South Texas Shaman


Book Description

This little book has a selected number of truthful anecdotes of some early supernatural experiences I went through beginning in October, ’72, during my graduate work in Social Work at Our Lady Of The Lake University, here in my beautiful hometown San Antone (some good folks call it San Antonio), as part of a pre-Destined, much larger spiritual Training that ended up stretching out some 33 years, and which I feel I am supposed to share with all you good people. But this is not about me: we ALL have Gifts, as Jesus repeatedly taught, and Demonstrated, whether we yet know it or not, and the Training has been HARSH, so I am bold in my Testimony, not being naïve about the dangers inherent in provoking controversy. This is (emboldened, admittedly) Testimony of the Guidance and Power and Love of my best Friend and Buddy since ’72, my beloved Lord Jesus, the coming Messiah and true King of the Mother Earth, Her peoples, and all of Nature (IN OUR LIFETIMES, ACCORDING TO MY TRAINING AND GIFTS, AND THE SIGNS NOW INCREASINGLY OBVIOUS, ALL AROUND US). There is an obvious progression of events that occurred during the Training, according to my Lord Jesus’ far-seeing purposes, so I have attempted to share that in a “scientific” way, if you would, -how one incident led to another, way down the road of linear time (but perfectly connected, in God’s timing). Such is the case with THE STORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE, with 13 of the early supernatural occurrences over a nine year period (’72 to’81) that led up to the picture (The Three Wood Dragons and Power Rock). Briefly, I have been close to my beloved Nature all my life, with both sides of my Family being solid, wonderful, country folk with deep spiritual values, raised in deep wilderness areas in south and east Texas, and all my young days my three cousins and I spent hunting and fishing, running through all those woods and creeks, just sitting, watching, listening to, and appreciating, all manner of wildlife (and the powerful, silent Music of God, out there). As soon as I learned to pray (ironically, through a beautiful 12th century Japanese Buddhist technique, explained in the book: please see A CHRISTIAN ADAPTATION OF THE NICHIREN SHOSHU JAPANESE BUDDHIST PRAYER CONSIDERATIONS), I went before my Lord Jesus on Nature’s behalf, and She has rewarded me (according to the Nagual, Don Juan’s, terminology- see the entire Carlos Castaneda works) in countless, exquisite ways, including the FOUR PHYSICAL OBJECTS GIVEN FROM SUPERNATURAL BEINGS: THE POWER ROCK AND THE THREE WOOD DRAGONS, given by the Astral Shaman and the Serpent Seraphim, as the Bible calls the supernatural Spirit Animals (well known by the Native Americans, before their genocide at the hands of the invading Europeans). I have created this little book (a larger one is still ahead, with more detailed Testimony (about 250 pages, most now handwritten), from a website, and added some special pieces from the larger manuscript. Some is deadly serious, but a lot of the pieces are definitely NOT serious, as you will see. Ya gotta keep a sense of humor all the time, do you not (Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were my heroes: they made a Party out of everything, just as an aging Hippie is obliged to do). I must stress that the Jesus Whom I have known since 1975 as my Savior, best Buddy, and Confidante, is NOT the Jesus portrayed through the centuries through evil people and organized “religion”, who have given Him a bad name among our Spiritual Families all over this planet. As the Testimony details, Jesus brought me to Himself through a beautiful twelfth-century Japanese “Buddhist” prayer technique (all prayers to the Creator are “techniques”), Nichiren Shoshu, which brought my first answered prayer in 1974, a full year before I learned Jesus was behind my Training. On the contrary, He has taught me since the beginning that ANYONE WHO CALLS




The White Shaman Mural


Book Description

Folded plate (1 leaf, 39 x 61 cm, folded to 19 x 16 cm) in pocket.




The Jaguar Within


Book Description

An important new way of viewing the prehistoric art of the Americas, The Jaguar Within demonstrates that understanding a work of art’s connection with shamanic trance can lead to an appreciation of it as an extremely creative solution to the inherent challenge of giving material form to nonmaterial realities and states of being. Shamanism—the practice of entering a trance state to experience visions of a reality beyond the ordinary and to gain esoteric knowledge—has been an important part of life for indigenous societies throughout the Americas from prehistoric times until the present. Much has been written about shamanism in both scholarly and popular literature, but few authors have linked it to another significant visual realm—art. In this pioneering study, Rebecca R. Stone considers how deep familiarity with, and profound respect for, the extra-ordinary visionary experiences of shamanism profoundly affected the artistic output of indigenous cultures in Central and South America before the European invasions of the sixteenth century. Using ethnographic accounts of shamanic trance experiences, Stone defines a core set of trance vision characteristics, including enhanced senses; ego dissolution; bodily distortions; flying, spinning, and undulating sensations; synaesthesia; and physical transformation from the human self into animal and other states of being. Stone then traces these visionary characteristics in ancient artworks from Costa Rica and Peru. She makes a convincing case that these works, especially those of the Moche, depict shamans in a trance state or else convey the perceptual experience of visions by creating deliberately chaotic and distorted conglomerations of partial, inverted, and incoherent images.




Painters in Prehistory


Book Description

The story of ancient canyon dwellers along the Lower Pecos and their culture




Rock Art of the Lower Pecos


Book Description

Boyd seed a way that hunter-gatherer artists expressed their belief systems; provided a mechanism for social and environmental adaptation; and acted as agents in the social, economic, and ideological affairs of the community. She offers detailed information gleaned from the art regarding the nature of the Lower Pecos cosmos, ritual practices involving the use of sacramental and medicinal plants, and hunter-gatherer lifeways.




Shamans of the Foye Tree


Book Description

Drawing on anthropologist Ana Mariella Bacigalupo's fifteen years of field research, Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche is the first study to follow shamans' gender identities and performance in a variety of ritual, social, sexual, and political contexts. To Mapuche shamans, or machi, the foye tree is of special importance, not only for its medicinal qualities but also because of its hermaphroditic flowers, which reflect the gender-shifting components of machi healing practices. Framed by the cultural constructions of gender and identity, Bacigalupo's fascinating findings span the ways in which the Chilean state stigmatizes the machi as witches and sexual deviants; how shamans use paradoxical discourses about gender to legitimatize themselves as healers and, at the same time, as modern men and women; the tree's political use as a symbol of resistance to national ideologies; and other components of these rich traditions. The first comprehensive study on Mapuche shamans' gendered practices, Shamans of the Foye Tree offers new perspectives on this crucial intersection of spiritual, social, and political power.




Amada's Blessings from the Peyote Gardens of South Texas


Book Description

Amada Cardenas, a Mexican American woman from the borderlands of South Texas, played a pivotal role in the little-known history of the peyote trade. She and her husband were the first federally licensed peyote dealers. They began harvesting and selling the sacramental plant to followers of the Native American Church (NAC) in the 1930s, and after her husband’s death in the late 1960s Mrs. Cardenas continued to befriend and help generations of NAC members until her death in 2005, just short of her 101st birthday. Author Stacy B. Schaefer, a close friend of Amada, spent thirteen years doing fieldwork with this remarkable woman. Her book weaves together the geography, biology, history, cultures, and religions that created the unique life of Mrs. Cardenas and the people she knew. Schaefer includes their words to help tell the story of how Mexican Americans, Tejanos, gringos, Native Americans, and others were touched and inspired by Amada Cardenas’s embodiment of the core NAC values: faith, hope, love, and charity.




Thunder Shaman


Book Description

As a “wild,” drumming thunder shaman, a warrior mounted on her spirit horse, Francisca Kolipi’s spirit traveled to other historical times and places, gaining the power and knowledge to conduct spiritual warfare against her community’s enemies, including forestry companies and settlers. As a “civilized” shaman, Francisca narrated the Mapuche people’s attachment to their local sacred landscapes, which are themselves imbued with shamanic power, and constructed nonlinear histories of intra- and interethnic relations that created a moral order in which Mapuche become history’s spiritual victors. Thunder Shaman represents an extraordinary collaboration between Francisca Kolipi and anthropologist Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, who became Kolipi’s “granddaughter,” trusted helper, and agent in a mission of historical (re)construction and myth-making. The book describes Francisca’s life, death, and expected rebirth, and shows how she remade history through multitemporal dreams, visions, and spirit possession, drawing on ancestral beings and forest spirits as historical agents to obliterate state ideologies and the colonialist usurpation of indigenous lands. Both an academic text and a powerful ritual object intended to be an agent in shamanic history, Thunder Shaman functions simultaneously as a shamanic “bible,” embodying Francisca’s power, will, and spirit long after her death in 1996, and an insightful study of shamanic historical consciousness, in which biography, spirituality, politics, ecology, and the past, present, and future are inextricably linked. It demonstrates how shamans are constituted by historical-political and ecological events, while they also actively create history itself through shamanic imaginaries and narrative forms.




Siberian Shamanism


Book Description

An intimate account of an ancient shamanic ritual of Siberia • Illustrated with vivid, full-color photographs throughout • Details the many preparations and ritual objects as well as the struggles of the shamans to complete the ceremony successfully Near the radiant blue waters of Lake Baikal, in the lands where Mongolia, Siberia, and China meet, live the Buryats, an indigenous people little known to the Western world. After seventy years of religious persecution by the Soviet government, they can now pursue their traditional spiritual practices, a unique blend of Tibetan Buddhism and shamanism. There are two distinct shamanic paths in the Buryat tradition: Black shamanism, which draws power from the earth, and White shamanism, which draws power from the sky. In the Buryat Aga region, Black and White shamans conduct rituals together, for the Buryats believe that they are the children of the Swan Mother, descendants of heaven who can unite both sides in harmony. Providing an intimate account of one of the Buryats’ most important shamanic rituals, this book documents a complete Shanar, the ceremony in which a new shaman first contacts his ancestral spirits and receives his power. Through dozens of full-color photographs, the authors detail the preparations of the sacred grounds, ritual objects, and colorful costumes, including the orgay, or shaman’s horns, and vividly illustrate the dynamic motions of the shamans as the spirits enter them. Readers experience the intensity of ancient ritual as the initiate struggles through the rites, encountering unexpected resistance from the spirit world, and the elder shamans uncover ancient grievances that must be addressed before the Shanar can be completed successfully. Interwoven with beautiful translations of Buryat ceremonial songs and chants, this unprecedented view of one of the world’s oldest shamanic traditions allows readers to witness extraordinary forces at work in a ritual that culminates in a cleansing blessing from the heavens themselves.




The Shaman's Wages


Book Description

"Most studies of Korean shamanism--a popular religion that is both celebrated and stigmatized--have minimized regional differences, focusing on shamans from central Korea whose work involves spirit possession. Less attention has been paid to hereditary shamans, a number of whom have resided for centuries on Cheju Island, off Korea's southwest coast. Although simbang (native Cheju shamans) are relied upon to perform important rituals, for which they receive lavish offerings, they are often perceived as charlatans who swindle innocent people. This first study of the material exchange and politics of Korean shamanism describes interactions between shamans and their clients in order to show how this ritual exchange is distinct from other forms of transaction, such as barter, purchase, bribery, and gift-giving. The "ritual economy" of Korean simbang involves not only monetary payment, but also reciprocity, sincerity, and the expressive forms that practitioners use to authenticate ritual actions that both emphasize ritual exchange and distinguish it from other forms social and economic transactions"--