Contemporary Voices from Anima Mundi

List of Figures - Acknowledgments - Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and Stefano Varese: Introduction: Cosmic Dialogues - Frédérique Apffel-Marglin: Western Modernity and the Fate of Anima Mundi: Its Murder and Transformation into a Postmaterial Ecospirituality - D. Ahmed: Lost and Found: Gifts, Dreams, and Sanity - Inés Hernández-Ávila: Spirit Crossings: An Indigenous Cultural Perspective on Mortality, Death, and Dying - Jacques Mabit: The Sorcerer, the Madman and Grace: Are Archetypes Desacralized Spirits? Thoughts on Shamanism in the Amazon - Stefano Varese: Between Matter and Spirit: An Unfinished Journey - Rabbi Fern Feldman: To Dwell in the Thick Darkness: The Sacred Dark in Jewish Thought - Guillermo Delgado-P: Andean Entifications: Pachamama Ajayun, The Spirit of Mother Earth - Neela Bhattacharya Saxena: Mapping the Chiasmus: Liberating Patterns in a Planetary Mandala - Robert Tindall: Shamanic Archaeology at Chavín de Huántar - List of Contributors

Frédérique Apffel-Marglin (PhD, Brandeis) is Emerita Professor in Anthropology at Smith College. She is Director of the Sachamama Center for Biocultural Regeneration in Peru and has authored 6 books and over 55 articles and has edited 8 books.

Stefano Varese (PhD, PUC-Lima) is Professor Emeritus of Native American Studies at the University of California-Davis. He is the founder of the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas and has authored 8 books and over 100 articles.

"Parallel to the extraordinary picture science is giving us, from the birth of the universe to an understanding of life processes in our planet, there has been also a continuous de-sacralization of nature by a reductionistic materialist view which is taking us to the brink of self-destruction. This book brings forth an array of multicultural and 21st century post-materialistic science perspectives, which reveal that spirit is indeed embedded in matter, and that we are surrounded by and in attainable relationship with visible and invisible non-human subjects. In accordance with mystical traditions and traditional societies from all over the world, we need-more than ever-to listen to the many voices of nature and spirit, enriching our lives and giving them meaning and a wider perspective. The recuperation of animistic worldviews-hand in hand with the development of non-reductionistic science-is not mere discursive speculation, but a conviction to be derived from direct attentive experience of the sentient interrelatedness of the natural world. In this regard, this book represents an important and timely contribution."-Luis Eduardo Luna, PhD, anthropologist, author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, co-author with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, co-author of Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics, Director of Wasiwaska, Research Center for the Study of Psychointegrator Plants, Visionary Art and Consciousness, Florianópolis, Brazil