This magical narrative aims to take you on a journey following a golden string first written about by the eighteenth-century poet, artist and shaman William Blake. Focused on my experience of such a journey as an anthropologist researching magic, it details the effects of my own shamanic soul loss and eventual soul retrieval. Both personal and universal, it combines multiple forms of knowledge encountered through more-than-human realms of the inspirited imagination that have resonance with how we live today.
Susan Greenwood, an anthropologist and past Lecturer at the University of Sussex UK teaching Shamanic Consciousness and Altered States of Consciousness courses, has published many books and articles on magic notably: Magic
, Witchcraft and the Otherworld
(Berg 2000),
The Nature of Magic
(Berg 2005)
The Anthropology of Magic
(Berg 2009)
,
all republished by Routledge in 2020,
Magical Consciousness:
an anthropological and neurobiological approach (with Erik Goodwyn, Routledge 2016),
Developing Magical Consciousness: a theoretical and practical guide for the expansion of perception (Routledge 2020).
'I think that this book is a useful and "natural" sequel to the important academic work of the author. It offers a different entry point to the research on magical consciousness that the author has been advancing in the past 20+ years. I think that, if read in conversation with her other work, it offers a more nuanced and articulated description of magical consciousness.... it is a unique experiment, and in my opinion a successful one. I believe it will be a reference point in studies of magic'.
- Giovanna Parmigiani, Anthropologist, Harvard Divinity School and CSWR
