(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best books about shamanism

Sure. :) I was trying not to hijack the thread, but I'll just put the list here and that way anyone can have it. Keep in mind, these aren't all collections of stories, some of them are research topics, but none of them that I've browsed through look like bad reads. The ones I have read I've tried to note.

Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People - Michael Bastine, Mason Winfield - most closely related to thread topic

Life After Life - Raymond Moody - Very good intro to Near Death Experience research

Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones - Raymond Moody

Journey of Souls - Michael Newton - Read this one, it was great, changed my views on reincarnation

The Day Satan Called - Bill Scott

Hunt for the Skinwalker - Colm Kelleher, George Knapp - read parts of, need to finish

The Vengeful Djinn - Rosemary Ellen Guiley - I've read this one, it's really good too, has a large "slow" section in the middle that quotes the Q'uran a lot, but some good creepy Djinn stories.

The Djinn Connection - Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Ghost Culture: Theories, Context, and Scientific Practice - John Sabol

Zones of Strangeness - Peter A. McCue

Lost Secrets of Maya Technology - James O'Kon

The Mythology of Supernatural - Nathan Robert Brown - this one might sound cheesy, but I've read a book on world mythology by the same author, and apparently the writers of the show did their research

Holy Ghosts: Or How a (Not-So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night - Gary Jansen

Thanks a million for your comment, /u/slowbrofl. I read a lot of the posts to this subreddit the night before posting my own, and stumbled upon these comments of yours from five months ago.

I subscribe to such subreddits as /r/GetDisciplined in an attempt to live a lifestyle such as yours, and not because of my eczema. To think that it may improve my eczema is additional motivation.

I'm not going to reply to every point in your comment individually because there are so many. Rather, I wish to tell you that I'm extremely grateful for your having included so many, and for having taken the time to try to help me.

You seem like a psychonaut, so it seems fitting to tell you about this book: Shedding the Layers: How Ayahuasca Saved More Than My Skin. I've yet to read it, but it's about a fellow who uses ayahuasca to treat his eczema.

Again, thanks a million for your comment, /u/slowbrofl. I wish you the very best.

Glad to have you aboard for so long!

Firstly you can still grab the book at the presale page. Go out and grab it!

Communicating with spirits is a very, very subtle sense. One tip that's helped me immensly is a background in shamanic journeying. I'd go in myself, with the use of drum, and enter a realm bordering on dream and the afterlife. You learn not to judge sensations or images there but simply accept them. This translates to your practice so when you are in a ritual and you hear a voice in your head say "3 days" you are able to determine it wasn't you.

Developing this ability to sense without judgement is paramount in magical practice. Let the images, feelings, and sounds flow through you.

This book is, in my opinion, one of the best on developing these psychical skills:

https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Age-Wisdom-Principles-Shamanism/dp/1450519016

Meditation helps a bunch as well.

I've read at least 7 or so books related to ayahuasca and The Shaman and Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms by Don Jose Campos is one of my favorites. Don Jose Campos is an active ayahuascero and this book is an English transcription/translation of oral interviews where he talks all about his craft. It is fascinating and inspirational. I hope you have a great visit to Peru.

I love my Mystical Shaman Oracle Deck.

The art work is beautiful, the imagery is - I feel - very accessible to nearly anybody to interpret, the messages are broad and wholesome... it's my only oracle deck and I love it.

Absolutely agree with /u/Ceath about Thomas.
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe - Part 6 The Twentieth Century Ed: Ankarloo and Clark. Section 3 by de Blecourt is particularly interesting. Section 1 by Hutton also, though it has a strong wiccan bias.
The Secret Lore of Magic by Idries Shah is worth a read. Currently out of print, though, and not cheap second-hand.
Weird Ways of Magic by Leo Martello is of historical interest

my bookclub book that was suggested by me but i have not started or bought yet. it will be made into a movie!

Happy Birthday & Merry XMas /u/caraeeezy

ebook that i want to suggest to everyone

> if someone knows about religions without this assumptions (gnosticism?), please share your knowledge.

Well, there is core shamanism, which is more about methodology. In other words, it teaches how to see and then lets you go see for yourself and draw your own conclusions. There is no required assumption about the existence of a benevolent deity. If you are curious about shamanism in general, I recommend Webb's "Traveling between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans". A good reference on "core shamanism" would be Harner's The Way of the Shaman and Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality

My personal observation of the Entity closest to the various concepts of "God" is very limited and yet largely inexpressible.

P.S. This isn't the type of scientific book I had just mentioned, but you might really enjoy it. It's pretty rad.

There's nothing odd about having multiple power animals.

If you're interested in learning more, I would recommend books by the late great Ted Andrews.

Animal-Speak: https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Speak-Spiritual-Magical-Powers-Creatures/dp/0875420281

Animal-Wise: https://www.amazon.com/Animal-wise-Understanding-Messengers-Companions-Anniversary/dp/1888767634

Yeah, I think we see it similarly. Awareness is a strange loop and so is consciousness... but awareness is like a strange loop about a strange loop and consciousness is just the single loop-thing itself, the solid-state circuit.

Yes, the torus is definitely the ourobouros! I am writing at least three books on this subject (books are very early drafts to mere scraps; the three non-poem books may merge or split into 1-3 final books).

Have you read Destiny and Control in Human Systems? It's by a systems analyst, if I remember his name for his field correctly.

Read anthropology, if that hasn't been part of your reading already. It's much more useful than a lot of the new age shit out there. Here are three great books about it.

• Portals: Opening Doorways to Other Realities Through the Senses by Lynne Hume
  
• Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession by I.M. Lewis
  
• The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul, Trance, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon by Piers Vitebsky

This is a great book. Has techniques, concepts, cultural info, and ethics. There are a lot of ethical considerations to this work. It's basically shamanism 101.

Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591797500/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_10V5CbC4Q9MAQ

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Yes. Here are my favorites:

1 - Thus Spoke The Plant

2 - Sacred Plant Medicine

3 - Plant Spirit Healing

4 - Plant Spirit Shamanism

5 - The Plant Spirit Familiar

The whole dialogue between humans and plants is always taking place. The trick is to learn the language.

1. I love guitar pedals, writing, music, t-shirts, and beer.
   
   
2. I want this book on urban magik.
   
   
3. Because I like presents.
   
   
4. Moon Knight
   
   
5. I'd post my address here.

A wonderful book about the history of DMT is called "mystery school in hyperspace." It is full of knowledge about my favorite molecule.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U4W2CYG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

This is an excerpt from the book I recommended you peruse during our video chat. It's an abstract and confusing book, and yields its secrets only after careful analysis and meditation (partly to absorb the nuggets of pure gold, and partly to realize what concepts and teachings are antiquated and unnecessary aspects of the path). But you may find it a helpful bridge from where you are, back to where you came from, and onwards into infinity. It never hurts to have read the words of others who have taken the somersault of thought into the impossible ;)

Here's a free pdf version: http://www.cdkkt.com/dant/docs/Esoterica/Castaneda/The%20Fire%20from%20Within%20.pdf

Amazon link (you can find it used for ~$4): http://www.amazon.com/The-Fire-Within-Carlos-Castaneda/dp/0671732501

>He affirmed that one of the most important breakthroughs for the new seers was to find that the spot where that point is located on the cocoon of all living creatures is not a permanent feature, but is established on that specific spot by habit. Hence the tremendous stress the new seers put on new actions, on new practicalities. They want desperately to arrive at new usages, new habits.

>“The nagual’s blow is of great importance,” he went on, “because it makes that point move. It alters its location. Sometimes it even creates a permanent crevice there. The assemblage point is totally dislodged, and awareness changes dramatically. But what is a matter of even greater importance is the proper understanding of the truths about awareness in order to realize that that point can be moved from within. The unfortunate truth is that human beings always lose by default. They simply don’t know about their possibilities.”

>“How can one accomplish that change from within?” I asked.

>“The new seers say that realization is the technique,” he said. “They say that, first of all, one must become aware that the world we perceive is the result of our assemblage points’ being located on a specific spot on the cocoon. Once that is understood, the assemblage point can move almost at will, as a consequence of new habits.”

>I did not quite understand what he meant by habits. I asked him to clarify his point.

>“The assemblage point of man appears around a definite area of the cocoon, because the Eagle commands it,” he said. “But the precise spot is determined by habit, by repetitious acts. First we learn that it can be placed there and then we ourselves command it to be there. Our command becomes the Eagle’s command and that point is fixated at that spot. Consider this very carefully; our command becomes the Eagle’s command. The old seers paid dearly for that finding. We’ll come back to that later on.”

>He stated once again that the old seers had concentrated exclusively on developing thousands of the most complex techniques of sorcery. He added that what they never realized was that their intricate devices, as bizarre as they were, had no other value than being the means to break the fixation of their assemblage points and make them move.

>I asked him to explain what he had said.

>“I’ve mentioned to you that sorcery is something like entering a deadend street,” he replied. “What I meant was that sorcery practices have no intrinsic value. Their worth is indirect, for their real function is to make the assemblage point shift by making the first attention release its control on that point.

>“The new seers realized the true role those sorcery practices played and decided to go directly into the process of making their assemblage points shift, avoiding all the other nonsense of rituals and incantations. Yet rituals and incantations are indeed necessary at one time in every warrior’s life. I personally have initiated you in all kinds of sorcery procedures, but only for purposes of luring your first attention away from the power of self absorption, which keeps your assemblage point rigidly fixed.” He added that the obsessive entanglement of the first attention in self absorption or reason, is a powerful binding force, and that ritual behavior, because it is repetitive, forces the first attention to free some energy from watching the inventory, as a consequence of which the assemblage point loses its rigidity.

>“What happens to the persons whose assemblage points lose rigidity?” I asked.

>“If they’re not warriors, they think they’re losing their minds,” he said, smiling. “Just as you thought you were going crazy at one time. If they’re warriors, they know they’ve gone crazy, but they patiently wait. You see, to be healthy and sane means that the assemblage point is immovable. When it shifts, it literally means that one is deranged.”

>He said that two options are opened to warriors whose assemblage points have shifted. One is to acknowledge being ill and to behave in deranged ways, reacting emotionally to the strange worlds that their shifts force them to witness; the other is to remain impassive, untouched, knowing that the assemblage point always returns to its original position.


>“What if the assemblage point doesn’t return to its original position?” I asked.

>“Then those people are lost,” he said. “They are either incurably crazy, because their assemblage points could never assemble the world as we know it, or they are peerless seers who have begun their movement toward the unknown.”

>“What determines whether it is one or the other?”

>“Energy! Impeccability! Impeccable warriors don’t lose their marbles. They remain untouched. I’ve said to you many times that impeccable warriors may see horrifying worlds and yet the next moment they are telling a joke, laughing with their friends or with strangers.”

>I said to him then what I had told him many times before, that what made me think I was ill was a series of disruptive sensorial experiences that I had had as aftereffects of ingesting hallucinogenic plants. I went through states of total space and time discordance, very annoying lapses of mental concentration, actual visions or hallucinations of places and people I would be staring at as if they really existed. I could not help thinking that I was losing my mind.

>“By all ordinary measures, you were indeed losing your mind,” he said, “but in the seers’ view, if you had lost it, you wouldn’t have lost much. The mind, for a seer, is nothing but the self reflection of the inventory of man. If you lose that self reflection, but don’t lose your underpinnings, you actually live an infinitely stronger life than if you had kept it.”

>He remarked that my flaw was my emotional reaction, which prevented me from realizing that the oddity of my sensorial experiences was determined by the depth to which my assemblage point had moved into man’s band of emanations.

Start with Neolithic Shamanism by Kaldera and Krasskova

Then start Kaldera's Northern Tradition series:

Jotunbok

Pathwalkers's Guide


Wightridden

Wyrdwalkers

In the meantime, start searching for the Galdrbok by Johnson and Wallis and read that when you can get a copy.

That should give you about 3-5 years worth of training material. Once you have worked through it all, set it aside and focus on how the spirits you work with encourage you to practice. All of the above authors have their own practices and much of what they offer will not be completely true for your work. Learn the skills that are presented, make them your own, and then foster your relationships with the spirits from there.