Book Reviews


The best book on ayahuasca yet… Beyer has found the sweet spot between scholarly and popular writing, the otherworldly and the disenchanted, participation and observation… A manifestly solid work of scholarship designed, happily, for the rest of us.

Erik Davis, writer, social historian, and cultural critic, author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, writing in Reality Sandwich
Eminently readable, clear, and engrossing, its balance of voices combines a very personal narrative of initiation and participation in a particular world of healing with almost encyclopedic research on South American plant medicine. This is really outstanding, important work. I would not hesitate to say that this could become one of the classics of its kind.

Kagan Arik, Ph.D., Professor of Central Asian Civilization, University of Chicago, author of Shamanism, Culture and the Xinjiang Kazak
Both a consummate scholar and an expert in wilderness survival, a compelling and elegant writer, the author is an authority on hallucinogens and a most compassionate mystic. His rare combination of qualities gives multiple dimensions to the story he tells — spiritual, anthropological, and political.

Wendy Doniger, Ph.D., D.Phil., Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago Divinity School, author of Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities
A rare mixture of exhaustive scholarship and gripping first person account. Scholars will appreciate the depth and breadth of the learning here, and ayahuasca pilgrims should consider this a must read. Find room in your backpack. You’ll want to return to this one again and again as your journey unfolds.

Richard Doyle, Ph.D., Professor of Rhetoric and Science Studies, Penn State University, author of The Ecodelic Hypothesis: Plants, Rhetoric and the Evolution of the Noösphere
Brilliant as an ethnographic portrayal, encyclopedic in scope, theoretically nuanced, eminently readable and thoroughly spellbinding. A tour de force, soon to be recognized as the definitive work on this topic.

Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Utah State University, author of The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru
Written with clarity and keen academic observation, Beyer deconstructs the methods of shamanic ontology and ritual with both a healthy skepticism and sincere admiration… Beyer pushes past surface elements of shamanic craft and takes an objective look at everything he reports… By far the best book on ayahuasca shamanism I have ever read.

James Kent, author of Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason, former editor of Trip Magazine, writing in DoseNation
A classic volume that provides its readers with an unsurpassed understanding of the healing power of shamanism, its use of spiritual rituals and visionary plants such as ayahuasca, and both its light and its dark sides, its sophistication and its humor.

Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing and co-editor of Varieties of Anomalous Experience
The real deal — a scholarly and quite compellingly written account of ethnographic fieldwork with shamans in the Upper Amazon. Treated as an apprentice, the author was able to gain insights into the rituals, beliefs, and practices that form the social context and the inner world of shamanism.

David Lukoff, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, author of Shamanistic Initiatory Crises and Psychosis and Transpersonal Psychology and the Journey to Spirituality
A wild ride out and across the jungles of mestizo shamanism… The book, and its wonderful cast of characters, curanderos, animals, plants, spirits and stories presents honest, accurate, respectful, levelheaded and, at times, outrageously marvelous descriptions of the environments and climates of mestizo shamanism in the Upper Amazon.

Morgan Maher, artist and photographer, author of Espiritu, writing in Reality Sandwich
An elegantly written description of shamanic healing ceremonies around the world, especially those involving ayahuasca, incorporating thoughtful analyses of psychological, cultural, and spiritual perspectives. A very valuable contribution to the literature.

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies, author/editor of Sacred Vine of Spirits and Sacred Mushroom of Visions
An exhaustively researched and detailed study, unique among its kind, and an absolute “must-have” for college library collections strong in anthropology and information on indigenous religions.

The Midwest Book Review
This extraordinary book is as thorough an account of any shamanistic complex as is available today… Surely one of the more lucidly written books in the broader field of religious studies… This book deserves a wide readership.

Frederick M. Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Religious Studies, University of Iowa, author of The Self Possessed, writing in Religious Studies Review
Both highly readable and scholarly… This is an excellent and strong book that, because of its reach and detail, will become a classic in the field of Amazonian shamanism.

José Luis Stevens, Ph.D, president and cofounder of Power Path Seminars, writing in The Journal of Shamanic Practice