Ayahuasca Reader

Given the plethora of publications on ayahuasca, it is sometimes difficult to know which are the worthiest. That being said, the Ayahuasca Reader is a classic. Mark Plotkin, PhD, ethnobotanist and director of Amazon Conservation Team The second edition of Ayahuasca Reader confirms that it is an invaluable resource and a must-read for anybody interested in ayahuasca. Jeremy Narby, PhD, Amazonian Project Director, Nouvelle Plante Gripping myths, rituals, and initiation rites; heavens, hells, and other worlds; healing, therapy, and spiritual growth. With all this as well as the chemistry and biology of this very special brew, this book is everything a Reader should be: broad, comprehensive, and enticing. Susan Blackmore, psychologist and memeticist

Luis Eduardo Luna, born in Florenciain 1947, in the Colombian Amazon region, is co-editor with Steven F. White of the Ayahuasca Reader. He received his PhD from the Institute of Comparative Religion at Stockholm University. A Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, he is also the author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon and, with Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, a project that grew from their work to establish the internationally recognized USKO-AYAR Amazonian School of Painting in Pucallpa, Peru. From 1994 to 1998 he was a Professor in Anthropology at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Florianpolis, Brazil. He retired from the Swedish School of Economics in Helsinki in 2011. He is the Director of Wasiwaska, Research Center for the Study of Psychointegrator Plants, Visionary Art and Consciousness, based in Florianpolis, southern Brazil. Steven F. White, born in Abington, Pennsylvania in 1955, is co-editor with Luis Eduardo Luna of the Ayahuasca Reader. He received a BA in English from Williams College as well as MA and PhD degrees in Spanish from the University of Oregon. He received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation and was the recipient of two Fulbright fellowships. He has lived and worked in many Latin American countries, an opportunity that enabled him to edit bilingual anthologies of poetry from Nicaragua, Chile and Brazil. Recent books have focused on ecology and include El mundo ms que humano en la poesa de Pablo Antonio Cuadra: un estudio ecocrtico, Arando el aire: la ecologa en la poesa y la msica de Nicaragua and El consumo de lo que somos: muestra de poesa ecolgica hispnica contempornea. He also co-translated Federico Garca Lorcas Poet in New York and The Angel of Rain by Gastn Baquero. His published poetry includes Escanciador de pcimas, Bajo la palabra de las plantas (poesa selecta: 1979-2009) and Sworn to the Plants: Selected Poems (1976-2016). He has been teaching at St. Lawrence University since 1987 and is one of the co-founders of its Caribbean and Latin American Studies program.

Foreword by Ralph Metzner Preface to the Second Edition Luis Eduardo Luna and Steven F. White Introduction I. AYAHUASCA MYTHS AND TESTIMONIES Yaj: Myth and Ritual Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff The Creation Myth Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff A Visit to the Second Heaven: A Siona Narrative of the Yag Experience E. Jean Matteson Langdon Two Ayahuasca Myths from the Cashinahua of Northwestern Brazil Elsje Maria Lagrou Mythologies of the Vine Oscar Calavia Sez A Huaorani Myth of the First Miiyabu (Ayahuasca Vine) Jonathon S. Miller Weisberger Initiation Experience Jean-Pierre Chaumeil (as told by Alberto Prohao) Light of This World Don Hilario Pea Unmarai, Father of Yaj Hugo Nio At the End You See God Fernando Payaguaje II.AYAHUASCA CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS On Some Remarkable Narcotics of the Amazon Valley and Orinoco Richard Spruce First Known Printed Reference to Ayahuasca (1675) Jos Chantre y Herrera The Drug that Makes Men Brave Gordon MacCreagh Discovering the Way Michael Harner A Yaj Session Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff Yag Nostalgia Scott S. Robinson The Spears of Twilight: Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle Philippe Descola One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest Wade Davis Becoming-Jaguar William Torres C. The Jaguar Who Would Not Say Her Prayers: Changing Polarities in Upper Amazonian Shamanism Franoise Barbira Freedman Montage Michael Taussig Design Therapy Angelika Gebhart-Sayer Healing Icaros in Peruvian Vegetalismo Susana Bustos Tracking the River of Change: A Multidimensional Interpretation of Ayahuasca Healing The Heart: Hungarian Ethnobotanical and Ayahuasca Research Team (Petra Bokor, Ede Frecska, Lajos Horvath, Attila Szabo) Through the Void: A Cognitive Testimony Jan Kounen Twenty Years Later Franois Demange Some Observations on the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience Luis Eduardo Luna Ayahuasca as Antidote Jeremy Narby III. NEW RELIGIONS: SANTO DAIME, BARQUINHA, AND UNIO DO VEGETAL (UDV) Hymns Received by Raimundo Irineu Serra Received by Sebastio Mota de Melo Received by Alfredo Gregrio de Melo Received by Daniel Pereira de Matos Received by Francisca Campos do Nascimento The Book of Visions: Journey to Santo Daime (excerpt) Alex Polari de Alverga An Unusual Experience with Hoasca: A Lesson From the Teacher Dennis J. McKenna IV. WRITING AYAHUASCA The Vortex (excerpt) Jos Eustasio Rivera The Yag Letters Allen Ginsberg Men of Chazta F. Bruce Lamb The Three Halves of Ino Moxo (excerpt) Csar Calvo Ayahuasca, or What There Is at the End Mario Villafranca Saravia Returning Ib Michael Aerial Waters Nstor Perlongher The Mother of the Voice in the Ear (excerpt) Alfonso Domingo Rio NAPO Dale Pendell From Sworn to the Plants Steven F. White Ayahuasca in My Art and Philosophy Alex Grey Ayahuasca Juan Carlos Galeano The Woman I Could Have Been Esthela Caldern Icaro of the Yacumama Ana Varela Tafur Rite of Passage Percy Vlchez Vela Ayahuasca Gave Me a Story Graham Hancock V. AYAHUASCA IN VISUAL EXPRESSION List of Color Plates, Ayahuasca in Visual Expression Bibliography, Select Discography and Filmography Appendix Selected Works in Their Original Language Notes on Contributors General Index