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The presence and function of pilgrimage in both the worlds New Age and Judeo-Christian religious landscape is incredibly important as it often provides individuals with an opportunity to exemplify and extended their spiritual beliefs and understandings and gives them a chance to create a meaningful, life changing and life affirming spiritual experience. New Age Pilgrimage in particular creates a chance for New Age adherents to explore the choices they made through encountering deep spiritual journeys and experiencing sacred energies through a range of different experiences. We will discuss the appeal of New Age pilgrimage with reference to two sites in particular, the vortex experience in Sedona, Arizona in the United States and the Ayahuasca rituals and journeys that occur all over the Amazon Rainforest in South America. These sites are worthy of looking at because they market two completely different spiritual experiences, but upon closer inspection seem to be important and appealing to the New Age community for similar reasons. The sites are similar because pilgrimages to these areas do not pertain to one strict site or one dogma of spiritual understanding; in fact they do the opposite by providing a large landscape in which individuals can create their own pilgrimage experience. Indeed it seems that the two most enticing factors about both these sites is the fact that they both feed and satisfy every individual’s desires and provide individuals with a chance to make sense of and answer the larger questions about life and the world that people struggle to answer. However both these sites also offer something that is unique to their pilgrimage alone, in Sedona that being the accessibility and ease of choice pertaining to practis...
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...s, Religious Transformation in Contemporary Brazil, Ashgate, Hampshire, 2007
- Ivakhiv, Red Rocks, “Vortexes” and the Selling of Sedona: Environmental Politics in the New Age. Social Compass, vol. 44, 1997
- Ivakhiv, Nature and Self in New Age Pilgrimage, Culture and Religion, 4:1, 2003, From RLST2626 Course Reader, University of Sydney Copy Centre, Sydney, 2011
- Coats, Sedona, Arizona: New Age Pilgrim-Tourist Destination, Cross Currents, 2009
- Tindall, Ayahuasca Pilgrimage?, Roaming the Mind, Journey to Our Origins, weblog, April 2009, < http://www.roamingthemind.com/on-ayahuasca-tourism>
- Sedona Chamber of Commerce, The Allure of Sedona’s Vortexes, Visit Sedona, 2011,< http://www.visitsedona.com/article/213>
- Saunders and Dashwood, A Peruvian Shamanistic Ayahuasca Ritual, Council of Spiritual Practices, 1996, < http://csp.org/nicholas/Shamanistic.html>
During a visit to Mexico, Gordon Wasson, a mycologist, discovered the use of psilocybin mushroom in spiritual ceremonies by Indian tribes. Upon experiencing the spiritual and hallucinatory effects of the mushroom, Wasson returned to the area accompanied by an experienced mycologist, Roger Heim, who managed to cultivate the mushroom once in France and send samples of it to the scientist who had discovered lysergic acid, Albert Hoffman. From the mushrooms, Hoffman successfully isolated two compounds which he further named psilocybin and psilocin. Analogs of these compounds were further synthesized and were employed mainly for psychotherapeutic uses. Many tests on psilocybin were made at Harvard University in the early 1960’s. However, along with LSD, psilocybin became a scheduled substance in 1970, making it illegal. During this time, psilocybin mushrooms became a part of the psychedelic and hippy movement and were used for recreational and spiritual purposes. Research on psilocybin ended in the late 1980’s because of strict rules imposed by the government but recently scientist have started researching on this chemical once more.
Thomas, Gerald, et al. "Ayahuasca-Assisted Therapy for Addiction: Results from a Preliminary Observational Study in Canada." Current Drug Abuse Reviews 6.1 (2013): 1-13.Google Scholar. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
Sullum, J. (2014, March 04). First Study Of LSD's Psychotherapeutic Benefits In Four Decades Breaks Research Taboo. Retrieved from Forbes: www.forbes.com
In 1785, a Christ Child was said to have appeared. A shepherd boy from the village of Tayankani played with the child, but the child disappeared. The child was believed to have disappeared into a rock that was left with his imprint. This is the story behind the pilgrimage to the rock, but those of our community don’t pay much attention to it. Their purpose in the event is to ‘honor’ their supernatural beings. They pay homage to Rit’i (the snow), Taytakuna (Fathers), and the great Apus (Lord Mountains).
“A Pilgrim’s Visit to The Five Terraces Mountains”. Making of the Modern World 12: Classical & Medieval Tradition. Trans. Richard F. Burton. Ed. Janet Smarr. La Jolla: University Readers, 2012. 108-110. Print.
Sabina Magliocco, in her book Witching Culture, takes her readers into the culture of the Neo-Pagan cults in America and focus upon what it reveals about identity and belief in 21st century America. Through her careful employment of ethnographic techniques, Magliocco allows both the Neo-Pagan cult to be represented accurately, and likewise, scientifically. I argue that Magliocco's ethnographic approach is the correct way to go about this type of research involving religions.
Hallucinogens are a class of drugs that share a vast history, and were used for spiritual and religious practices since the prime of early civilization. They are referenced in the Hindu holy book, Rig Veda, the healing rituals of the Aztecs of Pre-Columbian Mexico, and are often attributed to the illicit practices of those prosecuted during the Salem Witch Trials. The first synthetic hallucinogens were discovered by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman in 1938, and were originally manufactured to psychiatrists to help their patients access repressed emotions. Other uses considered for early hallucinogens included ingestion by doctors to better understand schizophrenic patients, and as an antibiotic. Their recreational use peaked in the 1960s, but began to decline after they were declared illegal in 1966, except in Native American churches where hallucinogens continued to be used as a spiritual tool. Though their popularity is not as prevalent as it had been in the “hippie movement”, their use continues to be recorded within a minority of the high school and college aged population.
Hofmann, A. (1970, January 1). The Discovery of LSD. The Discovery of LSD. Retrieved May 12, 2014, from http://www.psychedelic-library.org/hofmann.htm
“Key events in the history of psychedelic therapy(sidebar).” Issues and controversies. Facts on file news services, (11 July 2011). Web.19 Feb.2014.
Wesson, Donald R. "Psychedelic Drugs, Hippie Counterculture, Speed And Phenobarbital Treatment Of Sedative-Hypnotic Dependence: A Journey To The Haight Ashbury In The Sixties." Journal Of Psychoactive Drugs 2 (2011): 153. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
Native Americans are probably the people most known for their use of psychedelic drugs. Being a very religious people, their entire society revolved around the spirit world, and some believed that access to this world was possible by eating certain plants that were abundant in their surroundings. In what are now Mexico and the Southwestern United States, tribes familiarized themselves with mescaline, the active ingredient in the peyote cactus. Another drug that was used by tribes in these and many other areas was psilocybin, the active hallucinogenic ingredient of the mushroom Psilocybe mexicana and other psilocybe and conocybe species that grow on the pacific coast of North, South, and Central America. Ritual use of psilocybin and mesca...
After watching The Sacred Science for the second time, I’m finding that I’m very interested in the idea of ayahuasca. From the movie, I’ve gathered that ayahuasca, which is also known as yagé, is plant medicine that will heal all who are sick, as well as create an altered state of consciousness. But as we found in the movie, not all were successful with an ayahuasca treatment. I think this is because pushing away the concept of healing will deny the process, positive attracts positive and vice versa. Ayahuasca is known as a purifier or the medicine for those who are not lucky with love. I’ve also gathered from another source that ayahuasca is a brew that is used to heal people. It originated Peru, specifically in the Amazon Rainforest.
Rosen , Elliot . "The Globalization of Religion." - Inca Religion. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
Winzeler R. L. 2012. Anthropology and religion what we know, think, and question. Rowman Littlefield Publsihers, AltaMira