Bill Plotkin - Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche

Plotkin, Bill, 1950

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Here is an abundantly wise and carefully crafted survival guide for the wild soul

ying) at the heart of your civilized life."

author of The Spell of the Sensuous

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Here is an abundantly wise and carefully crafted survival guide for the wild soul currently dozing (or dying) at the heart of your civilized life. Plotkin has wandered again and again into the nourishing darkness, and has returned with this earthly bundle of insights and images talismanic tools for awakening to the outrageous depths both within us and all around us. He has bound them into a book that is immensely practical, alive with ritual intelligence, thick with useful tools from a host of courageous comrades.

David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous

The fundamental worldview of industrial society is that Earth is like a gravel pit or a lumberyard just a resource for human use. We live disconnected from the evolving earth community, but our deepest allurement is a rich, intimate participation in nature and the ongoing adventure of the Universe. In this stunningly original and inspiring guidebook, Bill Plotkin shows us how to reconnect with the sacred powers of life, of nature, of soul, and the ways that each one of us can reinvent ourselves and discover our unique way to flower forth.

Brian Swimme, author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos

and The Universe Is a Green Dragon

Those who allow Bill Plotkins musings to pass have allowed a diamond to fall from their pockets. Those who value the mystical secrets, the magic and mysterious in nature and the human soul, had better check their pockets, for there are priceless items here, far rarer than diamonds. There are huge questions here, and wisdom worthy of the twenty-first century. For in Soulcraft we find a new language, a new therapy, and a burning passion to get to the very heart of the universe. The answer to our difficulties? If not, a very important part of the answer. Check your pockets!

Steven Foster, Ph.D., and Meredith kittle, directors emeritus, School of Fost Borders

Every now and then a book is birthed into the world that is destined to irrevocably alter the spiritual face of modern culture. Bill Plotkins Soulcraft

is just such a book. This book provides a fresh heart-opening soul language, a new mythos for fathoming the depths of change, and time-tested practical methods for navigating the landscape of authentic transformation. In essence, Soulcraft is Plotkins soul gift, a users manual for the journey of the human soul, as well as a guide to the futurescape of why we are all really here. It is the book I wish I could have had at my fingertips when I began to feel the ancient call for rites of passage in my early youth. It is required reading for anyone guiding other people in soulwork, or delving deep into their own. As philosopher Parker Palmer has said, The way to God is down. Plotkin shows the way.

Frank MacEowen, author of The Mist-Filled Path

A poetic and yet intellectually rigorous exploration of the essential relationshop between the human soul and wild nature, Soulcraft guides the reader on a journey of descent, to return with gifts for a hungry world.

Molly Young Brown, author of Growing Whole and co-author with Joanna Macy of Coming Back to Life

Radical, embodied, and mature, Soulcrafi lays a map for those seeking to launch beyond the psychic and social limitations assumed in modern society. Please read this book. Please live it.

Chellis Glendinning, Ph.D., author of Off the Map and My Name Is Chellis and Im in Recovery from Western Civilization

Within the concepts, principles, and practices embodied in Soulcraft rests the foundation for a possible future that is worthy of humanitys coming of age. Soulcrafi is a culmination of a quest for understanding that goes back 6,000 years. This book will permeate the collective consciousness of the future in the same manner as Erik Eriksons Childhood and Society shaped the 1950s and the work of Abraham Maslow shaped the 1960s.

Dan Popov, Ph.D., author of The Family Virtues Guide

How can we begin our lifes deeper conversation within the greater world of Nature? Bill Plotkin shows us the path.

Dolores LaChapelle, author of Sacred Land, Sacred Sex

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Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche

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New World Library Novato, California

New World Library

_.dtL_ N Pamaron Way Om*s Novato, California 94949

Copyright 2003 by Bill Plotkin

Soulcraft is a registered trademark of Bill Plotkin.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The permissions acknowledgements beginning on page 355 are a continuation of this copyright page.

The material in this book is intended for educational purposes only. No expressed or implied guarantee as to the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given nor liability taken. The publisher advises such activities as fasting or wilderness excursions not be attempted or practiced without appropriate guidance and support.