Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon's Sacred Vine

by Ralph Metzner (Foreword), Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (Contributor), Alex Grey (Contributor)

The Ayahuasca Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine , is a panorama of texts translated from nearly a dozen languages on the ayahuasca experience. These include indigenous mythic narratives, testimonies, and religious hymns, as well as stories related by Western travelers, scientists, and writers who have had contact with ayahuasca in different contexts. In addition to contributions from Wade Davis, Dennis McKenna, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmotoff and Richard Spruce, the new edition includes essays from Graham Hancock, Alex Grey, Jeremy Narby, Susana Bustos, and a section on Ayahuasca art. The Ayahuasca Reader remains the most comprehensive collection of authoritative writings on the subject ever published. An essential reference for anthropology, ethnobotany and Latin American literature studies, it will be of intense interest to students of Amazonian indigenous culture, Native American spirituality, and metaphysical studies.

Genres: Psychology, Spirituality

464 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2000

About the author

Ralph Metzner Ph.D. was an American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later named Ram Dass). Dr. Metzner was a psychotherapist, and Professor Emeritus of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he was formerly the Academic Dean and Academic Vice-president. He received his undergraduate degree at Oxford University and his doctorate in clinical psychology at Harvard University, where he was also the recipient of an NIMH Post-doctoral Fellowship in psychopharmacology at the Harvard Medical School. He had a life-long interest in the many different realms of consciousness and its modifications.

He is the author of The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (with Ram Dass); editor of two collections of essays on ayahuasca and on psilocybe mushrooms; and author of a new series of seven books on The Ecology of Consciousness.