Itemize Appertaining To Books Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

Title	:	Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
Author	:	Daniel Pinchbeck
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 336 pages
Published	:	August 12th 2003 by Three Rivers Press (CA) (first published 2002)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Spirituality. Philosophy. Science

Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism Paperback | Pages: 336 pages

Representaion Conducive To Books Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

A dazzling work of personal travelogue and cultural criticism that ranges from the primitive to the postmodern in a quest for the promise and meaning of the psychedelic experience.

While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon, to the Mazatecs of Mexico, these plants are sacred because they awaken the mind to other levels of awareness--to a holographic vision of the universe.

Breaking Open the Head is a passionate, multilayered, and sometimes rashly personal inquiry into this deep division. On one level, Daniel Pinchbeck tells the story of the encounters between the modern consciousness of the West and these sacramental substances, including such thinkers as Allen Ginsberg, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, and Terence McKenna, and a new underground of present-day ethnobotanists, chemists, psychonauts, and philosophers. It is also a scrupulous recording of the author's wide-ranging investigation with these outlaw compounds, including a thirty-hour tribal initiation in West Africa; an all-night encounter with the master shamans of the South American rain forest; and a report from a psychedelic utopia in the Black Rock Desert that is the Burning Man Festival.

Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.

Details Books During Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

Original Title:	Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
ISBN:	0767907434 (ISBN13: 9780767907439)
Edition Language:	English

Rating Appertaining To Books Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

Ratings: 4.06 From 3046 Users | 179 Reviews

Assessment Appertaining To Books Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

This was a refreshing book to read when it came out and the fact that it seems a bit dated now is an indication of how much has happened since then, in terms of use of research chemicals and the expansion of festivals, than a reflection of the book. It journals a mans journey from that of a cynical hack to a new age neo shamanic enthusiast, via assignments to the jungles to take shamanic potions and also via the use of research chemicals. Those descriptions are a touch navel gazing but better

I was recommended this book because of the nature of the subject it discusses, mainly psychedelics. After reading it I was impressed by Daniels knowledge about psychedelics, clearly a subject he has frequented from a young age and his indoctrination into intellectual studies has no doubt enhanced his awareness of the subjects mentioned in the book. I did however feel the book had a feel to it which revolved around a purely disconnected perspective. Perhaps, at least for me, the book felt like it

Since November of 2007 to present day August 27, 2009 I have read an estimated 160 books. Daniel Pinchbeck is a voice that speaks to me more than any I've encountered along my self-developmental path. With a supreme command of the English language, Pinchbeck accounts the history of his and many great minds of the "Beat" generation while venturing into unfamiliar cultures, ritualistic initiations, and transcendent states of being and alteration through a number of organic substances and synthetic

The book started off well and I was interested in the subject matter that I didn't know anything about when I started reading. I also liked how each Part of the book was devoted to each entheogenic compound which made it easy for me to keep track of all of the different topics being covered.I quickly found the book less interesting (I even started skipping whole paragraphs and sections) when what I thought would be a subjective recount of a man's experience with psychoactive substances but

It's a fun book. I enjoyed some of the commentary on his ventures into shamanic rituals and mind altering substances. He's well read on the pop-literature surrounding these drugs. His arrogance and unskeptical embrace of any and all spiritual practices got tiring, though. He makes comparisons between cultures that highlight a few similarities and brush a myriad of differences under the rug. The author also makes haphazard claims. No, Daniel, shamanism isn't a human universal. How could it be

I LOVE this book! Reading this book was like having mental masturbation for me. It breaks open your head. For psychedelic lovers.