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Magick Matters
"Did you know that in medieval French folklore a person might change sex by passing under a rainbow? Or that same-sex unions have been celebrated by peoples of the ancient Mediterranean, Africa, China, and indigenous America? Or that Sappho, da Vinci, Emily Dickinson, Nijinsky, Benjamin Britten, Mishima, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Keith Haring, Boy George, and Derek Jarman number among those who have explored the spiritual dimension of gender and sexuality in their works? While the terms many of us employ today to identify ourselves — 'queer', 'lesbian', 'gay', 'bisexual', 'transgendered' — differ markedly from those of peoples of other times and places, we are nevertheless the bearers of a rich spiritual history that...>>
"Reveals the striking parallels between indigenous cultures of the Americas and the ancient Homeric world as well as Tolkien’s Middle Earth
• Explores the shamanic use of healing songs, psychoactive plants, and vision quests at the heart of the Odyssey and the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien
• Examines Odysseus’s encounters with plant divinities, altered consciousness, animal shapeshifting, and sacred topography—all concepts vital to shamanism
• Reveals how the Odyssey emerged precisely at the rupture between modern and primal consciousness
Indigenous, shamanic ways of healing and prophecy are not foreign to the West. The native way of viewing the world—that is, understanding our cosmos as living, sentient, and interconnected—can be found hidden throughout Western literature, beginning...>>
