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Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Healing Vine

Essential Guidebook to Learn about the History, Myths & Cultural Use of Ayahuasca

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Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Healing Vine

Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Healing Vine

Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Healing Vine

Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Healing Vine

Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Healing Vine

Essential Guidebook to Learn about the History, Myths & Cultural Use of Ayahuasca

Essential Guidebook to Learn about the History, Myths & Cultural Use of Ayahuasca

Essential Guidebook to Learn about the History, Myths & Cultural Use of Ayahuasca

Essential Guidebook to Learn about the History, Myths & Cultural Use of Ayahuasca

Synergetic Press
Synergetic Press
Synergetic Press
Synergetic Press
1 Campaign |
Santa Fe, United States
$10,866 USD 148 backers
14% of $75,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
Overview
Synergetic Press publishes key books on global ecology, ethnobotany, and consciousness. This expanded and updated edition of the Ayahuasca Reader brings together knowledge and insight from a variety of disciplines and experiences with the plant medicine. Taken together, this 496 page book with 16 pages of color artworks depicting the ayahuasca experience, is the most comprehensive anthology on the subject ever published. Help us continue to bring you cutting-edge books for a conscious culture.

Ayahuasca Reader Book - Worldwide Launch Campaign

Join us in the global launch of the Ayahuasca Reader. This beautiful book is the most comprehensive and authoritative source of information about ayahuasca, the extraordinary vine from the Amazon that is finding more widespread use for healing, spiritual awakening and a new ecological awareness. Edited by two renowned experts in the field, Luis Eduardo Luna and Steven F. White, this book provides a vital and timely transmission of knowledge, including contributions from Amazonian shamans, scientific researchers, visionary artists, primary historical sources, and other experts who have had significant experience of the wisdom of ayahuasca. Given the importance of this knowledge, we have committed to spreading this message far beyond standard publishing scenarios.

"The Ayahuasca Reader explains the necessity of integrating ayahuasca into Western culture, and educated its readers to do their part to facilitate that process." - Rick Doblin, Founder, Executive Director, MAPS

Synergetic Press is mounting a global publishing and educational outreach campaign about ayahuasca. With growing interest in this plant medicine, more people are discovering the many health benefits of this potent brew, including the treatment of conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to PTSD and depression.

But at the same time that Western doctors and researchers are taking note of its potential for humanity, the very cultures and rainforest environment where it came from continue to be threatened and we risk losing irreplaceable knowledge, as well as the healing plants themselves. 

The Ayahuasca Reader Campaign aims to shine a bright light on this relatively unknown plant and the cultures who have used ayahuasca for thousands of years. Our goal is to inform people across all sectors – from environmentalists to psychologists, from entertainers to philanthropists, from anthropologists to corporate leaders – about the healing benefits of ayahuasca, the "vine of the soul," its transformative powers and potential to promote well-being for people and planet. 

"... An interdisciplinary cornucopia, a comprehensive volume overflowing with valuable insights, paradigm-shifting discoveries, and a bounty of rare knowledge. A wide variety of perspectives are expressed, and a broad range of disciplines are utilized, in this extraordinary collection of essays, written by a stellar cast of contributors.  David Jay Brown, author of Dreaming Wide Awake

 

Why Is The Information In This Book So Important Now?

The Ayahuasca Reader tells the story of ayahuasca from many perspectives. The book explores the many aspects of this healing brew, providing cultural context from Amazonian shamans, offering a wealth of scientific and medical understanding, detailing its spiritual and religious use, as well as illustrating its role in both literary and artistic expression.

The book includes contributions from over forty of the most respected authorities such as Richard Spruce, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, Ralph Metzner, Dennis McKenna, Wade Davis, Graham Hancock, Susana Bustos, Luis Eduardo Luna, Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Martina Hoffmann and many others, whose work, when taken as a whole, is indeed potent medicine itself.

Why We Are Launching This Campaign & Use of Raised Funds

Synergetic Press does more than just publish books. We promote evolutionary ideas through books, both print and digital, as well as holding symposiums and salons, producing webinars and podcasts. The money generated through this campaign helps us to pay for costs of printing and permission fees for this quality anthology, international marketing efforts, educational outreach and distribution to non-traditional outlets. As a small, independent publisher, our team is composed of a few passionate individuals who are dedicated to spreading these ideas at this vital moment in time.

The funds raised will get enable us to get the book to leaders of influential organizations around the world, developing partnerships with groups working in both consciousness and environmentalism, extending the book’s content through social media channels, and organizing interdisciplinary symposiums (with three initial events already planned for New York, London and San Francisco). It will help us to launch an online quarterly Synergy Journal to circulate news, events and informative content related to this and our other titles.

Earth Consciousness event in Santa Fe, April 2016

Thanks in Advance for Your Support!

We can’t do it alone. We’re counting on you to share this knowledge and experience presented in this exceptional book. Get your own copy of the Ayahuasca Reader, explore our other incentives, and find the level of support that works for you! And please share this with any friends or colleagues who you feel will also appreciate this initiative.

Click on the cover to view excerpt from the book: 

 

"This book is a classic in the ayahuasca literature. Even if you already have the first edition on your shelf, you will want to add a copy of the second edition to your collection (and you’ll want to tell your friends too!)" –Dennis J. McKenna, PhD, ethnopharmacologist, Director of Ethnopharmacology, Heffter Research Institute

 

Praise for Ayahuasca Reader

"A wonderful book of vivid reports, illuminating every aspect of Ayahuasca‘s own world, covering all that matters about these plant spirits and their worldwide impact. This book’s poetry and scope led me to honor, as never before, the gifts we are offered from the proper use of these plants."
    –James Fadiman, PhD, psychologist, researcher and author, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide

“An invaluable resource and a must-read for anyone interested in ayahuasca." 
    –Jeremy Narby, PhD, Amazonian Project Director, Nouvelle Planete 

Given the plethora of publications on ayahuasca, it is sometimes difficult to know which are the worthiest. That being said, the Ayahuasca Reader is a classic.”
                        –Mark Plotkin, PhD, ethnobotanist, Founder & Director Amazon Conservation Team

“Gives scholarly, acute, practical takes on one of the most remarkable substances any shaman has ever mastered.”—John Allen FLS, Inventor of Biosphere 2, Pioneer of Biospheric Science.

“It’s a book that’s a keeper for the spirited and for the mind, and an antidote for anyone who’s sensing her/his brain is half dead from pop culture or the corporate news. Enjoy."  —Jay Levin, Founder and former Editor-     in Chief, LA Weekly newspaper

“...the curanderos, daring scientists, and visionary artists represented here are voices in the vanguard helping us to understand what it will really mean to be an Earthling in the years to come.” —Michael Garfield, Artist/Futurist, Global Communities Director of Symbio Life Sciences

(Painting "La Chacruna" by Martina Hoffmann)

Editors

LUIS EDUARDO LUNA (pictured left) holds a PhD from the Department of Comparative Religion Stockholm University (1989) and an honorary doctoral degree from St. Lawrence, Canton, New York (2002).  He retired in 2011 from the Department of Modern Language and Communication at the Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. He was an Assistant Professor in Anthropology (1994-1998) at the Department of Anthropology of Santa Catarina Federal University (UFSC) in Florianópolis, Brazil. Dr. Luna is the author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo
Population of the Peruvian Amazon
(1986), a co-author with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991), and co-author with Slawek Wojtowicz, Rick Strassman and Ede Frecska of Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (2008).  Dr. Luna is the Director of the Research Center for the Study of Psychointegrator Plants, Visionary Art and Consciousness, Florianópolis, Brazil.

STEVEN F. WHITE (pictured right) received a BA in English from Williams College, MA and PhD degrees in Spanish from the University of Oregon. He has lived and worked in many Latin American countries, an opportunity that enabled him to edit bilingual anthologies of poetry from Nicaragua, Chile and Brazil as well as to study candomblé, South American shamanism and Santo Daime. His research in recent years has focused on the environment and ecocriticism in publications that include El mundo más que humano en la poesía de Pablo Antonio Cuadra: un estudio ecocrítico, Arando el aire: la ecología en la poesía y la música de Nicaragua and El consumo de lo que somos: muestra de poesía ecológica hispánica contemporánea. He was guest editor of a special edition of Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas on Eco-Literature and Arts in Latin America. His article “Shamanic Ayahuasca Narratives and the Production of Neo-Indigenista Literature” appeared in Latin American Indian Literatures Journal. He also co-translated Federico García Lorca’s, Poet in New York and The Angel of Rain, by Gastón Baquero. His published poetry includes Escanciador de pócimas and Bajo la palabra de las plantas (poesía selecta: 1979-2009), which has a series of poems based on paintings by Pablo Amaringo. He has been teaching at St. Lawrence University since 1987, and is one of the co-founders of its Caribbean and Latin American Studies program.

Alex Grey, Net of Being

(poster)

 

 

 

 

Some of the contributors include:

RALPH METZNER PhD, is a recognized pioneer in psychological and cross-cultural studies of consciousness and its transformations. He is a psychotherapist and Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His books include The Unfolding Self; The Well of Remembrance; Green Psychology; The Expansion of Consciousness; Worlds Within and Worlds Beyond; and Mind Space and Time Stream. He is the editor of two collections of essays on ayahuasca and of psilocybin mushrooms and is coauthor with Ram Dass of Birth of a Psychedelic Culture: Conversations about Leary, the Harvard Experiments, Millbrook and the Sixties.

ALEX GREY, artist, poet, author, minister, is best loved for his paintings portraying multiple dimensions of reality, interweaving biological anatomy with psychic and spiritual energies. His books, Sacred Mirrors, The Mission of Art, Transfigurations, Art Psalms and Net of Being, trace the visions and mystical experiences that shaped his spiritual creative life and address how art can evolve the cultural body through icons of interconnectedness. Co-founded with his wife, the artist Allyson Grey, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, CoSM is an interfaith church celebrating creativity as a spiritual path. Alex has long been a practitioner of Buddhism and has taken a stand for cognitive liberty. More at www.alexgrey.com

DENNIS J. MCKENNA was born in 1950 and has pursued the interdisciplinary study of ethnomedicine and plant hallucinogens for the last forty-five years. He received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of British Columbia and subsequently obtained a fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he conducted research that he continued at Stanford University in the Department of Neurology. He has worked for Shaman Pharmaceuticals and the Aveda Corporation, and currently is a scientific consultant for clients in the herbal, nutritional, and pharmaceutical industries. He is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota, and teaches courses in Ethnopharmacology and Botanical Medicines. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit institution dedicated to the development of therapeutic applications for psychedelic medicines. He co-edited (with his brother Terence) The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching and is the author or co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His memoir, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna, was published in 2012. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife Sheila.

GRAHAM HANCOCK is the author of the non-fiction bestsellers The Sign and The Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, The Message of the Sphinx, Heaven’s Mirror, Underworld and Supernatural, and of the novels Entangled: The Eater of Souls, War God: Nights of the Witch, and War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent. His nonfiction books have been translated into thirty languages and have sold more than seven million copies worldwide.

 

WADE DAVIS is Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Between 1999 and 2013 he served as Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and is currently a member of the NGS Explorers Council. Author of 17 books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow, One River, The Wayfinders and The Sacred Headwaters, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his PhD in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight-hour documentary series written and produced for the National Geographic. Davis is the recipient of 11 honorary degrees, as well as the 2009 Gold Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society for his contributions to anthropology and conservation, the 2011 Explorers Medal, the highest award of the Explorers Club, the 2012 David Fairchild Medal for botanical exploration, and the 2013 Ness Medal for geography education from the Royal Geographical Society. His recent book, Into the Silence, received the 2012 Samuel Johnson prize, the top award for literary nonfiction in the English language.

MARTINA HOFFMANN has spoken about visionary art and culture at the “International Symposium on Altered States of Consciousness,” University of Cuernavaca, the “Promethean Impulse: Consciousness & Art,” Museum HR Giger in Gruyeres, Switzerland, “Chimeria” in France, “All Chemical Conference” in Kona, HI, “Mindstates Conference” in Berkeley, the “Prophets Conference” in Santa Fe, NM, “Women’s Visionary Congress at IONS,” CA, “Alchemeyez,“ HI, the “International Amazonian Shamanism Conference” in Iquitos, Peru, “Burning Man,” (USA) and the “Boom Festival” in Portugal. Her work has been published in books such as Albert Hofmann und Sein LSD (2011), The Visionary World of Hansruedi Giger by Stanislav Grof (2009), Be the Change by Ed and Deb Shapiro (2009), Inner Paths To Outer Space (2008), Metamorphosis (2007), True Visions (2006), and others. Currently, she works primarily at her Colorado studio. She has exhibited her work worldwide since 1985 and also designs “Urban Shaman” empowering yoga and street wear.

Thanks for the Video Soundtrack: Xavante by Govinda, Creation Matrix by Kalpaturu Tree from Critical Beats for Gaia (Earthdance Music)

Please note: Supporter Recognition with links on our website and social media is subject to review for safe and appropriate content.

 

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Choose your Perk

Seeker

$25 USD
Copy of Ayahuasca Reader eBook, plus social media recognition of your support, featuring a link to your work, cause, or organization. Links to artwork, podcasts & websites all welcome!
Estimated Shipping
September 2016
16 out of 1000 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Initiate

$35 USD
Paperback copy of Ayahuasca Reader book. Social media recognition of your support, featuring a link to your work, cause, or organization. Links to artwork, podcasts & websites all welcome! (International shipping not included and will be collected at time of shipment.)
Estimated Shipping
September 2016
51 out of 1000 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Apprentice

$50 USD
Paperback copy of Ayahuasca Reader book, Ayahuasca Primer eBook, plus social media recognition for your support. Links to artwork, podcasts & websites all welcome! (International shipping not included and will be collected at time of shipment.)
Estimated Shipping
September 2016
13 out of 1000 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Magician

$75 USD
Hardcover copy of Ayahuasca Reader, the Ayahuasca Primer eBooklet, Social media recognition of your support. Links to artwork, podcasts & websites all welcome! (International shipping not included and will be collected at time of shipment.)
Estimated Shipping
September 2016
24 out of 500 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Blessed Being

$125 USD
All of the above plus a $50 Gift Certificate for Shopping Spree at SynergeticPress.com. (International shipping not included and will be collected at time of shipment.)
Estimated Shipping
September 2016
5 out of 500 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Saint

$250 USD
All of the above mentioned, plus an autographed art poster by Alex Grey or Alyson Grey, and a $60 value one-year subscription to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Bulletin. MAPS is a non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.
Estimated Shipping
September 2016
3 out of 100 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Angel

$500 USD
All of the above mentioned, $100 Gift Certificate for Shopping Spree at SynergeticPress.com, plus iTunes edition of "Woven Songs of the Amazon: Healing Icaros of the Shipibo Shamans" album and a Wingo Shaker from Jamtown percussion instruments. (International shipping not included and will be collected at time of shipment.)
Estimated Shipping
September 2016
3 out of 20 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

The Jaguar

$1,500 USD
Hardcover copy of the book, the primer, Synergetic Press $100 Gift Certificate, MAPS membership, Woven Songs, Wingo Shaker, plus an full-size autographed limited edition Martina Hoffman print "LA CHACRUNA" (print on canvas, 20"x 30") and invitation to attend a private dinner reception with the speakers at a forthcoming Synergetic Press event.
Estimated Shipping
October 2016
0 out of 10 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Nature Spirit

$2,500 USD
Everything above in The Jaguar and a ticket to attend a forthcoming Synergetic Press symposium, invitation to the private dinner/reception with speakers (date and place TBC). Plus, a $500 Discount (on one week stay) to the beautiful “Guaria de Osa” EcoRetreat, wellness center, nature reserve in Costa Rica, adjacent to Corcovado National Park. Known as The Little Amazon by the Ocean, described as "the most biologically intense place on Earth" by National Geographic magazine. www.guariadeosa.com.
Estimated Shipping
October 2016
0 out of 5 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Earth Guardian

$3,500 USD
Everything above from Nature Spirit, plus one ticket to the World Ayahuasca Conference in Rio Branco, Brazil (www.ayaconference.com) and two tickets while there for a hot air balloon flight over the Amazonian state of Acre – fly over the forest, the river, the geoglyphs, and haciendas. Watch the promotional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlDLmPd-8FU. (Ride plus conf ticket is a $950 value)
Estimated Shipping
October 2016
0 out of 15 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Planetary Steward

$5,000 USD
Hardcover copy of the book, the Primer, Synergetic Press $250 Gift Certificate, choice of an Alex Grey or Allyson Grey poster, MAPS membership, Woven Songs and Wingo Shaker, a standing invitation to attend any forthcoming Synergetic Press event and dinner reception.
Estimated Shipping
October 2016
0 out of 10 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

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