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Three Halves of Ino Moxo : Teachings of the Wizard of the Upper Amazon

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Award-winning Peruvian author Cesar Calvo takes us on a quest through the mysterious, dreamlike world of powerful Amazonian sorcerers.

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

27 people are currently reading
533 people want to read

About the author

César Calvo

13 books10 followers

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5 stars
75 (51%)
4 stars
45 (30%)
3 stars
20 (13%)
2 stars
4 (2%)
1 star
2 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
25 reviews2 followers
November 8, 2017
I will never be able to write a review for this book.
I've started reading it and I had struggled for the first 80 pages to keep on reading it. And then, one day, I looked at the pictures at the end of the book and then the book came to life.

I left behind constricting reality and possibility within this reality and I flew. Then I became the book.

I am grateful to the author for having written it and for his journeys. I am grateful to the universe for having found a way to put it in my hands.

You really need an open mind and focus to read the book. If you have that then you are in for a treat, if not, read something conventional.
The English used by the author is simply marvelous, melodic and fluid.
2 reviews
December 11, 2017
This book showed me the unbelievable things nature can teach us. It is your chance to begin to see an ancient understanding of the universe passed down generations. It truly shows you that what you thought was impossible is possible. Forget your preconceived ideas of Amazonian shamanism and your scientific understanding of reality, and approach this book with an open mind and heart. I assure you will learn so much and finish the book with new perspectives. These understandings are so profound it will take time to integrate them into your life. Finishing this book I saw green lines glow on the final page; I'm not mad, this book is magick.

you am I and I am you
Profile Image for Jaime.
179 reviews11 followers
September 7, 2016
Libro extraordinario que renueva, expande, la mirada del lector. La anécdota: la búsqueda de y encuentro con Ino Moxo, es la puerta o el nivel superficial del proceso más denso y más complejo de comunicarse con, de oír al universo amazónico que transcurre, que es, a través de la historia. Libro maravilloso.
Profile Image for Hans.
860 reviews356 followers
January 29, 2023
“Believe me; reality means nothing unless we can verify it in dreams” -Ino Moxo

Stepping inside the dream of Cesar Calvo the reader is taken on a wild ride that requires you to suspend belief and judgment to even follow. With the same feel as “Into the Heart of Darkness” this book carry’s you along the rivers of Peru deep into the Amazon jungle where history turns into nightmares and back into dreams. Intoxication from plants, gold, rubber, money, blood all drive the souls of men to act as though mere puppets on a larger stage that spans time and their own understanding. Try and control or avoid it and the more you’re tightly embroiled in it.

“Plants mean nothing unless they are inserted within the whole, in the totality of knowledge we have inherited, in that infinite architecture of sacred realities, each one having very precise gateways”

“The most difficult problem is not that of wanting to learn. It is time. With enough time you might learn to listen and to walk”
Profile Image for Schwarzer_Elch.
985 reviews46 followers
October 18, 2022
En “Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo”, César Calvo construye un riquísimo relato en el que la esencia de las tradiciones amazónicas es la verdadera protagonista. Como muchos libros fundamentales en las literaturas peruanas, Ino Moxo es un libro bastante descriptivo en el que abunda el vocabulario característico de, en este caso, la inmensa biodiversidad amazónica. Sin embargo, así como hermoso, también puede resultar ligeramente complejo de leer, no solo por las descripciones, sino también por la estructura temporal que maneja del autor, la cual, por momentos, me resultó algo confusa. Aún así, considero que vale la pena al 100%.
Profile Image for Joey Carney.
Author 3 books4 followers
October 5, 2019
Sort of hard to follow sometimes, definitely like a dream written, but really interesting. Seems like Calvo was mixing together real life and dreams. About a trip to the Amazon, around Iquitos, an Ayahuasca trip but also brings in all kinds of real things from the history of Peru, like the rubber industry and all the bad that came with it.
Profile Image for Rita Sánchez Solis.
2 reviews
October 22, 2020
Calvo lo hizo de nuevo. Magia sale de los arroyos amazónicos y de cánticos de hechiceros en un tiempo sin tiempo. “Tántas y tántas existencias oyes, tánta callada sabiduría escuchas cuando escuchas la selva.”
Fantástico libro.
Profile Image for Pascale Petit.
Author 48 books130 followers
March 12, 2021
This is one of my bibles, read it if you want to speak the river's third bank and become rich.
162 reviews
July 28, 2011
Loved it..Very deep and needed to be read more than once.
Profile Image for Evan Mantri.
13 reviews5 followers
January 11, 2013
Incredible, poetic writing about about authentic amazonian shamanism and cosmology.
9 reviews
February 17, 2020
Either completely original or parts of a greater law; regardless, it’s a use of language, and poetry that streams from the in between of other worlds within our own.
Profile Image for Carlos Gameiro.
62 reviews
June 26, 2020
I liked the wizard of the upper amazon book better but this one is pretty interesting too.
Profile Image for didi.
129 reviews1 follower
October 1, 2024
From that fatuous saliva, without knowing it, the worst tongues of the invaders later gathered the worst. Because the invaders, with a more feeble root but a more luxuriant foliage in their blood, cut, disordered, and gave free rein to everything! They paired in loves with soulless birds, with beasts of burden, with adorning fish! They pillaged and degraded everything! They fell to heaven with open beaks, not like the Urus with their vanity of sages, but like themselves, like virakocha invaders—with only their ignorant greed!
Profile Image for Mason Dupuis.
15 reviews1 follower
April 19, 2025
Very difficult book to get through, the style of writing is like reading a dream (I think this is the point).

However, a very enriching read which resonates with my own strange experiences to a degree.

Glad I read it, maybe next time I won’t feel so confused.
Profile Image for Alfonso Rivadeneyra.
16 reviews1 follower
January 24, 2022
Todo un viaje esta novela. No es para todos, hay que tenerle paciencia. Es más la experiencia que el destino.
240 reviews7 followers
August 17, 2025
I haven't written a review of The Three Halves Of Ino Moxo?

I don't have time to write a review at the moment. Let's do a placeholder. If you're more impressed by a work of art than being absolutely riveted, how do you describe that? This is a magnificent book. It's a master chef non-novel. It's got a dash of this and that and it's brilliant. It gets a little captured by itself, sure, but it also leaves room for what it indicates, which is the metaphysic or beyond.

I've been obsessed with Cesar Calvo ever since, but not enough to learn Spanish.

CESAR CALVO
From a Pedestal to No one (Absences and Delays)

Nocturne in Vermont

They have also told me that over there the nights
have blue eyes
and wash their hair in gin.

Is it true that over there in Vermont, when you dream,
silence is a jazzy breeze over the grass?
And is it true that over there in Vermont the geraniums
lean towards the dawn,
and in your voice, at the time of my name,
in your voice, the sad nesses?

Or perhaps from Vermont bejeweled by autumn,
kissed evening to evening by a pale language
submerges the head in oblivion.
Because in ships of snow, daily,
your letters
don’t reach me.

And because the prisoner who sustains
with his distant front
the stars:
smitten hands, daily
I look for you in the mist.

Nor the galloping of the sea: left behind
immovable your diamond hoofs in the sand
But, a wind more beautiful
awakes in my room,
a wind more full of shipwrecks than the sea.

(What unattainable moon
wears out your hands
in the meantime a stormy weather banging
the way a door of silence sounds. )

From the wind I write to you,
And it’s like the my words would sail
in the pearl jars that the survivors
entrust to the swaying of the mermaids.

At a distance I hear
the crumbled cellophane of the river
descending a slope
( a silence of jazz over the grass)

And I ask and ask:

Is it true that over there in Vermont
the nights have blue eyes
and wash their hair in gin?

Is it true that over there in Vermont the geraniums
autumn the sadnesses?

Is it true that over there in Vermont it’s august
and in this sea absence…?

[Translated by Ron Rodriguez © 2011]
Profile Image for Hans Kemp.
Author 18 books7 followers
March 8, 2016
I thoroughly enjoyed the journey described in the book. One of the best books on the power of Ayahuasca.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews

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