23 leading experts reveal the ways that psychoactive plants allow nature's "voice" to speak to humans and what this communication means for our future

• Presents the specific "human-plant interconnection" revealed by visionary plants

• Explores the relevance of plant-induced visions and shamanic teachings to humanity's environmental crisis

• With contributions from Terence McKenna, Andrew Weil, Wade Davis, Michael Pollan, Alex Grey, Jeremy Narby, Katsi Cook, John Mohawk, Kat Harrison, and others

Visionary plants have long served indigenous peoples and their shamans as enhancers of perception, thinking, and healing. These plants can also be important guides to the reality of the natural world and how we can live harmoniously in it.

In Visionary Plant Consciousness, editor J. P. Harpignies has gathered presentations from the Bioneers annual conference of environmental and social visionaries that explore how plant consciousness affects the human condition. Twenty-three leading ethnobotanists, anthropologists, medical researchers, and cultural and religious figures such as Terence McKenna, Andrew Weil, Wade Davis, Michael Pollan, Alex Grey, Jeremy Narby, Katsi Cook, John Mohawk, and Kat Harrison, among others, present their understandings of the nature of psychoactive plants and their significant connection to humans. What they reveal is that these plants may help us access the profound intelligence in nature--the "mind of nature"--that we must learn to understand in order to survive our ecologically destructive way of life.

Autorentext

J. P. Harpignies is associate producer of the national Bioneers conference (www.bioneers.org) and coproducer and founder of the Eco-Metropolis conference (www.ecometropolis.org) in New York City. He is the author of Political Ecosystems and Double Helix Hubris and the associate editor of Ecological Medicine and Nature's Operating Instructions.

Inhalt

Foreword Jeremy Narby, Ph.D.

Preface Kenny Ausubel

Introduction J. P. Harpignies

Part One
The Western Mind's Encounter with Indigenous Worldviews and Visionary Plants

1 A Young Anthropologist Finds Far More than He Bargained for in the Peruvian Amazon
Jeremy Narby, Ph.D.
2 Shamans Through Time: Tricksters, Healers, Voodoo Priests, and Anthropologists
Jeremy Narby, Ph.D., Francis Huxley, and John Mohawk, Ph.D.
3 Culture, Anthropology, and Sacred Plants
Wade Davis, Ph.D.

Part Two
Psychedelics, Science, and Ways of Knowing

4 Psychedelic Empowerment and the Environmental Crisis: Re-awakening Our Connection to the Gaian Mind
Terence McKenna
5 Plant Messengers: Science, Culture, and Visionary Plants
Dennis McKenna, Ph.D., Terence McKenna, and Wade Davis, Ph.D.
6 The World Spirit Awaits Its Portrait: True Tales from One of the Planet's Great Visionary Artists
Alex Grey

Part Three
Sacred Plants and Human Cultures

7 The Garden and the Wild--Plants and Humans: Who's Domesticating Whom?
Michael Pollan and Wade Davis, Ph.D.
8 Women, Plants, and Culture
Kathleen Harrison
9 Visionary Plants Across Cultures
Edison Saraiva, M.D., Kathleen Harrison, Dennis McKenna, Ph.D., Charles Grob, M.D., Andrew Weil, M.D., Marcellus Bear Heart Williams, and Florencio Siquera de Carvalho
10 An Ethnobotanist and a Mycologist Discuss the Rewards and Risks of Sacramental Plant Use in a Modern Context
Kathleen Harrison and Paul Stamets
11 Plant Spirit
Kathleen Harrison, Jane Straight, Dale Pendell, and Paul Stamets
12 A North American Indigenous Look at Sacred Plant Use
Katsi Cook

Part Four
Brazil's Modern, Entheogen-based Religions

13 The New, Syncretic, Ayahuasca-based Religions
Luis Eduardo Luna, Ph.D. 160
14 The Extraordinary Case of the United States Versus the União do Vegetal
Church Jeffrey Bronfman

Epilogue:
The Madness of the War on Drugs--A Tragically Flawed Policy's Ecological & Social Harms
Michael Stewartt and Ethan Nadelmann, Ph.D.

Contributors