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Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations With Contemporary Shamans by Hillary S. Webb Every indigenous society throughout the world has had its own version of the shaman—a man or woman who can, at will, enter into altered states of consciousness in order to acquire knowledge and healing power. Despite having once considered shamanism a “low level religion,” today people in the Western world are beginning to recognize that, in our drive for material comfort, we have lost our vital connection with the sacred dimensions of life and, as a result, our own authentic selves. Thus called, our culture is once again turning to the shaman to help guide us back into a state of divine reverence for oIurselves and the world around us. |
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Sorcery and Shamanism: Curanderos and Clients in Northern Peru by Donald Joralemon, Douglas Sharon |
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Eduardo El Curandero: The Words of a Peruvian Healer Eduardo El Curandero is a documentary style book, which includes photograph excerpts from the anthropological film, Eduardo the Healer, which inspired its creation. This book allows access into aspects of Eduardo Calderón's life and his healing techniques, commonly found among the curanderos (healers) and practioners of shamanism in Northern Peru. The interactive quality of this book encourages the reader to follow the text as if it were an extension of the film. It weaves through the depths of Calderón's experiences, creating a mosaic of his life that shines light onto the magnitude of this cultural practice. Its importance pervades Peruvian borders and has provided a keen awareness of the significance of alternate methods of healing within the Latino culture. |
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Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records by Gary Urton "This is by far the most important monograph on Andean systems of information registry since the Ashers' volumes in the late 1970s. Urton provides a platform for a whole new generation of studies." --Frank Salomon, Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison In an age when computers process immense amounts of information by the manipulation of sequences of 1s and 0s, it remains a frustrating mystery how prehistoric Inka recordkeepers encoded a tremendous variety and quantity of data using only knotted and dyed strings. Yet the comparison between computers and khipu may hold an important clue to deciphering the Inka records. In this book, Gary Urton sets forth a pathbreaking theory that the manipulation of fibers in the construction of khipu created physical features that constitute binary-coded sequences which store units of information in a system of binary recordkeeping that was used throughout the Inka empire. Urton begins his theory with the making of khipu, showing how at each step of the process binary, either/or choices were made. He then investigates the symbolic components of the binary coding system, the amount of information that could have been encoded, procedures that may have been used for reading the khipu, the nature of the khipu signs, and, finally, the nature of the khipu recording system itself--emphasizing relations of markedness and semantic coupling. This research constitutes a major step forward in building a unified theory of the khipu system of information storage and communication based on the sum total of construction features making up these extraordinary objects. |
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Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals The Quechua people of southern Peru are both agriculturalists and herders who maintain large herds of alpacas and llamas. But they are also weavers, and it is through weaving that their cultural traditions are passed down over the generations. Owing to the region’s isolation, the textile symbols, forms of clothing, and technical processes remain strongly linked to the people’s environment and their ancestors. Heckman’s photographs convey the warmth and vitality of the Quechua people and illustrate how the land is intricately woven into their lives and their beliefs. Quechua weavers in the mountainous regions near Cuzco, Peru, produce certain textile forms and designs not found elsewhere in the Andes. Their textiles are a legacy of their Andean ancestors. Andrea Heckman has devoted more than twenty years to documenting and analyzing the ways Andean beliefs persist over time in visual symbols embedded in textiles and portrayed in rituals. Her primary focus is the area around the sacred peak of Ausangate, in southern Peru, some eighty-five miles southeast of the former Inca capital of Cuzco. |
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| Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of Ancient by Anthony F. Aveni The Nasca Lines are one of the world's great enigmas. Who etched the more than 1,000 animal, human, and geometric figures that cover 400 square miles of barren pampa in southern Peru? How did the makers create lifelike images of monkeys, birds, and spiders without an aerial vantage point from which to view these giant figures that stretch across thousands of square yards? Most puzzling of all, why did the ancient Nasca lay out these lines and images in the desert? These are the questions that pioneering archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni seeks to answer in this book. Writing for a wide public audience, Aveni begins by establishing the Nasca Lines as a true wonder of the ancient world. He describes how viewers across the centuries have tried to interpret the lines and debunks the wilder theories. Then he vividly recounts his own years of exploration at Nasca in collaboration with other investigators and the discoveries that have answered many of the riddles about who made the Nasca Lines, when, and for what purposes. This fascinating overview of what the leading expert and his colleagues currently understand about the lines is required reading for everyone intrigued by ancient mysteries.  |
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| The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community by Catherine J. Allen This second edition of Catherine J. Allen's distinctive ethnography of the Quechua-speaking people of the Andes brings their story into the present. She has added an extensive afterword based on her visits to Sonqo in 1995 and 2000, and has updated and revised parts of the original text. The book focuses on the very real problem of cultural continuity in a changing world, and Allen finds that the hold life has in 2002 is not the same as it was in 1985.--This text refers to the Paperback edition. |
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The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner Nevill Drury, author of The Elements of Shamanism |
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| The Secret of the Incas : Myth, Astronomy, and the War Against Time by William Sullivan In the tradition of Fingerprints of the Gods (Crown, 1995; 65,000 sold) and Stonehenge Decoded, this revolutionary new interpretation of the mythology of the Incas offers an astonishing "history of prehistory". At its peak, the Inca empire was the largest on Earth. Yet in the year 1532, it was conquered by fewer than 200 Spanish adventurers. How could this happen? Approaching the answer clue by clue, William Sullivan decodes the myths of the Incas to reveal that they embody an astoundingly precise record of astronomical events. In the 15th century, the Inca priest-astronomers read the sky and saw signs of an apocalypse. So the Incas took a desperate gamble: If events in the heavens could influence those on Earth, perhaps the reverse was true. In The Secret of the Incas, Sullivan shows that the Inca rituals of warfare and human sacrifice were nothing less than an attempt to stop time, to forestall the cataclysm that would sweep away their world. This is a work of rare erudition and imagination that will reshape our understanding of the past. |
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