Books

When the Buddha was asked to sum up his teachings in a single word he said "awareness"—experiencing the whole of reality, seeing what is, and being entirely in the present. In this way, the mind is made free. 

In Buddhism Plain and Simple, Zen priest and longtime teacher Steve Hagen presents this heart of Buddhist teaching, pared down to its essence and explained in simple, everyday language. This best-selling beginner's guide to Buddhism text has served international readers at all levels of study and practice since it was originally published over a decade ago. More than 300,000 copies in various formats have sold to date, and now it's available in this brand new, high-quality paperback edition. 

The practices are paired with illuminating stories from spiritual teachers around the world, plus sidebars with fascinating details on ancient traditions, global mythology, and scientific trivia. Delivered in an enchanting package overflowing with insight and magic, Animal Power is a celebration of the natural world and an inspiring companion for modern mystics, nature and animal lovers, and the spiritually curious.

Hardcover, 304 pages

An in-depth exploration of the elements, their lore, history, correspondences, and use in spellwork and ritual.

The four elements are the pillars that uphold the manifest world and anchor spirit to matter. They are associated with a wide range of spiritual entities, from small elementals to divine beings.

This book explores the consciousness of the elements, which provides a system of understanding that supports most of the magic of the West and paganism. The use of the elements in a wide range of systems and practices will be examined. Much has been written about the four elements already; this book offers new teachings for newcomers and long-time practitioners alike.

Each of the four elements is explored in depth, including how they interact and change as they rise on the planes. Practical applications for working with the elements are also woven throughout the book. The book concludes with the union of the elements that is more than just becoming Spirit, but the completion of their Great Work.

According to Sandra Ingerman and thousands of years of shamans before her, it is not what we do but who we are and what we are willing to become that affects our happiness, the health of our communities, and ultimately the planet itself.

The Shaman's Toolkit teaches us how to root out the beliefs that are limiting us, how to heal our inner lives and become the people we most want to be, and how to utilize ancient shamanic principles of manifestation to help shape the world we want to live in.

This is shamanism with a kind of social change agenda. It's about having the happiest and most fulfilling life possible and becoming a truly effective world citizen and change maker.

This book was originally published in 2010 as How to Thrive in Changing Times.

Lama Surya Das, the most highly trained American lama in the Tibetan tradition, presents the first comprehensive book of Western Buddhism for the modern-day spiritual seeker. Buddhism offers a profound yet practical path to enlightenment. In this loving and generous book, the American-born and Tibetan-trained Lama Surya Das offers at once a definitive and nonsectarian guide to the wisdom found in ancient Tibetan teachings and a tried and true path of spiritual transformation.

 Human beings continue to search for a sacred elixir to transcend ordinary reality, heal themselves and make sense of their existence. For many who have experienced the Master Plant Ayahuasca - She is that sacred elixir. 

Alchemical Ayahuasca is the true story of Alan Waugh, a house painter from South London who on the brink of suicide, radically changes his life and in the process discovers the secret of healing. 

This book was written to aid your spiritual growth and support your healing journey. It is not to persuade you to drink Ayahuasca. Get ready to explore the Sweet Spot of healing and discover a way of magic!

Alan Waugh trained as a plant Shaman in the Shipibo tradition of Peru. He is an internationally recognized Healer, Ayahuasca Ceremony Leader, Reiki Master, Hypnotherapist, and Freedom Breathworker. 

Alan learned deep compassion as a hospice volunteer over twenty years and has guided over a thousand clients in safe medicine ceremonies in the US and South America. 

He founded the Sacred Valley Spiritual Retreat Center in Mount Shasta, California and now lives in Vilcabamba, Ecuador with his Beloved Dianna, where they offer healing work, trainings, and plant ceremonies at their retreat center Sacred Valley Retreats - Ecuador. 

One of the most distinguished voices in American letters, N. Scott Momaday has devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially its oral tradition. A member of the Kiowa tribe, Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, and grew up on Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo reservations throughout the Southwest. It is a part of the earth he knows well and loves deeply.

In Earth Keeper, he reflects on his native ground and its influence on his people. “When I think about my life and the lives of my ancestors," he writes, "I am inevitably led to the conviction that I, and they, belong to the American land. This is a declaration of belonging. And it is an offering to the earth.”  

In this wise and wonderous work, Momaday shares stories and memories throughout his life, stories that have been passed down through generations, stories that reveal a profound spiritual connection to the American landscape and reverence for the natural world. He offers an homage and a warning. He shows us that the earth is a sacred place of wonder and beauty, a source of strength and healing that must be honored and protected before it’s too late. As he so eloquently and simply reminds us, we must all be keepers of the earth.

Young Blood, Old Magic: A No-Nonsense Approach to the Ancient Art of Reading Tarot

You do not need to learn the tarot because you already know it. It is from this radical jumping off point that WTF Is Tarot breaks down the ancient art of cartomancy. This fresh, accessible and sometimes cheeky guide sheds a holistic light on how to read tarot, from the foundation of magic itself to understanding those tricky court cards to offering readings to others.

Destiny Retrieval shows how to reverse destiny loss with shamanic practices like soul clearing, pathfinding, and signpost recognition. In this comprehensive exploration, author David Kowalewski uses cross-cultural research, scientific findings, field-tested protocols, and personal experiences to unpack this ancient practice. Find out how you can be a hero in your own mind--and in your own reality--by embarking on your destiny quest with the help of shamans and their spirit allies. You can learn the costs of a purposeless and meaningless life and discover how shamans can reverse malaise with destiny-retrieval practices from the ancient past.

Honeybees are fascinating creatures. But in today’s rushed world our only thoughts of bees seem to be about what “busy bees” we have to be to stay afloat in this economy. Dancing with a Thousand Bees offers a different perspective. Inspired by the multifaceted approach that bees themselves take to creating, author Karrie Marie Baxley weaves together visual art, poetry, and prose to create her story of a honeybee, a woman, and the magic of nature. When an artist decides to move from the city to the country and take up beekeeping, she has no idea the impact her decision will make on her life. Embarking on a surprising journey of self-discovery, which also awakens her to the mystical world around her, she begins to see just how critical the tiny bee is to life on this planet—and how much we all can learn from one of nature’s greatest feminine masters. 

Touching on themes of environmentalism, feminism, and shamanism, this book is a creative, layered story that educates, inspires, and delights. Addressing fun facts about the honeybee as well as the plight it currently faces, the author recognizes that the first step toward changing our environmental impact is to be awestruck—and she writes accordingly.

The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this underground classic explores higher consciousness, human evolution, metaphysics, sacred geometry, the secret government, and more.

Bob Frissell has kept intact the basic message of the previous edition; he has also expanded upon it by including significant additions and updates to virtually every chapter, including ten completely new chapters. The author details from a big-picture perspective the enormous infusion of higher dimensional energy that is dramatically raising the vibratory rate of the planet and everyone on it. He also gives the details of the personal transformation that we must make if we are to survive and thrive, so we can “catch the ride” into higher consciousness in a way that enables Mother Earth to reach critical mass and become “lit from within.” This is the story of nothing less than the birth of a new humanity, of the cocreation of Heaven on Earth. 

This is a time of great celebration as we move out of the darkness and into the light. It means that the veils will be lifted, we will remember and live our intimate connection to all life, and we will be allowed to reunite with our cosmic brothers and to move about the universe. We will completely redefine what it means to be human!

INDIGENOUS CULTURES / HAWAII Rima has seen the islands by foot and sleeping under the stars. In return she has experienced the islands the way that few visitors ever do. Not only has she learned vital information, but she has done so with a heart and mind open to island ways. . . . as a native Hawaiian I am honored to recommend this book. MELVIN LONOKAIOLOHIA KALAHIKI, Ali'i Nui o Pu'ukohola Heiau, Council of Hawaiian Organizations When Rima Morrell first went to Hawai'i as a young anthropology student from Cambridge University, she was surprised to find a lighter brighter world where trees talked to her in ancient temples and magic regularly happened. She found the system of ancient Hawaiian wisdom known as Huna, a system that teaches us how to focus the light of our own being to make magic. Following her Higher Self--and overcoming resistance to its rainbow guidance--she discovered we are each responsible for our own power.

Through practicing Huna, we can consciously create our own reality, for we are each the navigator of our own soul canoe. Following her years in the islands, and Ph.D. in Huna, Rima reveals new knowledge about this sacred tradition. Citing the work of earlier researchers such as Max Freedom Long, as well as native kahuna, Rima reveals knowledge about Huna that has not previously been available: the role of emotion in gaining true wisdom, the magical elements of Hawaiian language, the sophisticated system of lunar astrology, and the hula as a system of shamanism. Rima also shows how the principles of a society woven with love can shape our own lives.

RIMA A. MORRELL has a doctorate in Hawaiian Shamanism from the Department of Geography, University -College London, and a Masters and Honours degree in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. She spent years in Polynesia conducting fieldwork with many -kahuna on remote islands and teaching at universities, including the University of Hawai'i. A -fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the Royal Anthropological -Institute, she lectures at international conferences. She also teaches Huna in -Europe. She and her husband live in London and the Scottish Highlands. Rima's website is www.hunalight.com.

Twenty-five years ago, a young musician and painter named Martin Prechtel wandered through the brilliant landscapes of Mexico and Guatemala. Arriving at Santiago Atitlan, a Tzutujil Mayan village on the breathtaking shores of Lake Atitlan, Prechtel met Nicolas Chiviliu Tacaxoy--perhaps the most famous shaman in Tzutujil history--who believed Prechtel was the new student he had asked the gods to provide. For the next thirteen years, Prechtel studied the ancient Tzutujil culture and became a village chief and a famous shaman in his own right.In Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, Prechtel brings to vivid life the sights, sounds, scents, and colors of Santiago Atitlan: its magical personalities, its beauty, its material poverty and spiritual richness, its eight-hundred-year-old rituals juxtaposed with quintessential small-town gossip. The story of his education is a tale filled with enchantment, danger, passion, and hope.

Anthropologist Johannes Wilbert here presents a comprehensive ethnography of magico-religious, medicinal, and recreational tobacco use among native South American societies. Surveying nearly three hundred societies, Wilbert has found that South American Indians employ numerous means of nicotine application and that a close functional relationship exists between tobacco and shamanism. His book is "a superb reference and a pleasure to read."—Robert Byck, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine

Non-Indian theologian and editor Nerburn attempts to bridge the gap between the world into which I had been born and the world of a people I had grown to know and love by narrating the fascinating toils and truths of Dan, a 78-year-old Lakota man.

Against an unflinching backdrop of 1990s reservation life and the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas, Neither Wolf nor Dog tells the story of two men, one white and one Indian, locked in their own understandings yet struggling to find a common voice. In this award-winning book, acclaimed author Kent Nerburn draws us deep into the world of a Native American elder named Dan, who leads Kent through Indian towns and down forgotten roads that swirl with the memories of the Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull. Along the way we meet a vivid cast of characters -- ranging from Jumbo, a 400-pound mechanic, to Annie, an eighty-year-old Lakota woman living in a log cabin with no running water. An unlikely cross between On the Road and Black Elk Speaks, Neither Wolf nor Dog takes us past the myths and stereotypes of the Native American experience, revealing an America few ever see.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community based on the lessons of the natural world.

As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry's relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth- its abundance of sweet juicy berries- to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains,"Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency."