Customer Reviews

Plant Spirit Shamanism: Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Brilliant book, well written, insightful and mind blowing. I was camping when I read it and have a totally different respect and understanding of mother earth now, to understand the consciousness has helped greatly. I highly recommend this book! You will never look at plants, grass, trees earth in the same way again!

PLANT SPIRIT SHAMANISM: TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUES FOR HEALING THE SOUL explores not the usual medicinal qualities of plants, but shaman communications with the spirits of the plants themselves. Both authors have years of in-depth field shamanic work in the Amazon, Haiti and Europe, and their experiences and interviews with other master shamans in different areas results in a core of insights gleaned from not just one but a variety of indigenous cultures. Healers will find this essential to understanding plant processes.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I read a lot of books on spritiality, spiritualism etc, but this book shows the way to spirituality, which is very simple and right in front of us. I was born and brought up in India, I have seen a lot of spiritual practices being followed in India, I did not know why people do them, this book answered all my questions, this is a must book for each and everyone of us to understand nature and to realize that we are not alone.

Some aspects of this book regarding pusanga, etc are debatable, but overall this book is a eye-opener, it changed my life and affirmed my faith and love in God and Nature.

Plant Spirit Shamanism is a wonderful book detailing some cultural and religious practices of shamanism. But more than that, it's an important guide and sign post for those of us who are taking that first step into the jungle as explorers.

It is very interesting, has loads of exercises with each chapter - and is overall a powerful read.

There Are No Incurable Diseases: Dr. Schulze's 30-Day Cleansing & Detoxification Program, School of Natural HealingHerbal Home Health Care, Herbal Healing for Women, Complete Medicinal Herbal (Natural care) can round this out, on the herbal side. For the Shamanic side, The Physics of Miracles: Tapping in to the Field of Consciousness Potential The Future Is Yours: Do Something About It! There is a Sufi story about moths, and the only moth that really understands the candle is the one who gives himself totally to the light, and the light gives itself to him. This applies to shamanic work. Shamanic techniques work from the larger self, especially in service to others. Shamanism means working with the subconscious, and at times superconscious minds. It cannot be apprehended by the conscious mind, the ego. Without service, many things just don't work, or work only slightly. Whispers of the Ancients: Native Tales for Teaching and Healing in Our Time gives you some idea of how very different native storytelling is, and stories shape the Universe. Indigenous life, for which these techniques go hand in glove, can be approximated from Journey to the Ancestral Self: The Native Lifeway Guide to Living in Harmony With Earth Mother, Book 1 (Bk.1) These are very good basic books, to getting out of the box of Western culture, into the much more fascinating 7 worlds of the spiritual traveller. Wong Kiew Kit's books on Chi Kung show how ideas like this survive in Chinese culture, and Chinese Herbal medicine has aspects very similar to these. Healing For The Millions would also help. Wisdom of the Earth, by Barry Kapp, goes into similar ideas. Amazon doesn't have it in stock, though.

To begin with, I particularly enjoyed reading the preface by Howard G. Charing. I quote part of it (page xx): "Gathered around me were giants in ornate costumes of gold and multicolored feathers blowing smoke and fanning me. These were the spirits of ayahuasca, whose soft, gentle and exquisitely sensual voices spoke to me of creation and the universal mind". It is precisely that kind of universal spiritual opening described that makes the Ayahuasca experience so captivating and inspiring to read about.

I believe (and this is also mentioned in the book, page 53, on the challenges westerners face when it comes to the shamanic diet. Shaman Javier Arevalo also speak of this on page 87) that it would be very helpful for a lot of readers - myself included - interested in the topic of this book to seek out the kind of experience mentioned in Charings preface in order to connect to the "other" world, cosmic consciosness, higher self or God if you will in a direct and authentic way, thereby creating a new inner pesonal psycho-spirtual framework and then proceed from there.

To quoute Terence McKenna in the beginning of the preface: "We are not talking about passive agents of transformation; we are talking about an intelligence, a consciousness, an alive and other mind, a spirit.... Nature is alive and is talking to us. This is not a metaphor"

There are interesting interviews throughout the book with various indigenous practitioners of shamanism, plant healing and magic. The authors theorize about how and why plant healing and magic works and how to communicate with plant spirits. They write about using intention and love as a language in communicating with plants/plant spirits.

In chapter 1 there is mention of some interesting experiments in plant-human relationship/communication by Cleve Backster, Alfred Vogel and a student of his Vivian Wiley. One thing these experiments show is basically that plants are sensitive to human intention, that they react in some way to our thoughts by some unexplained means. (suggestive of an interconnectedness between all living things in spirit, a theoretical basis for magic to be effective and a part of the shamanic worldview.) From the point of view of the traditional materialistic worldview this concept is - as one would expect - met with strong scepticism and thus these experiments are as far as I can tell not accepted by the scientific community in general. The chapter ends with an invitation for us readers to try a similar experiment on our own. (page 50)

Chapter one also includes practical guidelines to making "mojo-bags" and "offerings" to influence and direct the forces of the universe, for example in healing, luck, love and personal success.

Other interesting points discussed in the book is the evolution of the human species and the possible role of psychedelics in brain development. I quote page 81: "we have been hardwired for the sacred" (This is along the lines of Terence McKennas ideas in his book Food of the Gods)

A very interesting discussion on the ethics of pusangas (magical potions that for example can make people attracted to you) takes place in chapter 5. On the surface, pusangas may seem like a method of manipulating other poeple and thus may be thought of as unethical. However, another perspective is mentioned page 155: Pusangas do not change the other person, they change *you*, it makes your natural ability to attract other people come out. In other words, the magic takes place within *you*.

I am an open-minded person, but I am somewhat sceptical to some of the things in the book, no doubt because of my atheist upbringing in our western society. It often (if not always) comes down to personal experience when breaking with the old ways (the western materialistic worldview) and becoming aware of the larger spiritual side of existance (the shamanic/transpersonal worldview). I have limited personal experience. For example I hold it as highly likely that consciousness survives bodily death but something like magic is still an area where I have a relatively high degree of scepticism but also ignorance. I do however have a theoretical interest in it and this book gives me an increased understanding and insight. It may even make me curious enough to further explore magical/healing rituals because it does make a lot of sense within a larger framework (the shamanic/transpersonal worldview) that something like magic would actually have a real effect, that plants have spirits we can communicate with and that can influence our lives if we ask it of them.

Some questions arise as I read the book:

What factors influence magic?
To what extent does: personal belief, sociocultural upbringing, group psychology, "hardwired" ESP-abililies, effect outcome?

What about shamanic initiation, spiritual opening, altered states of consciousness in relation to magical practice?
To what degreee does that increase the effect of magical practice? (concievably as a result of believing in it more because of the expanded worldvew that frequently results from such experiences)

What about the shamanic worldview and the law of karma and reincarnation, can past life experiences be the cause of disease aswell as spirit intrusion and soul loss?

I feel the authors should have explored these questions more. Shaman Javier Arevalo talks a litte about the western lifestyle in relation to working with plant spirits on page 148: "To control oneself is fundamental to having the strenght to work with the spirits, but city people [Westerners and Peruvians with westernized lifestyles] do not take responibility for themselves and their power wastes away. Now they don't even know what they want or what is good for them or how to get it [because we give control of ourselves over to society and the goverment]".

Key to making magic work according to one don Eduardo of Cusco is your own belief in it (Page 151): "You must believe without an atom of a doubt [because] lack of faith robs your spirit of power". If this is the case, then it puts the western would be magician/shaman in a difficult position. Having been raised in western society it may prove quite a challenge for him to break with the old world and be reborn into the world of magic and spirits. As mentioned previously, Ayahuasca may provide a sort of gateway for this purpose, in my opinion this point should have been more prominent.

Overall, the book is an easy and interesting read. It presents ideas in an easy to understand way. As a practical guide it gets 5 stars, however the theoretical part should have been more elaborate and could have been more convincing and it gets 3 stars.

This book is full of exercises, for both Amazon Jungle and here in the West. It explains tradition which is very exciting. I love this book.

I bought this book with little knowledge about plants, other than herbalism.
I'm very glad that I read it because it totally changed the way I look at plants, and our earth now. Before plants were just green things to me, they were just there. I never realized how truly alive and 'intelligent' they are.
I loved reading this book, very enjoyable read and fascinating. the more you read, the more you begin to appreciate the beautiful and fragile nature of our world. I really came to appreciate plants a lot more. I'm glad I'm a vegetarian, because I can see how healthy plants can very positively affect the human body.

EDIT: I have since learned some things about one of the authors, namely that he is not as much of an expert on ayahuasca as I had thought, when I first read this book. The author in particular is Ross Heaven.

I really recommend anyone who is interested in this topic to read other books. This is a good book, but not a higher authority. this book is the tip of the iceberg as far as this subject is concerned!

This is a great book on the perspective of healing from a shaman's view instead of the Western scientific reductionist view of the pharma industry. The author interviews shamans from different cultures, but most all their work has the same basis.

Everything, including plants and flowers, has consciousness and has the ability to communicate with other sentient beings. The shamans listen to the wisdom of the plants. Through their spirits the shamans have been able to determine the answers to questions about the brain and our universe that modern science still hasn't figured out with any clarity.

Plus, any book that quotes the late comedian Bill Hicks is definitely worth of 5 stars.

This is nothing more than a advert for the Authors' "workshops". Being from that hotbed of shamanic understanding ?(U.K.) They shamelessly grab bits and pieces of already researched and documented shamanic lore that they can make a buck ( or pound) off of. Full of nuevo wavo drivel, They fail to comprehend the primal tenet of shamanism. It is , above all else, a belief system. This system is culture and bio system specific. Innuit shamanism is entirely different from Yanomami shamanism. The authors attempt to homogenize the incredibly diverse and location specific beliefs into an uber shamanism. It is apparent that neither understand the carnival aspect of any of these practices. "Treatments" are not a one stop cure, but a carefully constructed theater performance to influence the patients belief system as well as engender trust in the shaman. The events and practices presented to the authors are staged for the effect it has on the observer/participant. In short they were told and shown what they expected, and I suspect, whatever was most profitable.
There is a long history in Anthropology of Fakirs and Charlatans. These two are both. Look at the references. Not a one that would suffice in ANY peer reviewed study. The hoodo-voodoo presented here is worhtless. There is nothing here more than New and Old World grifters trying to separate you from your money. There are legitimate shamans in indigenous cultures. They do not, however, use metal pots to prepare infusions, discarded soda bottles, and certainly would not participate in the obvious for profit shams presented by the authors.
If you want to read this as a Castenada novel, fine. But don't confuse this fiction for any shamanic truth.