Spirituality and religious experience

An insider's account of the journey to become an ayahuasquero, a shaman who heals with the visionary vine ayahuasca *; Details the author's training and life as a curandero using ayahuasca medicine, San Pedro cactus, tobacco purges, psychedelic mushrooms, and other visionary plants *; Offers first-hand accounts of miraculous healing where ayahuasca revealed the cause of the illness, including how the author healed his mother from liver cancer *; Shows how ';ayahuasca tourism' symbolizes the Western world's reawakening need to connect with the universal life force For more than 20 years American-born Alan Shoemaker has apprenticed and worked with shamans in Ecuador and Peru, learning the traditional methods of ayahuasca preparation, the ceremonial rituals for its use, and how to commune with the healing spirit of this sacred plant as well as the spirit of the San Pedro cactus and other sacred plant allies.

A profusely illustrated history of the occult nature of the tarot from its origins in ancient Persia*; Thoroughly examines the original historical source for each tarot card and how the cards' divinatory meanings evolved from these symbols*; Provides authentic 18th- and 19th-century spreads and divination techniques*; Reveals the divinatory meanings of the cards as understood by diviners in the Middle Ages and RenaissanceThe origins of the tarot have been lost in the mists of time.

A profound understanding of the surrealists' connections with alchemists and secret societies and the hermetic aspirations revealed in their works *; Explains how surrealist paintings and poems employed mythology, gnostic principles, tarot, voodoo, alchemy, and other hermetic sciences to seek out unexplored regions of the mind and recover lost ';psychic' and magical powers *; Provides many examples of esoteric influence in surrealism, such as how Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon was originally titled The Bath of the Philosophers Not merely an artistic or literary movement as many believe, the surrealists rejected the labels of artist and author bestowed upon them by outsiders, accepting instead the titles of magician, alchemist, or--in the case of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo--witch.

"e;Essential Spirituality beautifully articulates the benefits of spiritual living in the material world.

Many people find the very notion of silence uncomfortable, even alarming or embarrassing.

Listened to by huge congregations in Britain, and perhaps the most recognizable British Methodist voice in the mid-twentieth century, W.

Lessons of the Wild creates an awareness of the essential lessons that Nature teaches us, and provides a guidebook for men and women--particularly those in their forties, fifties, and sixties--who are seeking greater significance in their lives.

The notion and phrase of "e;entering the stream"e; has long been an image for merger and union.

"e;Walter Brueggemann is the master of finding fresh and compelling dimensions of meaning in texts so familiar they barely scratch the surface of our consciousness.