is no exception.

The use of psychedelic substances in the 60's and 70's opened many of our minds to realities beyond the one we grew up with, and Dr. Pinkson has explored these realities like any intrepid explorer would. With eyes and heart open, he searched for wisdom wherever it might be located, and found a huge cache in the Huichol Indian culture - the native people of Southern Mexico who have a 5,000-year unbroken history of deep and powerful knowledge about the world and about the self through their shamanic use of the peyote cactus as spiritual medicine. In the current anti-drug mania, this is a voice of sanity reminding us that mind-altering plants have been used in religious ceremonies and for sacred rituals for many thousands of years. Used in the right context, they are gifts from the gods. Used in the wrong context (for entertainment or escape, for example), they can destroy lives.

Tom's biography is a powerful account of a brave explorer -- not of some external geography but of the infinitely more complex and interesting internal landscape of the mind and spirit. This is an authentic biography - real stories about real experiences. I highly recommend this book if you've enjoyed the writings of Carlos Casteneda, Michael Harner, Native Americans, or books about the spiritual quest.

Tom Pinkson is a Ph.D. psychologist and the founder of a non-profit organization and spiritual community called Wakan (I've been a member for more than ten years) -- an educational and spiritual organization dedicated to the proposition that all life is sacred, and that we can live in alignment with our own sacred nature. Dr. Pinkson's website (has ...) more information about his work is there.