Robert Tindall

This book details the remarkable potential of terra preta, the recently rediscovered sacred soil of the pre-Columbian peoples of the Amazon rainforest, to reverse some of the most the catastrophic damage that has been visited on our environment. The authors lay out a fascinating description of how utilizing the biochar embedded in this highly fertile, living soil offers a way to free ourselves from dependency on petrochemicals, restore the health of our soils, and remove carbon from our overheating atmosphere by fixing it back where it belongs--in the earth. They predict that biochar could significantly contribute to the restoration of the planet to pre-industrial levels of atmospheric carbon by 2050. The book also shows that the rediscovery of terra preta is an opportunity to move beyond the West's tradition of plunder and genocide of the native civilizations of the Americas by offering an invitation to embrace the deeper mystery of the indigenous methods of inquiry and to participate in an animate cosmos that gave rise to such a powerful technology as terra preta in the first place. Sacred Soil, in recognizing the need for biocultural regeneration, takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the phenomenon of bio-char soils, utilizing mythopoeic, historical, anthropological, and scientific perspectives to embrace the deep past, the vexed present, and the prospectus for our future. Coming at this crucial juncture in human history, the potential resting in biochar is also an open doorway into the indigenous ways of knowing that enabled the pre-Columbian Amazonian high civilizations to support a population of millions while leaving their lands more fertile than when they arose.

THE JAGUAR THAT ROAMS THE MIND is a journey into the vanishing world of Amazonian shamanism - an adventure of initiation and return - that explores the unique reality at the heart of the Amazonian healing system. Robert Tindall shares his journeys through the inner and outer landscape of the churches of ayahuasca and with the Kaxinawa Indians in Brazil; his experiences at the pioneering centre for the treatment of addiction, Takiwasi, in Peru; and his studies with an Ashaninca master shaman deep in the rainforest jungle. Moving beyond the scientific approach to medicinal plants, which seeks to reduce them to their chemical constituents, Tindall illustrates the shamans' intimate relationships with plant spirits. He explores the three pillars of Amazonian shamanism: purging (drawing disease out of the body), psychoactive plants (including the ritual use of ayahuasca) and diet (communing with the innate intelligence of teacher plants). Through trials and revelations, the subtle inner logic of indigenous healing unfolds for him, including the miraculous healing of a woman suffering from a brain tumour. Culminating in a ceremony fraught with terror yet ultimately enlightening, Tindall's journey reveals the crucial component missing from the metaphysics of the West: the understanding and appreciation of the sentience of nature itself.*Explores the three pillars of Amazonian shamanism: purging, psychoactive plants, and diet*Shares the experiences of apprenticing with an Ashaninca master shaman*Reveals the intimate relationship between shamans and plant spirits