Howard G. Charing - 16 Feb

THE
ACCIDENTAL
SHAMAN

The authors honest narration of his long exploration of South American shamanism is a delight to read. Valuable insights from an author who walks his talk.

NICHOLAS BREEZE WOOD, EDITOR OF SACRED HOOP MAGAZINE

The author tells insightful shamanic stories based on personal experience while recognizing the wisdom of indigenous cultures. His book also contains precious wisdom regarding safety in contemporary shamanic practices.

JEREMY NARBY, ANTHROPOLOGIST AND AUTHOR OF THE COSMIC SERPENT: DNA AND THE ORIGINS OF KNOWLEDGE AND INTELLIGENCE IN NATURE

Although the author refers to himself as the Accidental Shaman it becomes very clear from his shocking elevator crash to his stunning encounters with the indigenous people and their medicines that Howard G. Charing was chosen by powerful spiritual forces beyond his own ego control to walk the shamanic path of death and rebirth. His miraculous transformational journey has manifested in his being able to share his gifts with others also in need of deep healing.

LINDA STAR WOLF, PH.D. IN SHAMANIC PSYCHOSPIRITUAL STUDIES AND AUTHOR OF SOUL WHISPERING: THE ART OF AWAKENING SHAMANIC CONSCIOUSNESS

A must-read for anyone wanting to explore unseen worlds! Powerful shamanic wisdom that will guide you on how to consciously connect more fully with energy fields and the spirit world.

ROBBIE HOLZ, COAUTHOR OF SECRETS OF ABORIGINAL HEALING AND ABORIGINAL SECRETS OF AWAKENING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to offer my thanks and heart-filled appreciation to those who have helped, challenged, and inspired me on this ongoing journey, in particular, Leo Rutherford, Pablo Amaringo, Peter Cloudsley, John-Richard Turner, and Steve Beyer. In addition, I also thank the indigenous shamans and healers with whom I have worked over the years and who have been generous in sharing their knowledge and medicine teachings.

FOREWORD

Never allow your reality to be undermined.

HOWARD G. CHARING

I honestly cant remember when I first met Howard. He comes and goes a lot, as many shamans do. I remember he once stayed in my house for a week or so as he was traveling around the United States. My house is set on a busy urban street just a few blocks from a popular beach and zoo. We would sit on my front stoop while he smoked his morning cigar, and together we would watch the summer parade of people on the street. I remember how delighted he was to find an old-fashioned barbershop just up the block.

We talked together for hours, about everything. I discovered a man who was deeply knowledgeable about shamanism around the world, particularly the shamanism of the Upper Amazon, a culture in which he had immersed himself for many years. He had long experience working with shamans in the region; he had published dozens of interviews with them. We found that we knew many of the same people; we shared our knowledge of jungle lore, traded stories of shamans both impeccable and perfidious, and spoke especially of his love and admiration for the shaman and visionary artist Pablo Amaringo.

I became aware of something that you will find to be true throughout this book: Howard is an enthralling storyteller. If you love storiesthat is, if you are a human beingyou are in for a treat.

It is easy to believe that Howard has been just about everywhere. He has performed psychic surgery in the Philippines, worked with some of the most respected shamans in the Amazon, produced intricate and colorful ayahuasca-inspired paintings, and was initiated into the lineage of the maestros of the Rio Napo in the Upper Amazon. He is now in Romania, living in Transylvania (not far from Castle Dracula), studying Romanian shamanism. I am not surprised.

It is important, I think, to underscore Howards unstinting devotion to what he calls the Great Domain. His first book was on Amazonian plant spirit medicine, for which Pablo Amaringo wrote the foreword. This was the start of an epic and productive collaboration. When Amaringo died in 2009, he left behind a mass of uncataloged paintings and hastily jotted notes. Howard, along with Peter Cloudsley, had been working with Amaringo for months to get his collection in order, annotate his more recent work, create a digital archive of his art, and protect his paintings from deterioration in their humid tropical environment. The meticulously cataloged and annotated collection became the basis for the remarkable and beautiful posthumous book The Ayahuasca Visions of Pablo Amaringo.

The book you now hold in your hands is another treasure. It is a storehouse of Howards knowledge, experience, and teaching. But it is more.

Psychologist James Hillman distinguishes between two basic orientations to the world, which he calls spirit and soul. Spirit, he says, is detached, objective, intense, absolute, abstract, pure, metaphysical, clear, unitary, eternal, and heavenly. Soul, on the other hand, is mortal, earthly, low, troubled, sorrowful, vulnerable, melancholy, weak, dependent, and profound. Spirit means fire and height, the center of things; soul means water and depth, peripheries, borderlands. Spirit seeks to transcend earth and body, dirt and disease, entanglements and complications, perplexity and despair, seeks to escape or transcend the pleasures and demands of ordinary earthly life.

It is soul, not spirit, that is the true landscape of shamanismthe landscape of suffering, passion, and mess. Shamans deal with sickness, envy, malice, conflict, bad luck, hatred, despair, and death. Indeed, the purpose of the shaman is to dwell in the valley of the soulto heal what has been broken in the body and the community. Shamans live with betrayal, loss, confusion, need, and failureincluding their own.

In this book we have a remarkably forthright and detailed chronicle of such a shaman at work. Howard is first and foremost a healer and visionary, clearly situated in the valley of the soul, and he shares with us his visions, his practices, and his remarkable experiences. At the same time, we can watch him thinking through his healing practices and experiences, placing them within a widerindeed, a globalcontext. He is a man at the intersection of many forms of shamanism, drawn together by his personal healing mission.

This is really three books in one. The first is Howards fascinating story, from the shattering accident that opened up his healing visions, to his meetings with teachers and shamans, to his own healing experiences and practices. The second is his exploration of what these experiences mean, his exploration of how these experiences and healings fit into a variety of current understandings of shamanism worldwide. And, third, the book is in itself a shamanic tutor, incorporating a number of exploratory exercises deriving from Howards many years of leading workshops around the world.

The book is the story of a modern Westerner discovering a healing gift, learning to use it, and striving to understand it. It is valuable for us all.

STEPHAN V. BEYER, PH.D.

Stephan V. Beyerresearcher in ethnomedicine, shamanism, peacemaking, and the spirituality of nonviolencestudied wilderness survival among the indigenous peoples of North and South America, and sacred plant medicine with traditional herbalists in North America and