Journeys to our origins
“There are an increasing number of psychospiritual drug narratives that centre around ayahuasca and the Amazon, and while they all retain a great number of similar threads, Robert Tindall’s The Jaguar the Roams the Mind stands out from the crowd…
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Robert recently had a conversation with Erik Davis and Maja D’Aoust on the Progressive Radio Network’s program Expanding Mind, exploring indigenous versus modern consciousness, addiction, and the profound relevance of Homer’s Odyssey to unraveling the roots of our current ecological
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Salud con Todos! Due to the vigorous response we’ve received for our June pilgrimage to Mayantuyacu, we’ve chosen to offer another opportunity in August of 2013 for a small group of people to journey into the depths of the vegetalista
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“Animism” is a concept first introduced into anthropological circles by one of its founders, Edward Tylor, as the belief in supernatural beings permeating the natural world. In his Primitive Culture (1871), he wrote that animism is a perception held by
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“I very much enjoyed reading the shamanic analysis of two of my own favourite books. The use of plants in the Odyssey, and the idea of an “intensified trajectory of consciousness” in Tolkien, and the phenomenological idea of presence in
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The impulse to transcend, to rise to a higher plane, was deeply engraved upon Western spirituality by Plato and later Neo-Platonic Christians such as Saint Augustine. Yet Humanity’s primordial mystical desire, artistically rendered in the art of the Paleolithic caves,
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“I love these kind of interviews – makes you feel like you’ve been sitting around the campfire with one of the ‘elders’ – out there in the jungle with the ancestors. You can almost hear their voices echoing in the
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Although Middle Earth could easily be characterized as a product of the intensified trajectory, J. R. R. Tolkien, staunch Catholic, Oxford don, one of the most brilliant philologists of his age, gives scant evidence of a shaman adventurer. “I am
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J.P. Harpignies, New York-based Associate Producer of the Bioneers Conference, and editor of Visionary Plant Consciousness recently corresponded with Robert Tindall, now located in the cacophonous mestizo wilds of the Peruvian Amazon, about his new book, The Shamanic Odyssey: Homer,
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KMO welcomes Robert Tindall to the C-Realm to discuss the experiences that inform his book, The Jaguar that Roams the Mind: An Amazonian Plant Spirit Odyssey, and the themes of his new book, The Shamanic Odyssey: Homer, Tolkien, and the
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Susana and I will be among the “illustrious presenters” at the upcoming International Amazonian Shamanism Conference from July 21st to 27th 2013 in Iquitos, Peru. These conferences have become something of a hub for hipsters, scholars, and practitioners of traditional
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I first encountered the Ashaninkan shaman Juan Flores within the Cinema de Indio, one of the magical* practices of the rainforest facilitated by the psychoactive brew ayahuasca. Even many years after that heady initial immersion in the vegetalista tradition of
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Luxurious, well-lit spirit boats plying the night waters? Bath houses for the spirits? The danger of total memory loss? Implanted spells in the shape of little black worms? Bitter medicines that provoke vomiting and purge the system of malign influences?
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The president of Uruguay, Pepe Mujica, like a gadfly Socrates, lets the truth all hang out about the reality of economic progress in a recent meeting of world leaders in Rio: For more info on this most remarkable of world
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Our first visit to Takiwasi, the center for the treatment of addiction that utilizes the methods of Amazonian shamanism along with Western psychotherapy, and its host town, Tarapoto, was many years ago, in a quieter age. Susana had arrived long
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We are honored that John Perkins, founder of the Pachamama Alliance and author of the New York Times Bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hitman, has penned a preface for our forthcoming book, The Shamanic Odyssey: Homer, Tolkien, and the Visionary
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After seven years of residence in the California Bay Area, Susana and I have pulled up stakes and moved back to Peru, where we have been acclimatizing and settling down for about a month now. Our intention is to stay
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The prophecy of the Eagle and Condor is remarkable in that it marks the first truly international indigenous prophecy widely embraced by both Native and European-descended peoples, yet in approaching it, we need to be wary of the word “prophecy.”
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A reader, Elina, wrote this response to my posting Indigenize Yourself!: “How lucky for you to have become Indigenous without ever having to have experienced colonization, racism, etc. How miraculous for you to have received “the seed of an indigenous,
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Some years ago in Argentina, a gaucho who loved the works of J.R.R. Tolkien politely inquired of me if there was actually a place like the Shire he could go to visit in England.
Indigenous, shamanic ways of healing and prophecy are not foreign to the West. Rather, they are simply unrecognized. Native symbiosis in a living, sentient cosmos is found at the very origin of the European literary tradition.
Traditional people, and I think the people of the Paleolithic had, very probably, two concepts that change our vision of the world. The concept of fluidity and the concept of permeability,
You know, I think if people stay somewhere long enough – even white people – the spirits will begin to speak to them. It’s the power of the spirits coming up from the land. The spirits and the old powers
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Readers of The Jaguar that Roams the Mind occasionally want to learn more about my experiences growing up on the streets, in shelters, and in group homes in California during the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, especially in the Skinnerian
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The healing power of icaros, the magic melodies of Amazonian shamanism, were the focus of Susana’s research in the Peruvian Amazon in 2004, where she participated in numerous ceremonies and conducted extensive interviews with healers and their clients in the
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Roaming the Mind is the online home for the writing and work of Robert Tindall and Susana E. Bustos.
The Shamanic Odyssey: Homer, Tolkien, and the Visionary Experience is an exploration of the indigenous roots of Western literature, of the native mind lying in plain sight not only in the ancient epics of Homer, but also in the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien. As such, the Odyssey as well as The Lord of the Rings can be seen as awakening and healing songs to return our disconnected souls back into harmony with the living cosmos.
Please order your copy here.
The Jaguar that Roams the Mind is a journey into the vanishing world of Amazonian shamanism. Robert Tindall travels through the churches of ayahuasca, with the Kaxinawa Indians in Brazil; to a Peruvian center for the treatment of addiction, Takiwasi; and reveals his studies with an Ashaninca shaman in the rainforest jungle. Moving beyond the scientific approach of reducing medicinal plants to their chemical constituents, Tindall illustrates the shamans' intimate relationships with plant spirits. He explores the three pillars of Amazonian shamanism: purging (drawing disease out of the body), psychoactive plants (including the use of ayahuasca), and diet (communing with teacher plants).
Please order your copy here.
