Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon's Sacred Vine

The Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon's Sacred Vine, is a panorama of texts translated from nearly a dozen languages on the ayahuasca experience. These include indigenous mythic narratives, testimonies, and religious hymns, as well as stories related by Western travelers, scientists, and writers who have had contact with ayahuasca in different contexts. In addition to contributions from Wade Davis, Dennis McKenna, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmotoff and Richard Spruce, the new edition includes essays from Graham Hancock, Alex Grey, Jeremy Narby, Susana Bustos, and a section on Ayahuasca art. The Ayahuasca Reader remains the most comprehensive collection of authoritative writings on the subject ever published. An essential reference for anthropology, ethnobotany and Latin American literature studies, it will be of intense interest to students of Amazonian indigenous culture, Native American spirituality, and metaphysical studies.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Ralph Metzner Preface to the Second Edition Luis Eduardo Luna and Steven F. White Introduction   I. AYAHUASCA MYTHS AND TESTIMONIES Yajé: Myth and Ritual Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff   The Creation Myth Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff   A Visit to the Second Heaven: A Siona Narrative of the Yagé Experience E. Jean Matteson Langdon   Two Ayahuasca Myths from the Cashinahua of Northwestern Brazil Elsje Maria Lagrou   Mythologies of the Vine Oscar Calavia Sáez   A Huaorani Myth of the First Miiyabu (Ayahuasca Vine) Jonathon S. Miller Weisberger   Initiation Experience Jean-Pierre Chaumeil (as told by Alberto Prohaño)   Light of This World Don Hilario Peña   Unámarai, Father of Yajé Hugo Niño   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) José Chantre y Herrera   The Drug that Makes Men Brave Gordon MacCreagh   Discovering the Way Michael Harner   A Yajé Session Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff   Yagé 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 Françoise 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 François 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 UNIÃO DO VEGETAL (UDV) Hymns Received by Raimundo Irineu Serra Received by Sebastião Mota de Melo Received by Alfredo Gregório 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) José Eustasio Rivera   The Yagé Letters Allen Ginsberg   Men of Chazúta F. Bruce Lamb   The Three Halves of Ino Moxo (excerpt) César Calvo   Ayahuasca, or What There Is at the End Mario Villafranca Saravia   Returning Ib Michael   Aerial Waters Néstor 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 Calderón   Icaro of the Yacumama Ana Varela Tafur   Rite of Passage Percy Vílchez 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

About the Author :
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 Florianópolis, 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 Florianópolis, 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 más que humano en la poesía de Pablo Antonio Cuadra: un estudio ecocrítico, Arando el aire: la ecología en la poesía y la música de Nicaragua and El consumo de lo que somos: muestra de poesía ecológica hispánica contemporánea. He also co-translated Federico García Lorca’s Poet in New York and The Angel of Rain by Gastón Baquero. His published poetry includes Escanciador de pócimas, Bajo la palabra de las plantas (poesía 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.

Review :
“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 Planète “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