Drinking the Four Winds: A Shamanic Love Story

Drinking the Four Winds: A Shamanic Love Story, by Ross Heaven

When Ross Heaven, a psychologist and ex-pharmaceutical industry consultant, embarks on a shamanic apprenticeship in the rainforests and mountains of South America his intention is to unlock the secrets of San Pedro, the mescaline cactus that has been used as a sacrament and teacher plant in Peru for millennia, and to learn about love and healing. What he finds is more remarkable, painful, enriching, liberating and extraordinary than he could have imagined.

Ross Heaven was described by Guardian newspaper journalist James Shreeve as "the Joseph Campbell of our times". The director of The Four Gates Foundation for spiritual and shamanic wisdom, Ross is a psychologist, presenter, and the author of more than 10 books on shamanism, plant medicines, and the healing traditions, including The Hummingbird's Journey to God (the first book to be written about shamanic healing with the plant teacher San Pedro), Plant Spirit Shamanism (about ayahuasca and San Pedro healing and the therapeutic uses of other plants), Plant Spirit Wisdom (about healing traditions and practices with native European plants), and The Sin Eater's Last Confessions (about the folk-healing practices of Wales).

As well as his work with native shamanism, Ross has visited Peru since the 1990's to work with the ayahuasceros and curanderos of the Amazon and Andes, and with ayahuasca and San Pedro, the two legendary sacraments and teacher plants used by the shamans of these regions to heal the mind, body, and soul, and to unlock new levels of expanded consciousness.

He now offers the same opportunity for others, with retreat programmes and journeys to Peru where participants can work with indigenous healers and explore and expand their awareness through shamanic encounters with visionary plants. He has also worked with the shamans and plant healing traditions of Haiti and his experiences in this area are recorded in his book Vodou Shaman, of which Publisher's Weekly said "This stands out as one of the most articulate and well-intentioned guidebooks available".

In his workshops, Ross draws from his cross-cultural knowledge of shamanism and its healing possibilities for creating new ways to understand ourselves, our connections to the Earth, and the journeys we are on. Order from Amazon

Isaac Newtons Freemasonry: The Alchemy of Science and Mysticism

Isaac Newtons Freemasonry: The Alchemy of Science and Mysticism, by Alain Bauer. An exploration of how modern Freemasonry enabled Isaac Newton and his like-minded contemporaries to flourish. Freemasonry, as a fraternal order of scientists and philosophers, emerged in the 17th century and represented something new--an amalgam of alchemy and science that allowed the creative genius of Isaac Newton and his contemporaries to flourish. In Isaac Newton’s Freemasonry, Alain Bauer presents the swirl of historical, sociological, and religious influences that sparked the spiritual ferment and transformation of that time. His research shows that Freemasonry represented a crossroads between science and spirituality and became the vehicle for promoting spiritual and intellectual egalitarianism. Isaac Newton was seminal in the “invention” of this new form of Freemasonry, which allowed Newton and other like-minded associates to free themselves of the church’s monopoly on the intellectual milieu of the time.

This form of Freemasonry created an ideological blueprint that sought to move England beyond the civil wars generated by its religious conflicts to a society with scientific progress as its foundation and standard. The “science” of these men was rooted in the Hermetic tradition and included alchemy and even elements of magic. Yet, in contrast to the endless reinterpretations of church doctrine that fueled the conflicts ravaging England, this new society of Accepted Freemasons provided an intellectual haven and creative crucible for scientific and political progress. This book reveals the connections of Rosslyn Chapel, Henry Sinclair, and the Invisible College to Newton’s role in 17th-century Freemasonry and opens unexplored trails into the history of Freemasonry in Europe. Alain Bauer, a researcher and historian, is the current Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France. He is the author in French of Grand O and Le Grand Orient de France.

Ganesha Goes to Lunch: Classics from Mystic India

Ganesha Goes to Lunch: Classics from Mystic India, by Kamla K. Kapur. Epics of ancient India rank with the timeless myths of classical Greece and Rome in the power of their language and the underlying moral lessons. The Ramayana and Mahabharata, both written in Sanskrit, contain vibrant stories of kings and princes, sages and tricksters, demons and gods, damsels in distress and mighty heroes. Ganesha Goes to Lunch collects some of the most vivid stories from these and other early Indian folklore and spiritual texts including the Vedas and the Puranas. These stories feature the gods of India in their celestial and earthly abodes, hapless humans struggling with life's many problems, and gods and humans interacting. Assembled by Kamla Kapur, these stories illustrate the great spiritual and practical themes of the human condition. Kamla Kapur brings her poet’s eye and ear to the retelling of these stories, recreating and dramatizing them to illuminate their relevance to modern times.

Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul

Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul, by Caroline Myss. Internationally renowned motivational teacher, spiritual instructor, and popular theologian Caroline Myss has created a transcendent work of unique insight and revelation in Entering the Castle. This exciting new teaching of contemporary mysticism is also a brilliant synthesis of the psychology of consciousness and of Eastern and Western mystical traditions. Myss provides a highly original inner path to self-knowledge -- which is also the road into a spiritual knowledge of God and your own soul -- as she reveals a necessary external path, one that takes you out into the world to serve God and others as a mystic without a monastery -- without having to retreat into total silence, self-denial, or isolation.

As her main template for this extraordinary, modern spiritual journey, Myss uses the beloved, revered writings of The Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila. Adapting Teresa's vision of the soul as a beautiful crystal castle with many floors, or mansions, and many rooms within those mansions, Myss guides us from room to room, helping us meet different aspects of our self, our soul, and our spirit -- preparing us for the ultimate encounter with God and our own divinity. Through intense practices and methods of spiritual inquiry adapted for contemporary life, she helps us to develop our personal powers of prayer, contemplation, and intuition and to ascend the seven levels of soul knowledge that build an ever stronger interior castle of our own -- a soul of strength and stamina.

As in all her books, Myss also recounts stories of profoundly moving real-life experiences -- of her own, as well as of her students and of renowned spiritual figures -- that bring home the universal truth of her insights. Presiding over the entire book and journey are the great mystics, ancient and contemporary, of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism with their inspiring lives and discerning spirits. And over all, the benevolence, truth, and gentle and tough love of Teresa of Ávila shine through. Doubtless Myss's most deeply personal, revealing, compassionate, and transforming book yet, Entering the Castle is a comprehensive guidebook for the journey of your life -- a journey into the center of your soul. There, peace, God, and a fearless bliss wait for you to discover them...and claim them for your own.

The Forbidden Rumi

The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication, by Nevit O. Ergin and Will Johnson. After his overwhelming and life-altering encounters with Shams of Tabriz, Rumi, the great thirteenth-century mystic, poet, and originator of the whirling dervishes, let go of many of the precepts of formal religion, insisting that only a complete personal dissolving into the larger energies of God could provide the satisfaction that the heart so desperately seeks. He began to speak spontaneously in the language of poetry, and his followers compiled his 44,000 verses into 23 volumes, collectively called the Divan. When Nevit Ergin decided to translate the Divan of Rumi into English, he enlisted the help of the Turkish government, which was happy to participate. The first 22 volumes were published without difficulty, but the government withdrew its support and refused to participate in the publication of the final volume due to its openly heretical nature. Now, in The Forbidden Rumi, Will Johnson and Nevit Ergin present for the first time in English Rumi’s poems from this forbidden volume. The collection is grouped into three sections: songs to Shams and God, songs of heresy, and songs of advice and admonition. In them Rumi explains that in order to transform our consciousness, we must let go of ingrained habits and embrace new ones. In short, we must become heretics.