|  These ideas provoke predictable and usually uninformed reactions. People fear the small society and the critique of the State. It is difficult to see, when one has been raised under it, that it is the State itself which is inherently greedy, destabilizing, entropic, disorderly, and illegitimate. They cite parochialism, regional strife, “unacceptable” expressions of cultural diversity, and so forth. Our philosophies, world religions, and histories are biased toward uniformity, universality, and centralization – in a word, the ideology of monotheism.
—Gary Snyder My personal vision of wilderness spirituality has its roots in animism, pantheism, shamanism, myth, Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, bioregionalism, ecology, voluntary simplicity, archetypal psychology, Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, indigenous spiritualities, and Native North and South American traditions. That is quite a gemisch, but I believe it embraces common themes of human interrelatedness with all life; the importance of right relationships with humans, animals, and the spirits that dwell in all places; the centrality of story and song in maintaining those relationships; and the essentially magical and unpredictable nature of a world that is filled with soul. These are books that, in one way or another, contribute to those themes.
 Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), ISBN 0-8263-1724-3. One of the most important aspects of wilderness spirituality is finding in the wilderness a sense of place. “Sense of place” has become a truism in much contemporary architecture and city planning, and this rather specialized book puts the concept back into its indigenous context. Apache constructions of place reach deeply into other cultural spheres, including Apache concepts of wisdom, politeness, morality, history, and their own cultural identity. This book, which won the Western States Book Award for creative nonfiction, explores the multitude of ways in which the Apache “know their country” through its connections with the moral worlds of myth and history. The author also co-edited an anthology of essays and studies on the same issues in a variety of cultures – Steven Feld, et al., editors, Senses of Place (Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press, 1996), ISBN 0-933452-95-0.
 Peggy Beck, et al., The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life (Tsaile AZ: Navajo Community College Press, 1996), ISBN 0-912586-24-9. This large volume is the single best general work on Native North American religion. Published by an Indian community college, it is a well written, accurate introduction to traditional ideas, contemporary practices, and new religious movements from the time of the first European contacts. Without either polemics or romanticizing, its fourteen chapters cover such topics as ritual drama and prayer, traditional education, the boundaries of the sacred, the world of the spirits, life transition rituals, Navajo traditional knowledge, sacred clowns, and religious revitalization movements from the Ghost Dance to the Native American Church, and the book looks unflinchingly at the survival of Native religions in the face of almost unceasing efforts by Europeans to destroy them. The book provides numerous old black-and-white photographs, a complete bibliography, a glossary, and a guide to films.
 Fikret Berkes, Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management (London UK: Taylor & Francis, 1999), ISBN 1-56032-695-6. We are just beginning to understand and appreciate the value of indigenous ecological knowledge, and this book details the ecological knowledge, practices, and beliefs of the Cree Indians of James Bay in the eastern subarctic of North America. The book shows the interrelations of Cree local knowledge, resource management systems, social institutions, and world view -- that is, what they know about local species, how that knowledge guides a sustainable hunting and foraging practice, how that practice is embodied in social rules and codes of behavior, and how it is embodied in their religion and ethics. The book also discusses the roots, development, and significance of traditional ecological knowledge as a field of study, and argues that such knowledge is a model for an ethical and respectful approach to our own natural resources.
 John Bierhorst, The Mythology of North America (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-19-514623-9. The problem in writing about Native North American mythology is not a lack of material; the problem is to organize and explain the material in ways that are both sympathetic and illuminating. The author here divides the North American continent into eleven cultural regions and discusses the similarities, variations, and differences in mythical themes in each region. Many expositions of myth are heavy with theory and unconcerned with story; this book concentrates instead on the tales themselves and how they are situated in the lives of the people. Here, too, we find, for the first time, a discussion of the contemporary use of traditional myths as oral evidence to reclaim land rights and repatriate grave goods. There are detailed maps and photographs of both traditional and contemporary artwork illustrating the myths. The author has also produced two parallel texts covering the rest of the Americas – John Bierhorst, The Mythology of Mexico and Central America (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-19-514621-2, and John Bierhorst, The Mythology of South America (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-19-514624-7.
 Richard Bradley, An Archeology of Natural Places (London UK: Routledge, 2000), ISBN 0-415-22150. In wilderness spirituality, there are certain places which seem, by their nature, to be sacred. This sacrality of place has clearly been a part of human experience for a long time; but this book is the first to examine the special importance that unaltered features of the landscape held for prehistoric peoples. This volume explores why natural places such as caves, mountains, springs and rivers assumed a sacred character in European prehistory, and how the evidence for this can be analyzed in the field. It covers votive deposits, rock art, burials – even the places where our ancestors chose to make their tools. We are all bound to our prehistoric humanity by the sense of the numinous that we feel before strange rock formations, caves, natural mounds, mountaintops, and inaccessible places.
 Raymond Bucko, The Lakota Ritual of the Sweat Lodge: History and Contemporary Practice (Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), ISBN 0-8032-1272-0. The sweat lodge, like the offering of tobacco smoke, has been virtually universal among the indigenous peoples of North America. Although focused on the the practice of the sweat lodge among a single people, the Lakota, this book is of more general significance in its exploration of persistence, adaptation, and cultural appropriation. The Lakota sweat lodge has changed little since its first description by Europeans in the seventeenth century, and it continues to be a central part of Lakota life, providing both moral and physical purification. This book uses both historical sources and recent fieldwork to provide a detailed discussion of the structure and function of the sweat ceremony in Lakota culture.
 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2nd edition, 1968), ISBN 0-691-01784-0. This book has become a core text for the contemporary wilderness vision fast, which equates the wilderness quest with the quest of the mythic hero. Campbell argues that the heroic quest is in fact the central myth of all narrative literature, so basic that he labels it with the Joycean term monomyth. This fundamental myth is simple: A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are encountered there, and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his or her people. As Campbell points out, the mythological adventure of the hero is in fact a magnification of the threefold formula represented in an initiation or rite of passage – separation, initiation, return – which he calls “the nuclear unit of the monomyth.” Apollo, the Frog King, Luke Skywalker, Wotan, the Buddha, and we ourselves, in our lives and our dreams, reenact this myth; it is part of what makes us human.
 James Cunkle, et al., Stone Magic of the Ancients: Petroglyphs, Shamanic Shrine Sites, Ancient Rituals (Phoenix AZ: Golden West Publishers, 1996), ISBN 1-885590-04-0. Petroglyphs are images created in stone by carving or pecking the outer stone surface away and exposing the deeper stone surface beneath. Ancient petroglyphs – often of striking abstract beauty – are found all over the world, and their meaning is controversial. Were they purely artistic expressions? Did they have magical or spiritual purpose? Were they the ancient equivalent of graffiti? This thoroughly illustrated book discusses petroglyph images of humans, tools, weapons, spirits, natural features, tracks, animals, place markers, and geometric designs, giving them each a context and function. It sets forth a strong case, utilizing contemporary informants and ancient pottery images, that many ancient petroglyphs functioned within the context of shamanic ritual – hunting and fertility rituals, spirit visions, healing and divination, and rites of passage.
 Joan Halifax, Shamanic Voices (New York NY: Viking Penguin, 1994), ISBN 0-14-019348-0. This book is a collection of autobiographical and visionary narratives by native shamans and healers from a variety of cultures and collected from a variety of sources. The book provides an excellent brief introduction on the general nature of shamanism, but makes little attempt to place the individual narratives in cultural context, or even to differentiate one culture from another. Still, the narratives themselves are fascinating and eloquent, and include stories of initiatory rites, visionary journeys, and the role of the shaman as intermediary between the people and the spirits.
 Paul Harrison, The Elements of Pantheism: Understanding the Divinity in Nature and the Universe (Boston MA: Element Books, 1999), ISBN 1-86204-463-5. This little handbook is an excellent brief introduction to the nature and history of pantheism. As a philosophy, pantheism holds that the universe as a whole is divine, and that there is no divinity other than the universe and nature; as a religion, it reveres and cares for nature, accepts this life as our only life, and sees this earth as our only possible paradise. The book covers the history, core beliefs, and ethical implications of pantheism; explores the possibilities of pantheist ceremony, meditation, and mysticism; and discusses pantheist controversies about souls, death, and the afterlife.
 Graham Harvey, Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth (New York NY: New York University Press, 1997), ISBN 0-8147-3549-5. Contemporary pagan and neopagan movements have thrown off a tremendous variety of books, both polemical and scholarly, at all levels of quality. This book is a broad, scholarly, sympathetic introduction to the main trends of contemporary paganism, discussing the origins, sources, and practices of contemporary druidry, witchcraft, heathenism, goddess spirituality, magic, shamanism, and other strands in the complex web of these new religious movements. The book deals with seasonal rituals, rites of passage, and theology; the relationship of paganism with other religions; and neopaganism's ecological and environmental beliefs and politics. There are larger more specialized books of equal quality, in particular the 480-page Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), ISBN 0-19-820744-1; but in a contentious field, this is the best and most accurate introduction.
 Graham Harvey, editor, Indigenous Religions: A Companion (London UK: Cassell, 2000), ISBN 0-304-70448-2. This is a collection of seventeen scholarly essays on representative indigenous religions from all over the world. Several contributors are members of the indigenous nations about which they write; in every case the aim has been collaborative engagement in dialogue with the indigenous tradition that is the subject of the essay. The book is organized around three themes – persons, powers, and gifts – and many of the essays challenge received wisdom about the nature of so-called “primitive” religions. Indigenous religious traditions emerge from these essays as pragmatic, complex, multilayered, nondogmatic, this-worldly, political, and largely concerned with the maintenance of reciprocal relationships. The introduction by the editor is alone worth the price of the book. The book also contains an excellent short essay on shamanism written by Piers Vitebsky, whose book The Shaman is discussed below.
 James Hillman, A Blue Fire (New York NY: HarperCollins, 1989), ISBN 0-06-016132-9. In the wilderness, we become open to the presence of spirits; we are – somehow – closer to the imaginal realm where spirits live. I am not about to decide whether these spirits are real, whatever that means. As far as I am concerned, they are real enough. One of the few modern psychological traditions to take these experiences seriously – as primordial images, shamanic spirits, the gods – is generally called archetypal psychology, descended from Jung largely through the singular vision of James Hillman. This psychological approach to encountering the spirits is worth exploring, and this book is the best introduction to Hillman’s thought. Edited by fellow archetypalist Thomas Moore, author of such equally relevant books as The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life (New York NY: HarperCollins, 1997), ISBN 0-06-092824-7, it contains excerpts, mostly brief, from all of Hillman’s major writings, arranged topically under the headings of Soul, the World, and Eros, including his essays on polytheism and imaginal practice.
 Lee Irwin, The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains (Tulsa OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), ISBN 0806128933. This is a scholarly text that discusses the place of dreams and visions – and the solitary quest that leads to them – as sources of empowerment and innovation in Plains Indian religion. The author draws on 350 visionary dreams from twenty-three groups of Plains Indians, using published and unpublished sources that cover a span of 150 years. He describes spontaneous vision experiences among women; the role of stress, illness, social conflict, and mourning in obtaining visions; the stages of the structured male vision quest; the nature of the vision experience; unsuccessful or abandoned quests; the means by which religious empowerment is obtained and transferred; and how all of this relates to the cosmological beliefs common among the Plains nations. This is the single most informed and comprehensive treatment of the Native North American vision fast that I have found.
 Luis Eduardo Luna, et al., Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (Berkeley CA: North Atlantic Books, 1993), ISBN 1-55643-064-7. This large and beautiful book, featuring the paintings of ayahuasquero Pablo César Amaringo, is the best available introduction to the mestizo shamanism of the western Amazon. The paintings represent the visions that Amaringo received while practicing as a shaman, and they serve as a basis for a thorough documentation and analysis by anthropologist Luna, who identifies the images – biological, mythical, and cultural – with tribal and cross-cultural references. The result is a discussion that covers all aspects of Amazonian shamanism. Because it is based on a series of paintings, the discussion is less organized than in a straightforward textbook; but there is a thorough index, and the paintings, beautiful and provocative in themselves, ground the discussion in an even more satisfying way.
 Brian Molyneaux, The Sacred Earth (Boston MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), ISBN 0-316-90303-5. Indigenous religious traditions perceive certain places on the earth as being particular sacred or powerful, and the earth itself as a living, nurturing body, a sacred source of vitality. The author of this profusely illustrated book, with more than 250 full-color illustrations, is a research archeologist at the University of South Dakota and a specialist in prehistoric art and society. Here he discusses the spirits of the landscape, ancient alignments and pathways, and the places where sacrality has traditionally been found to be concentrated – waters, stones, caves, mountains, trees. There is a chapter on earth images and structures, including rock art, mounds, boulders, megaliths, pyramids, and underground temples and tombs. The book also covers such derivative topics as geomancy, feng shui, and gardens.
 Michael Perlman, The Power of Trees: The Reforesting of the Soul (Woodstock VT: Spring Publications, 1994), ISBN 0-88214-362-X. The author – a founder, like James Hillman, discussed above, of archetypal psychology – considers the relationship of trees with the human soul. He interviews people about the trees they know – residents of South Florida after Hurricane Andrew, sawmill operators, street tree planting committees; he looks at trees in literature and myth; he explores the effects of trees on both consciousness and culture – and especially their loss, in hurricanes, clear-cut timberlands, tract housing, and war zones. The book helps us to turn from ourselves and ensoul the world; our soul-making encounter with trees, the author says, leads us to both the darkness and light of our own souls.
 Linda Pierce, Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World (Carmel CA: Gallagher Press, 2000), ISBN 0-9672067-1-5. Based on the Pierce Simplicity study – a three-year study of 211 people who simplified their lives, this book sets forth the process by which people choose new locations, new work, new communities, and new ways of achieving a simple and intentional lifestyle, a more soulful and sustainable ways of living. The book discusses both successes and failures, the variety of ways in which people move toward simplicity, and the obstacles and doubts on the path. The stories include commentary and insights to guide those who want to explore simplicity and to sustain those who have already set forth. The book also includes a sixteen-page resource guide, with summary reviews of books on simplicity, and information on related Web sites, organizations, simplicity study circles, workshops, newsletters and magazines.
 Scott Savage, editor, The Plain Reader: Essays on Making a Simple Life (New York NY: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1998), ISBN 0-345-41434-9. The essays in this book first appeared in Plain magazine, an Amish/Quaker/Luddite publication which explores the nature and implications of a plain lifestyle. The journal is published by the Center for Plain Living, a group of mostly Quaker plain people who wanted to connect with the Amish or Anabaptist traditions – what are sometimes called the Believers or Peace churches, who live a fully realized, sustainable culture that is largely invisible in modern society. The essays in this book reflect both this lifestyle and the attempts – often clumsy and humorous – of outsiders to learn the often complex ways of simplicity. The book includes chapters on hand-washing your clothes, learning to use a horse and buggy, getting rid of the television set, and trying to diminish the importance of money; the authors discuss creating a community through shared labor on a farm, reconnecting with children through home schooling, and using midwives in place of obstetricians and medical technology. The book is warm, funny, and provocative.
 Richard Schultes, et al., Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers (Rochester VT: Inner Traditions, Revised edition, 2001), ISBN 0-89281-979-0. Hallucinogenic plants, capable of bringing human beings in closer touch with the spirit worlds, have been part of human culture for millennia. One author of this book, Richard Schultes, a Harvard professor, was one of the most celebrated and influential ethnobotanists of our time; the other, Albert Hofmann, perhaps best known as the discoverer of LSD, was head of the research laboratories of a major pharmaceutical company. Together they have produced a profusely illustrated account of psychoactive flora – their use, properties, effects, cultural contexts, and significance in shaping history and culture – with more than a hundred full-color illustrations and numerous rare photographs of plants, people, ceremonies, and art work. Chapters cover hemp, datura, iboga, ayahuasca, peyote, San Pedro, teonanacatl, and others; more than ninety-one plants are illustrated and characterized; the book discusses geographical distribution, patterns of use, and phytochemical research on sacred plants.
 Mary Tucker, et al., editors, Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-945-45414-7. Despite its largely world-denying origins, Buddhism has developed a profound sense of the interconnection of all life, reflected both in later interpretations of its doctrine of dependent origination and in its metaphor of the infinitely reflecting Net of Indra. Also, Buddhist values stand directly opposed to the “three poisons” of greed, hatred, and stupidity that characterize modern consumerism. As a result, many modern Buddhists have become social activists, in both the peace and environmental movements. This book elaborates on topics introduced at a conference at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, and its contributors analyze the prospects and the problems of using Buddhism as an environmental resource in both theory and practice. Most of the authors are American or American based, and the book does not explore the classical Buddhist sources that inform contemporary Buddhist environmentalism. These deficits are addressed in two additional anthologies – Stephani Kaza, et al., editors, Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism (Boston MA: Shambhala Publications; 2000), ISBN 1-570-62475-5, and Alan Badiner, editor, Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley CA: Parallax Press, 1990), ISBN 0-938-07730-9 -- both of which give sources in Buddhist Scriptures, writings of past Buddhist masters, and essays by contemporary Buddhist thinkers and activists, including Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Sulak Sivaraksa, Joanna Macy, and Gary Snyder.
 Piers Vitebsky, The Shaman (Boston MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), ISBN 0-316-90304-3. This is, in my opinion, the best general book on shamanism; it is thorough, thoughtful, and has lots of pictures. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky gives us a balanced account of shamans and shamanic practices from Siberia to the Amazon rain forest. He combines reports of field work, classical texts, and hundreds of full-color photographs; an extensive bibliography includes a list of new shamanic movements. Chapters cover the shamanic worldview, regional traditions, the process of becoming a shaman, and the relationship between shamans and clients; a concluding chapter discusses the history of our understanding of shamanism, shamans, and shamanic healing.
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