The Four Winds: A Shaman's Odyssey Into the Amazon

Trained in Western psychology, Villoldo went to Peru, became a Quechua shaman's apprentice, took hallucinogens and had visionary experiences in the shadow of Inca ruins. Combining adventure, journal jottings, philosophical reflections and a comparison of Western psychotherapy with the shamanic system of multiple realities, this lyric, soul-searching odyssey, written with playwright Jendresen, pulls the reader along on ``a journey into Eros, the feminine, and intuitive mind, the place of myths and dreams.'' To Villoldo (coauthor with Stanely Krippner of Healing States ), the Inca Medicine Wheel represents a neurological map which guides the initiate beyond the instinctive reactions of the primeval limbic brain--fear, feeding, aggression and sex. Seekers on many paths--Jungian, shamanic, dreamwork, transpersonal psychology, etc.--will find this open-ended vision-quest inspirational. (Sept.)