Peyote Dreams

Download or read book Rock Crystals & Peyote Dreams written by Peter T. Furst and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book about the author's time among the Huichol people, considered the most authentically "traditional" of all Mexican Indians, in west Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental. It includes transcriptions of myths that function as charters for "being Huichols," descriptions of deities, rituals, beliefs, as well as discussion of the place of hallucinogens in Huichol culture.

Download or read book Peyote Dreams written by Charles Duits and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed account of the transformation of consciousness and discovery of life’s purpose brought on by peyote • Shows how peyote and other visionary plants do not distort reality but gloriously unveil it, pulling the mind out of its cosmic slumber and revealing our unity with all life • Explains the necessity when working with peyote to remain the master of one’s mind and consciously work on oneself • Examines how modern society’s revulsion to sacramental plants and other consciousness expanders is deeply rooted in Western philosophy Charles Duits was caught in the grip of a dead-end existential and spiritual crisis. At the urging of one of his oldest friends, he takes peyote “like a man committing suicide,” launching him on a visionary journey of philosophical examination and spiritual revelation. In this little-known classic of drug literature, we find a detailed account of the radical alteration of consciousness and discovery of life’s purpose brought on by the Mexican cactus known as peyote. Consuming peyote more than 200 times, Duits lucidly describes the transformation of reality he experienced as well as the necessity to consciously work on oneself and remain the master of one’s mind in order to avoid getting carried away by hallucinations. The author examines how modern society’s revulsion to sacramental plants and other consciousness expanders is deeply rooted in Western philosophy’s embrace of reason and materialism at the expense of inner knowledge. He explains how sacramental plants do not distort reality as many fearfully believe but gloriously unveil it, pulling the mind out of its cosmic slumber and revealing a world that is finally real and full of meaning. Poetic yet precise, Duits’s descriptions of his peyote experiences offer a glimpse in to the beautiful divine reality of which we are all a part, yet over which the structures of society cast a veil. This guide to “sailing the inner sea” reveals that the answers to the meaning of life lie not in material pursuits but in experiencing the richness and unity of the world in front of us.

Download or read book Selected Climbs in the Desert Southwest written by Cameron Burns and published by The Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * The classic routes for the desert Southwest* A glovebox companion for every desert climber* Author Cameron Burns is a stickler for clean routes and clean climbing The desert southwest is a prime destination for some of the best rock climbing in the United States, with hundreds of documented routes. But how are climbers to find out which routes are the best routes, the jewels in this desert crown? That's where Selected Climbs in the Desert Southwest comes in. A longtime, expert desert climber, Cam Burns separates the wheat from the chaff and offers a sampling of the southwest's absolutely finest areas, spires, and walls. For climbers with limited time or for those seeking to climb the most classic desert routes, this guide is all they'll need. The more than 130 climbing routes in western Colorado and southern Utah included are not only the most fun, the most elegant, and the most historically interesting, they are also the cleanest routes. Each detailed route description includes difficulty rating, time, approach, equipment, special considerations, and the descent.

Download or read book Consciousness written by Susan Blackmore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a theory that explains the essence of consciousness? Or is consciousness itself just an illusion? The 'last great mystery of science', consciousness is a topic that was banned from serious research for most of the last century, but is now an area of increasing popular interest, as well as a rapidly expanding area of study for students of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience. This ground-breaking textbook by best-selling author Susan Blackmore was the first of its kind to bring together all the major theories of consciousness studies, from those based on neuroscience to those based on quantum theory or Eastern philosophy. The book examines topics such as how subjective experiences arise from objective brain processes, the basic neuroscience of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, out of body and near death experiences and the effects of drugs, dreams and meditation. It also explores the nature of self, the possibility of artificial consciousness in robots, and the question of whether animals are conscious. The new edition has been fully revised to include the latest developments in neuroscience, brain scanning techniques, and artificial consciousness and robotics. The new website includes self-assessment exercises, advanced further reading, flashcards and MCQs. For all those intrigued by what it means to be, to exist, this book could radically transform your understanding of your own consciousness.

Download or read book The Shaman’s Mirror written by Hope MacLean and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huichol Indian yarn paintings are one of the world's great indigenous arts, sold around the world and advertised as authentic records of dreams and visions of the shamans. Using glowing colored yarns, the Huichol Indians of Mexico paint the mystical symbols of their culture—the hallucinogenic peyote cactus, the blue deer-spirit who appears to the shamans as they croon their songs around the fire in all-night ceremonies deep in the Sierra Madre mountains, and the pilgrimages to sacred sites, high in the central Mexican desert of Wirikuta. Hope MacLean provides the first comprehensive study of Huichol yarn paintings, from their origins as sacred offerings to their transformation into commercial art. Drawing on twenty years of ethnographic fieldwork, she interviews Huichol artists who have innovated important themes and styles. She compares the artists' views with those of art dealers and government officials to show how yarn painters respond to market influences while still keeping their religious beliefs. Most innovative is her exploration of what it means to say a tourist art is based on dreams and visions of the shamans. She explains what visionary experience means in Huichol culture and discusses the influence of the hallucinogenic peyote cactus on the Huichol's remarkable use of color. She uncovers a deep structure of visionary experience, rooted in Huichol concepts of soul-energy, and shows how this remarkable conception may be linked to visionary experiences as described by other Uto-Aztecan and Meso-American cultures.

Download or read book A Linking of Heaven and Earth written by Scott K. Taylor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reformation of the sixteenth century shattered the unity of medieval Christendom, and the resulting fissures spread to the corners of the earth. No scholar of the period has done more than Carlos M.N. Eire, however, to document how much these ruptures implicated otherworldly spheres as well. His deeply innovative publications helped shape new fields of study, intertwining social, intellectual, cultural, and religious history to reveal how, lived beliefs had real and profound implications for social and political life in early modern Europe. Reflecting these themes, the volume celebrates the intellectual legacy of Carlos Eire's scholarship, applying his distinctive combination of cultural and religious history to new areas and topics. In so doing it underlines the extent to which the relationship between the natural and the supernatural in the early modern world was dynamic, contentious, and always urgent. Organized around three sections - 'Connecting the Natural and the Supernatural', 'Bodies in Motion: Mind, Soul, and Death' and 'Living One's Faith' - the essays are bound together by the example of Eire's scholarship, ensuring a coherence of approach that makes the book crucial reading for scholars of the Reformation, Christianity and early modern cultural history.

Download or read book Substance and Seduction written by Stacey Schwartzkopf and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-11-08 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chocolate and sugar, alcohol and tobacco, peyote and hallucinogenic mushrooms—these seductive substances have been a nexus of desire for both pleasure and profit in Mesoamerica since colonial times. But how did these substances seduce? And when and how did they come to be desired and then demanded, even by those who had never encountered them before? The contributors to this volume explore these questions across a range of times, places, and peoples to discover how the individual pleasures of consumption were shaped by social, cultural, economic, and political forces. Focusing on ingestible substances as a group, which has not been done before in the scholarly literature, the chapters in Substance and Seduction trace three key links between colonization and commodification. First, as substances that were taken into the bodies of both colonizers and colonized, these foods and drugs participated in unexpected connections among sites of production and consumption; racial and ethnic categories; and free, forced, and enslaved labor regimes. Second, as commodities developed in the long transition from mercantile to modern capitalism, each substance in some way drew its enduring power from its ability to seduce: to stimulate bodies; to alter minds; to mark class, social, and ethnic boundaries; and to generate wealth. Finally, as objects of scholarly inquiry, each substance rewards interdisciplinary approaches that balance the considerations of pleasure and profit, materiality and morality, and culture and political economy.