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Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.
Eliade, Mircea. (1958).
New York: Pantheon Books.
ISBN: None
Description: Hardcover,
xxii + 529 pages. Originally published in 1954 as Le Yoga:
Immortalite et Liberte, Paris: Librairie Payot, translated
by Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series
Number 56.
Contents: Foreword, 8
chapters, chapter notes, list of works cited, index.
Note: Wasson
cites the excerpt below in his book SOMA on page 326 and
strongly criticizes this quotation and four similar selections
from Eliade's Shamanism. (The four
quotations from Shamanism appear on page
327 of SOMA.)
Excerpt(s): In the sphere
of shamanism, strictly speaking, intoxication by drugs (hemp,
mushrooms, tobacco, etc.) seems not to have formed part
of the original practice. For, on the one hand, shamanic myths
and folklore record a decadence among the shamans of the present
day, who have become unable to obtain ecstasy in the fashion of
the "great shamans of long ago"; on the other hand,
it has been observed that where shamanism is in decomposition
and the trance is simulated, there is also overindulgence in intoxicants
and drugs. In the sphere of shamanism itself, however, we must
distinguish between this (probably recent) phenomenon of intoxication
for the purpose of "forcing" trance and the ritual consumption
of "burning" substances for the purpose of increasing
"inner heat" ... (pages 338-339)
This compilation by Thomas B. Roberts & Paula Jo Hruby, © 1995-2003 CSP
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