Between AD 900-1600, the native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States conceived and executed one of the greatest artistic traditions of the Precolumbian Americas. Created in the media of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood, and incised or carved with a complex set of symbols and motifs, this seven-hundred-year-old artistic tradition functioned within a multiethnic landscape centered on communities dominated by earthen mounds and plazas. Previous researchers have referred to this material as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). This groundbreaking volume brings together ten essays by leading anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians, who analyze the iconography of Mississippian art in order to reconstruct the ritual activities, cosmological vision, and ideology of these ancient precursors to several groups of contemporary Native Americans. Significantly, the authors correlate archaeological, ethnographic, and art historical data that illustrate the stylistic differences within Mississippian art as well as the numerous changes that occur through time. The research also demonstrates the inadequacy of the SECC label, since Mississippian art is not limited to the Southeast and reflects stylistic changes over time among several linked but distinct religious traditions. The term Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS) more adequately describes the corpus of this Mississippian art. Most important, the authors illustrate the overarching nature of the ancient Native American religious system, as a creation unique to the native American cultures of the eastern United States.

Beautiful illustrations and maps transport the reader into the remains of synagogues as far afield as North Africa, Italy, Asia Minor, Israel, and Syria. Sacred Realm complements an exhibition organized by the Yeshiva University Museum in New York. The exhibition brings together archaeological artifacts and manuscripts from museums in North America, Europe, and Israel, most of which have never before been displayed in the Unites States.

The rediscovery that each one of us can achieve the direct, transformative connection with the sacred realms lies right at the heart of the spiritual reawakening sweeping the Western world—a phenomenon explored by anthropologist Hank Wesselman, Ph.D., in his widely read book The Journey to the Sacred Garden. In Spirit Medicine, Dr. Wesselman is joined by his wife, transpersonal medical practitioner Jill Kuykendall, RPT., to present us with a cross-cultural consideration of illness, healing, and health care from the ancient wisdom of the traditional peoples. Spirit Medicine opens a window into a universal worldview that will help you: • understand the classic causes of illness—-an essential step in true healing; • work with the four levels of spiritual healing; • expand your connections to inner sources of wisdom and power; and • deepen your contacts with your helping spirits and healing masters. Spirit Medicine will provide you with the singular key to success that energy medicine by itself lacks. It will also provide you with a perspective derived from the Hawaiian kahuna tradition in which knowledge of the soul cluster, as well as the multileveled nature of reality, forms the foundation. Included is an experiential CD of shamanic drumming and rattling to be used with specific exercises and meditations designed to enhance your healing practice for yourself and others. Spirit Medicine reconsiders and reworks the time-tested techniques pioneered by the shamans of the indigenous peoples, providing nontribal Westerners with extraordinarily effective insights into healing and problem solving.

At the heart of spiritual awakening lies the discovery that each of us can achieve the direct, transformative connection with the sacred realms—a connection that defines the mystic. The Journey to the Sacred Garden guides us along a well-traveled path into this extraordinary experience and includes an experiential audio download of shamanic drumming and rattling, providing us with an effective, easily learned technique for expanding awareness and shifting consciousness safely. The first goal: to find our Sacred Garden, a place for personal empowerment; as well as physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual restoration. Once there, we learn through direct experience that the garden can be used as a gateway into the other levels of the inner worlds. Anthropologist Hank Wesselman, Ph.D., reveals that our garden operates by four primary rules: • Everything in the garden is symbolic of some aspect of ourselves or our life experience. • Everything in the garden can be communicated with, enhancing understanding. • The garden can be changed by doing work. • When you change your garden, some part of you or your life will change in response.

More and more Ayahuasca has come to the attention of the Western media. Used by the shamans of Peru, the rituals and practices around this psychoactive plant-based brew date back 50-70,000 years as evidenced by rock and cave paintings found the world over. Through their use of Ayahuasca, Shamans establish contact with the spirit world which they call upon to aid them in their healing practices, understanding of the cosmos, and how to live well in the world. In "The Shaman & Ayahuasca," internationally respected Peruvian shaman Don Jose Campos illuminates the practices and benefits of Ayahuasca with grace and gentleness, while expressing respect and gratitude for the gifts Ayahuasca has bestowed on him throughout the 25 years he has been a practicing shaman. He takes the reader on a journey through his own discovery of other worlds, other dimensions, alien entities and plant teachers. "The Shaman & Ayahuasca" gives an overview of an entire cosmology with the potential to benefit all of mankind. It is the perfect book to introduce readers to the profound experiences of Ayahuasca."

The prehistoric native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States shared a complex set of symbols and motifs that constituted one of the greatest artistic traditions of the pre-Columbian Americas. Traditionally known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, these artifacts of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood were the subject of the groundbreaking 2007 book Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, which presented a major reconstruction of the rituals, cosmology, ideology, and political structures of the Mississippian peoples. Visualizing the Sacred advances the study of Mississippian iconography by delving into the regional variations within what is now known as the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS). Bringing archaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and iconographic perspectives to the analysis of Mississippian art, contributors from several disciplines discuss variations in symbols and motifs among major sites and regions across a wide span of time and also consider what visual symbols reveal about elite status in diverse political environments. These findings represent the first formal identification of style regions within the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere and call for a new understanding of the MIIS as a network of localized, yet interrelated religious systems that experienced both continuity and change over time.

Sacred Realms is a collection of classic and contemporary articles that introduce religion from an anthropological perspective. It is designed to give students the tools to understand and analyze religion as well as to consider its important role in world affairs. The book is divided into twelve major topics in faith, religion, and belief; it concludes with a unique section written by the editors that describes fundamental aspects of five of the world's most influential religions.