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" Breaking open the head : "
Daniel Pinchbeck.
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BL
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| Record Number
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1033786
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| Doc. No
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b788156
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| Main Entry
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Pinchbeck, Daniel.
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| Title & Author
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Breaking open the head : : a psychedelic journey into the heart of contemporary shamanism /\ Daniel Pinchbeck.
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| Edition Statement
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1st ed.
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| Publication Statement
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New York :: Broadway Books,, 2002.
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| Page. NO
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322 pages ;; 22 cm
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| ISBN
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0767907426
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: 0767907434
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: 9780767907422
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: 9780767907439
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| Bibliographies/Indexes
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Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-305) and index.
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| Contents
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My initiation: The king of the Bwiti -- Mad to be saved -- You want to cheat me? -- Touchers teach too -- I am the one you seek -- I see your grandmother -- Strange growths: Treacherous excrescences -- Profane illuminations -- Fun with fungi -- Night travelers -- Shamanism and the world tree -- Leave no trace: A cybernetic pulse engine -- Doctor Megavolt -- Great robot empires -- The temple of tears -- Shamanism and modernism: Walking in mysteries -- I am not here -- An orgy of vision -- A sea of spiritual protoplasm -- A handful of ashes -- The medicine: The purge -- My shamanic vacation -- Meet the snake -- All the energy in the universe -- LSD and the 1960s: The multiple million-eyed monster -- A pathetic clown act -- The light at the end of the tunnel -- Entheobotany: White blossoms -- The quality of revealing -- The fairy folk -- Why did you eat us? -- Thrown-away knowledge -- I smoked DMT -- Direct mystical transmission -- Do you take responsibility? -- Inconceivable new worlds: Not for human consumption -- New sensations -- Magical thinking -- Epilogue: The angel of history.
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| Abstract
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"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 and the ayahuasca of the Secoya in Ecuador to the psilocybin mushrooms of the Mazatecs in Mexico, these plants are revered because of their potential to awaken the mind to other levels of awareness and to act as gateways to other dimensions - bringing about a holographic vision of the universe." "Breaking Open the Head is a passionate, multilayered, and sometimes rash personal inquiry into this deep division between views. On one level, Daniel Pinchbeck tells of encounters between the modern consciousness of the West and these sacramental substances, highlighting such thinkers and seekers as Allen Ginsberg, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, and Terence McKenna as well as a new underground of present-day ethnobotanists, chemists, psychonauts, and philosophers. It is also a scrupulous recording of the author's wide-ranging investigation into these outlaw compounds. We witness Pinchbeck's thirty-hour tribal initiation in West Africa; an encounter with the master shamans of the south American rain forest; and sleepless nights in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, at the "Archaic Revival" that is the Burning Man Festival - all part of his effort to grasp the meaning of shamanism as well as the stages of his own spiritual quest." "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 jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos."--Jacket.
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| Subject
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Shamanism.
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Spiritual life-- New Age movement.
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Andligt liv.
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Hallucinogener.
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New age.
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Schamanism.
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Shamanism.
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Spiritual life-- New Age movement.
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| Dewey Classification
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299.9
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| LC Classification
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BF1621.P56 2002
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