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Secrets of the Talking Jaguar: Memoirs from the Living Heart of a Mayan Village
Twenty-five years ago, a young musician and painter named Martin Prechtel wandered through the brilliant landscapes of Mexico and Guatemala. Arriving at Santiago Atitlan, a Tzutujil Mayan village on the breathtaking shores of Lake Atitlan, Prechtel met Nicolas Chiviliu Tacaxoy--perhaps the most famous shaman in Tzutujil history--who believed Prechtel was the new student he had asked the gods to provide. For the next thirteen years, Prechtel studied the ancient Tzutujil culture and became a village chief and a famous shaman in his own right.In Secrets of the Talking Jaguar , Prechtel brings to vivid life the sights, sounds, scents, and colors of Santiago its magical personalities, its beauty, its material poverty and spiritual richness, its eight-hundred-year-old rituals juxtaposed with quintessential small-town gossip. The story of his education is a tale filled with enchantment, danger, passion, and hope.
304 pages, Paperback
First published August 24, 1998
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1,414 people want to read
About the author
Martin Prechtel
23 books174 followersA master of eloquence and innovative language, Martín Prechtel is a leading thinker, writer and teacher whose work, both written and oral, hopes to promote the subtlety, irony and pre-modern vitality hidden in any living language. As a half blood Native American with a Pueblo Indian upbringing, his life took him from New Mexico to the village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. There becoming a full village member of the Tzutujil Mayan population, he eventually served as a principal in that body of village leaders responsible for instructing the young people in the meanings of their ancient stories through the rituals of adult rights of passage. Once again residing in his native New Mexico, Martín teaches at his international school Bolad’s Kitchen. Through story, music, ritual and writing, Martín helps people in many lands to retain their diversity while remembering their own sense of place in the daily sacred through the search for the Indigenous Soul.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
June 16, 2008
The official book summary and most of the reviews here talk about the external Guatemalan world that Martin Prechtel inhabited; however, I was struck by the dream-like passages describing his close encounters with death and with deities, and by his philosophical descriptions of how the world works, according to the ancient Maya world view. Even though I've read a lot of books about the nature of spirit (or perhaps because of that), many of the passages struck me as profound. It had a real meaty substance, not new-age flim-flam. I love real-life accounts of syncronicities, bizarre happenings, and the way spirits and dreams interact with the tangible, visible world.
April 18, 2008
One of my absolute favorite books because it takes you directly to the heart of an indigenous culture that lived in a way that is so true to the heart and themselves. At least the way it's told. Beautiful and evocative, if you like reading stories about different cultural perspectives, this is excellent and takes you deep into something we don't seem to treasure much any more...and I can't even put that into words.
February 5, 2010
There's a rule of thumb test I heard once to determine if a comment is patronizing to a person or group. If you switched the parties in the comment, would you find the statement offensive or obviously wrong? If so, it's probably patronizing. This works well when applied to comments about men and women or races, but I think it also applies very well to this book. If I read a book that spoke in almost uniformly glowing terms about a modern society, and dismissed an indigenous culture in gross generalities, picking only its worst moments and tendencies to characterize it, and implied that pretty much all of its people are spiritually dead and immature... I'd think the author was offensive and almost certainly wrong. So, all this is to say I found this book a little patronizing. The Noble Savage stereotype, as it were, promoted by Himself.
The book tells about how Prechtel, raised on a Pueblo reservation in the southwest US, wanders around Mexico and Guatemala in an aimless search in his early 20s until he finds his home among the Guatemalan Maya in the village of Santiago Atitlan. There he lives for 13 years and is apprenticed and becomes a working shaman. He is fully accepted and fully loves his life there. Eventually he is forced to leave the country with his wife and children as a result of civil war, although his exit is not clearly explained.
His descriptions of his training, the beautiful land, the village life, and especially the spirituality of the Mayans were wonderful. I learned a lot about the culture of the village, and their view of the world and their place in it. It certainly is radically different than a modern mindset. His life was full of amazing adventures (some of which I admit to being a tiny bit skeptical about) and it makes for a great story.
The thing is, though, it's also a call for each of us to find our own indigenous heart, to recognize the poverty of our own alienating, deadening experience in a modern society and return to a true, spiritual, enlivening, rich life as embodied in his Mayan village. (Conveniently, he teaches classes and workshops on how to do this throughout the US. Yes, I'm a bit cynical). I just didn't feel it. I think a lot of this might be my membership in paradoxically one of the most corporate AND one of the most "indigenous" religions around in our modern society. If you don't know much about Mormons, you'd be surprised at the number of elements of our beliefs and practices I found echoed in those of the Mayan. I'm not saying the religions are related, and there are many *significant* differences. Only that our temples, views about holiness and priesthood, ideas about humanity, and ideas about community are similar in many respects. Maybe this is why I don't feel many of the horrible effects of modernity he describes. I do not discount his own experience of alienation during his time in the US, nor his obviously joyful finding of a people and culture where he felt fully embraced, challenged, valued, and alive. I enjoyed his story. But I don't think it is mine.
The book tells about how Prechtel, raised on a Pueblo reservation in the southwest US, wanders around Mexico and Guatemala in an aimless search in his early 20s until he finds his home among the Guatemalan Maya in the village of Santiago Atitlan. There he lives for 13 years and is apprenticed and becomes a working shaman. He is fully accepted and fully loves his life there. Eventually he is forced to leave the country with his wife and children as a result of civil war, although his exit is not clearly explained.
His descriptions of his training, the beautiful land, the village life, and especially the spirituality of the Mayans were wonderful. I learned a lot about the culture of the village, and their view of the world and their place in it. It certainly is radically different than a modern mindset. His life was full of amazing adventures (some of which I admit to being a tiny bit skeptical about) and it makes for a great story.
The thing is, though, it's also a call for each of us to find our own indigenous heart, to recognize the poverty of our own alienating, deadening experience in a modern society and return to a true, spiritual, enlivening, rich life as embodied in his Mayan village. (Conveniently, he teaches classes and workshops on how to do this throughout the US. Yes, I'm a bit cynical). I just didn't feel it. I think a lot of this might be my membership in paradoxically one of the most corporate AND one of the most "indigenous" religions around in our modern society. If you don't know much about Mormons, you'd be surprised at the number of elements of our beliefs and practices I found echoed in those of the Mayan. I'm not saying the religions are related, and there are many *significant* differences. Only that our temples, views about holiness and priesthood, ideas about humanity, and ideas about community are similar in many respects. Maybe this is why I don't feel many of the horrible effects of modernity he describes. I do not discount his own experience of alienation during his time in the US, nor his obviously joyful finding of a people and culture where he felt fully embraced, challenged, valued, and alive. I enjoyed his story. But I don't think it is mine.
March 12, 2008
I read this for a Fairhaven class on the anthropology of shamanism. The professor, Leslie Conton, has been dogged by controversy surrounding her experiential methods as an anthropologist, as her ethnographic work has consisted of studying various cultures' shamanic practices by training as a shaman in those cultures. No longer allowed to conduct shamanic journeying workshops as part of the class, she assigned Secrets of the Talking Jaguar because it was "the closest thing she could give us to an experiential education" on the subject.
Well, that whole subject is very sticky and I don't think here is the place to write any more about it. But Prechtel's memoir was definitely in stark contrast to the dryer, more purely ethnographic materials assigned, and I relished it. I don't know how an author can describe the ineffable, and I imagine the answer is that he can't--but this is still a beautiful, evocative piece of writing.
Traveling aimlessly around Central America, Prechtel happenstantially (I want that to be a word) ended up in a Tzutujil Mayan village in Guatemala, was chosen despite his protests to train under the village shaman, and stayed (I think) 15 years, before being forced to leave due to political circumstances. It doesn't sound true, but as far as I can tell, it is. Now back in the U.S., Prechtel is working to inform people about the sociopolitical situation of indigenous cultures in Central America. A pretty amazing dude. This book is mostly about the spiritual and social aspects of his shamanic training and practice, and the relationship of these things to his experience of being a cultural expatriate/import.
I lent my copy to David Ney a couple of years ago after he tried to convince me to read Carlos Castaneda, and he still hasn't read it. So if you want to borrow it, I'll get it back from him.
Well, that whole subject is very sticky and I don't think here is the place to write any more about it. But Prechtel's memoir was definitely in stark contrast to the dryer, more purely ethnographic materials assigned, and I relished it. I don't know how an author can describe the ineffable, and I imagine the answer is that he can't--but this is still a beautiful, evocative piece of writing.
Traveling aimlessly around Central America, Prechtel happenstantially (I want that to be a word) ended up in a Tzutujil Mayan village in Guatemala, was chosen despite his protests to train under the village shaman, and stayed (I think) 15 years, before being forced to leave due to political circumstances. It doesn't sound true, but as far as I can tell, it is. Now back in the U.S., Prechtel is working to inform people about the sociopolitical situation of indigenous cultures in Central America. A pretty amazing dude. This book is mostly about the spiritual and social aspects of his shamanic training and practice, and the relationship of these things to his experience of being a cultural expatriate/import.
I lent my copy to David Ney a couple of years ago after he tried to convince me to read Carlos Castaneda, and he still hasn't read it. So if you want to borrow it, I'll get it back from him.
November 18, 2015
This book goes up there in the handful of books that actually weave into fibers of my soul. I read it based on the recommendation of several friends who are students of Martin, and the timing couldn't have been better. Like Martin starts our in the book, my wife, daughter and I are traveling now with grief-stricken hearts, and confronting the pervasive spiritual illness sweeping the world. True hope is hard to come by, but the stories the author shares of his life in Santiago Atitlan actually see the chance for humanity to reconnect with our natural souls. Maybe it will take generations, but I am grateful for elders like this who can offer a grounded perspective of what "healing" actually means in today's world.
October 8, 2015
Don't judge a book by the cover.
The cove of this one is beautiful, a painting by the author. He's a really good painter. He's not a really good author.
This is a story about his life; born to a Westerner and a First Nations Woman, Prechtel was raised in the American Southwest, a rebellious youth who was ultimately betrayed by his mother (she died), his father (in grief, he fled), and his wife (she cheated on him with a white man). Penniless, he left for Mexico, where he spent some time, before continuing on to Guatemala. There, he found the village of Santiago Atitlan, where he lived for more than a decade, learning a particular Mayan style of life.
The book obviously is in the same vein as the Carlos Castanada books about Don Juan. I remember reading through that whole series in my mid-teens and being very taken by them. We now know that they're pretty much all fake, but the power of the writing remains. (Whether I would think so some quarter-century later, I don't know.) It could be that Prechtel's books are completely authentic--although a few things give me pause--but the writing is incredibly flat and prosaic.
It is worth noting that the book--the first in a series, apparently--is introduced by Robert Bly, author of Iron John. I've read that book, too, and although Bly is often lumped in with the men's movements of the early 1990s--the Promise Keepers, etc.,--his book was always a bit more tricky than those atavisms. He has a sense of the absurd and the dramatic and the weridnesses of life. None of that is in this book, but I could see why he might be drawn to it. Prechtel is enacting many of the initiation rites that Bly feels are needed in this modern world.
Indeed, one of the reasons why I am leery about this book is it reads like a transliteration of Bly's ideas. Prechtel cannot connect to The Feminine (it's not capitalized in the book, but might as well be) because he has not made it as a man: and so is rejected by his wife and the waitress he is considering marrying in Mexico. He leaves the U.S. when he is 20 and returns at the rather significant age of 33: without saying so, he wants us to link his learning with the lost years of Christ. But he escapes crucifixion.
When he arrives in the village, he is greeted as welcome--somebody there has been sending him the dreams to tempt him there all along. That's not as extraordinary as all of the help he has received making his way to the remote village. Everyone just seems to accept him and he becomes friends with everyone--yet to this point no individual has really been described, including the woman he fell in love with in Mexico.
That pattern continues through the book. Even the man who teaches him to become a shaman (because, of course) is hardly more than a name. It's a very narcissistic book, with everything in the universe there not for its own reasons but to improve Prechtel's own soul, and to impart wisdom.
Another reason I have trouble accepting this as an actual document is too often does Prechtel slide between saying the particular group of Mayans he lives with believes certain things or does certain things and ALL Mayans do such things and there is an essential indigenous soul.
I did like the imagery of the gods having created humans because humans can create beauty and joy and use this to feed the God's hungers--it is a manner of praying and conversing with the divine world.
According to Prechtel, there are two such tracks human's can follow to propitiate the gods. One is belonging to a village hierarchy, and acting, essentially, as an institutional memory of these negotiations. The other is shamanic, in which a person acts, essentially, as a lawyer for others before the divine courts, doing individual negotiations. Of course, though he was an outsider, he was accepted into both. (He was more determined to keep the "old ways" than most of the others in the village--though it is unclear how old these old ways were.) This book only deals with his shamanic training, though. Long Life Honey in the Heart deals with his chiefdom.
The real problem, though, is that the initiation he describes is boring. He struggles here and there, but only for a paragraph or two, There's none of the soul-wrenching weirdness of Carlos Castanada. Like his trip across central America, things just happen, easily, he is accepted, he does his job, blah de blah.
Blah.
The cove of this one is beautiful, a painting by the author. He's a really good painter. He's not a really good author.
This is a story about his life; born to a Westerner and a First Nations Woman, Prechtel was raised in the American Southwest, a rebellious youth who was ultimately betrayed by his mother (she died), his father (in grief, he fled), and his wife (she cheated on him with a white man). Penniless, he left for Mexico, where he spent some time, before continuing on to Guatemala. There, he found the village of Santiago Atitlan, where he lived for more than a decade, learning a particular Mayan style of life.
The book obviously is in the same vein as the Carlos Castanada books about Don Juan. I remember reading through that whole series in my mid-teens and being very taken by them. We now know that they're pretty much all fake, but the power of the writing remains. (Whether I would think so some quarter-century later, I don't know.) It could be that Prechtel's books are completely authentic--although a few things give me pause--but the writing is incredibly flat and prosaic.
It is worth noting that the book--the first in a series, apparently--is introduced by Robert Bly, author of Iron John. I've read that book, too, and although Bly is often lumped in with the men's movements of the early 1990s--the Promise Keepers, etc.,--his book was always a bit more tricky than those atavisms. He has a sense of the absurd and the dramatic and the weridnesses of life. None of that is in this book, but I could see why he might be drawn to it. Prechtel is enacting many of the initiation rites that Bly feels are needed in this modern world.
Indeed, one of the reasons why I am leery about this book is it reads like a transliteration of Bly's ideas. Prechtel cannot connect to The Feminine (it's not capitalized in the book, but might as well be) because he has not made it as a man: and so is rejected by his wife and the waitress he is considering marrying in Mexico. He leaves the U.S. when he is 20 and returns at the rather significant age of 33: without saying so, he wants us to link his learning with the lost years of Christ. But he escapes crucifixion.
When he arrives in the village, he is greeted as welcome--somebody there has been sending him the dreams to tempt him there all along. That's not as extraordinary as all of the help he has received making his way to the remote village. Everyone just seems to accept him and he becomes friends with everyone--yet to this point no individual has really been described, including the woman he fell in love with in Mexico.
That pattern continues through the book. Even the man who teaches him to become a shaman (because, of course) is hardly more than a name. It's a very narcissistic book, with everything in the universe there not for its own reasons but to improve Prechtel's own soul, and to impart wisdom.
Another reason I have trouble accepting this as an actual document is too often does Prechtel slide between saying the particular group of Mayans he lives with believes certain things or does certain things and ALL Mayans do such things and there is an essential indigenous soul.
I did like the imagery of the gods having created humans because humans can create beauty and joy and use this to feed the God's hungers--it is a manner of praying and conversing with the divine world.
According to Prechtel, there are two such tracks human's can follow to propitiate the gods. One is belonging to a village hierarchy, and acting, essentially, as an institutional memory of these negotiations. The other is shamanic, in which a person acts, essentially, as a lawyer for others before the divine courts, doing individual negotiations. Of course, though he was an outsider, he was accepted into both. (He was more determined to keep the "old ways" than most of the others in the village--though it is unclear how old these old ways were.) This book only deals with his shamanic training, though. Long Life Honey in the Heart deals with his chiefdom.
The real problem, though, is that the initiation he describes is boring. He struggles here and there, but only for a paragraph or two, There's none of the soul-wrenching weirdness of Carlos Castanada. Like his trip across central America, things just happen, easily, he is accepted, he does his job, blah de blah.
Blah.
January 2, 2018
This whole book is fake, and Martin Prechtel is a fraud. And while he has some good one liners and paragraphs, his writing is not particularly good or engaging, his visions are laughable, and the book draws on too long, filled with his own pomp and self-elevation. He is a plastic shaman. I read this book after hearing so many good things about it from others, and was left with a feeling of frustration because even as a work of fiction it isn't terribly insightful. Who falls for this crap? Carlos Castaneda and Tom Brown are far better, more insightful authors in the naturalistic/spiritual fiction department.
Then I found this, his old colleagues put out a warning on him:
"Dr. Nathaniel Tarn (author of Scandals in the House of Birds: Shamans and Priests on Lake Atitlán) and Dr. Robert Carlsen (author of The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town) wish to disassociate themselves completely from the latest activities of Mr. Martin Prechtel. When they worked with him in the 1970s, Mr. Prechtel was an honest and knowledgeable collaborator and Tarn and Carlsen gave him joint-author status on a variety of projects as a result. Mr. Prechtel, now calling himself a "Maya Shaman," has in the 1990s, with Putnam as his publisher, written (or had written for him) a self- puffing volume without any scholarly basis whatsoever, but full of anthropology-bashing. His claim, in essence, is that all costumbre is now dead in Atitlán, but it lives inside him. Therefore he is the only Atitlán that is left. We regret that, without warning, he has broken all agreements made with us and reiterated over the years to work within a scholarly context. Further, we regret this blatant commercialization of Native American rituals and beliefs at the hands of someone who once respected them."
Then I found this, his old colleagues put out a warning on him:
"Dr. Nathaniel Tarn (author of Scandals in the House of Birds: Shamans and Priests on Lake Atitlán) and Dr. Robert Carlsen (author of The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town) wish to disassociate themselves completely from the latest activities of Mr. Martin Prechtel. When they worked with him in the 1970s, Mr. Prechtel was an honest and knowledgeable collaborator and Tarn and Carlsen gave him joint-author status on a variety of projects as a result. Mr. Prechtel, now calling himself a "Maya Shaman," has in the 1990s, with Putnam as his publisher, written (or had written for him) a self- puffing volume without any scholarly basis whatsoever, but full of anthropology-bashing. His claim, in essence, is that all costumbre is now dead in Atitlán, but it lives inside him. Therefore he is the only Atitlán that is left. We regret that, without warning, he has broken all agreements made with us and reiterated over the years to work within a scholarly context. Further, we regret this blatant commercialization of Native American rituals and beliefs at the hands of someone who once respected them."
November 6, 2015
This, as a natural cynic, is a truly transformative account of both Maya culture and a deeply inspirational peek into the civil war's effect on a people. Martin begins with flowery language in defense of the reverence of nature that is both repelling to a modernized person and compelling in mystery. His own fascinating history, as a young integree to Pueblo culture in New Mexico, his exile, then discovery and integration to shaman culture in Highland Guatemala lends context to forgotten concepts and a vignette into the indigenous cultures' oppression in the 1980s. Prechtel is a wonderfully poetic writer, whose prose compels the reader forward despite their own preconceptions of "indigenous culture". This account alone truly adds value to the ambiguous, ill-annotated history of a people subjugated as collateral damage to corporate and political objectives.
January 19, 2016
This book was beyond words and I cannot wait to dive into more of Prechtel's work. His talk "Grief and Praise" is an utter favorite of mine and Secrets of the Talking Jaguar was filled with mysticism, beauty, heartache, laughter and words that drip with images of the Maya people. What a storyteller and writer!
December 26, 2014
this is one of the worst, dumbest books I have ever read. white man shaman? not uh.
August 13, 2018
Honey in the Heart
October 17, 2024
no idea how much of this i can really believe, but it was all incredibly compelling. one of the most vivid books i've ever read in the physical world it described, the village feels set up in my mind, the trees, the huts, the water, the people. i haven't had much time to read anything other than set uni texts in the past couple months, but this has been a constant welcome companion. the last four pages made me cry.
February 22, 2015
Especially fascinating in terms of how language is a reflection of cultural reality and how language shapes that reality. Ex. the Mayan language spoken in this book does not have a word for "to be" and so there is no concept of "future." People live in a sense of belonging to the present moment. For example a traveller is said to "belong to the road." In the day time people "belong to the sun." Linguistically enlightening! Other aspects of the book were not as engrossing, but there was lots to keep me reading.
August 22, 2019
The first half of this book was filled with amusing and sometime hilarious travel misadventures as he made his way to Guatemala. Once he arrived there and met the shaman he was to train with the tone of the book changed. His shamanistic training should have been the most interesting part of the book, but this section consisted of a dry, chapter long description of the village and other uninteresting narratives on his training that did not put you right into this part of the story. It was almost as if this section was written by a different person.
July 4, 2016
A tale of Mayan Shamanism told by a Mayan Shaman, it should be understood that English was not the main language used and spoken for the majority of this author's life. As the reader, if you can meet the author where his circumstances lie and accept his more poetic (sometimes exaggerated) manner of speech, you may just grow fond of his personal story about the indigenous soul and keeping it alive in a dark world. I know I did.
September 2, 2019
The most engrossing and inspiring book... what a spiritual way of life could be like. What community can be like. Great adventure, brilliant storytelling... lyrically beautiful language - nonfiction at its best... Martin's other books run a close 2nd.
March 24, 2024
I started the book liking his writing about life and nature, then I started to feel like his writing was self-righteous and slightly misogynistic. I’m glad I finished it as I did like what he had to say about life, the world, and human beings.
July 7, 2008
This book is part epic journey, part lucid dream. A glimpse into a shaman's journey in 1970's rural Guatemala. Not to be taken lightly, or easily forgotten...
August 12, 2008
Martin's writing is candy for the mind. A wordsmith with an open heart.
April 16, 2015
beautiful true story of a person transformed by engaging with an Indigenous community and the Earth and being transformed and healed by and through both. This is medicine.
October 25, 2014
Pretentious and patronizing.
November 13, 2023
This book jumped out at me from a shop window. I was waiting at a bus stop next to a Notting Hill bookshop on a rainy Saturday, and I swear I heard a voice when I looked at it, so I went in and bought it on the spot. I have never had that happen before or since.
It was a hardback copy that later disappeared mysteriously. It is probably still out there somewhere, doing the rounds. I then bought a paperback version and gave it to a friend - because it was such a life-changing book for me, and she had talked to me on the subject matter. Then the same thing happened to her (I had not mentioned the incident to her). I now think this book has a life of it's own. This may sound like fruit-loop, woo-woo, jiggery pockery, but it is the only incident like it I ever experienced. And yes, reading this book subsequently redirected the course of my life.
It opened me up for the first time to indigenous knowledge in a way that rang all the bells inside me and confirmed for me that my life had been lived this way somewhat already. I was doing a lot of drugs at the time, and was trying to get away from that hallucinogenic underworld that I'd existed in, in clubland London. I was in my late 30s and coming apart at the seams. I desperately needed a new direction, and modernity was not providing one that made sense to me.
I was lucky enough to get to visit Martin Prechtel at events he was doing in St James's Church in Piccadilly, and then later at a workshop retreat for men. It was a happy-sad occasion, I am not sure he got much out of it, though I sure did. Many of the men there seemed to want to defend the anthropologist viewpoint of his culture, rather than hear what he had to say, and let him teach us what he knew of that world.
To this day, he is the man that set me off on the path of making a shrine; embracing its purpose; and growing with it. To this day the "bundle" I put together during his workshop still sits on it. I am deeply connected to that, especially when times get hard.
I have travelled a long way since, and I can pin-point the moment of change - and escape - from the bad habits of my life. They lead back to this book, followed by Malidome Patrice Somé's book and work (I will review seperately), and then finally Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenke. These three things changed my life, without any shadow of doubt. The shrine became a healing thing for me, and it all began with this book.
This book is about Martin's acceptance into a tribe in Guatemala as a apprentice shaman - yea all very woo-woo I hear you say, but bear with me - this book then goes into the purpose of the work, how it functions, and the beauty of grief and how their village dealt with it. "Grief is Love" has to be one of the most profound things I ever heard once I understood it, and it is a quote from Martin. I spent many hours and days listening to the stories he tells, and he has a story to tell that everyone in modernity needs to hear, imo.
People tend to romanticise the idyllic assumptions of "indigenous wisdom". That is a big mistake. Their life was hard, violent, dangerous, often short, and far more difficult than ours is in modernity. The only real difference is they were better connected to Nature, the forces of Nature, and the terror of it. There is absolutely no good reason to want to live like indigenous people did, except for one: they knew how to embrace death, and they knew how to grieve well. We, in modernity, do not. We, in modernity, carry our troubled ghosts around and completely ignore their cries, preferring to supress the emotional hubbub with drink, drugs, television, and possibly the worst of all - ambition. We are spiritually lost amnesiacs, and I include all the monotheistic organised religions in that list of broken beings.
I read a number of the other books from Martin, but no book, not his others, or any before or since, did for me what this book did for me. If you are ready to consider what is missing from modernity, why your life feels empty, and wonder what the spirit world is all about. Try this book as an opener, but dont expect it to be the fix. It's all around us, we just miss it. This book is a window into our indigenous ancestors methods of connecting back to Nature, but more importantly, to ourselves. That is the purpose of a shrine: we can manifest our grief there, and have a conversation with the dead that still exist - in a way - inside of us. Some of the most powerful influences in our lives come from dead ancestors we never even met. Think about that.
Or maybe reading this book will do nothing for you, and you will wonder what I was talking about. My girlfriend at the time kept falling asleep reading it, so who knows.
I just know it set me off on a solo adventure that eventually changed my life, and the root of it all was that I actively began working with a shrine. That same shrine has now grown to hold my life-story, my grief, my loss, my love, and all my memories of everyone I ever met, or forgot. I have spent a lot of time in front of it since. All thanks to this book, found at the beginning of that journey.
This book is about Martin's life in a tribal village learning to become a shaman, and it was eventually destroyed, and he was forced out of Guatemala. But another part of this book is about his other task. He then carried a piece of the "village heart" with him, to take it out into the world and spread it like seeds in the hope it might find a new home before the forces that still seek to destroy the indigenous on our planet, succeeded.
A little piece of that, I feel honoured to carry in my world today. I will forever be grateful to Martin for helping me re-discover my connection to that world and teaching me how to breath it back to life with my grief.
A hundred thousand thank-you's, sir, and honey in the heart.
It was a hardback copy that later disappeared mysteriously. It is probably still out there somewhere, doing the rounds. I then bought a paperback version and gave it to a friend - because it was such a life-changing book for me, and she had talked to me on the subject matter. Then the same thing happened to her (I had not mentioned the incident to her). I now think this book has a life of it's own. This may sound like fruit-loop, woo-woo, jiggery pockery, but it is the only incident like it I ever experienced. And yes, reading this book subsequently redirected the course of my life.
It opened me up for the first time to indigenous knowledge in a way that rang all the bells inside me and confirmed for me that my life had been lived this way somewhat already. I was doing a lot of drugs at the time, and was trying to get away from that hallucinogenic underworld that I'd existed in, in clubland London. I was in my late 30s and coming apart at the seams. I desperately needed a new direction, and modernity was not providing one that made sense to me.
I was lucky enough to get to visit Martin Prechtel at events he was doing in St James's Church in Piccadilly, and then later at a workshop retreat for men. It was a happy-sad occasion, I am not sure he got much out of it, though I sure did. Many of the men there seemed to want to defend the anthropologist viewpoint of his culture, rather than hear what he had to say, and let him teach us what he knew of that world.
To this day, he is the man that set me off on the path of making a shrine; embracing its purpose; and growing with it. To this day the "bundle" I put together during his workshop still sits on it. I am deeply connected to that, especially when times get hard.
I have travelled a long way since, and I can pin-point the moment of change - and escape - from the bad habits of my life. They lead back to this book, followed by Malidome Patrice Somé's book and work (I will review seperately), and then finally Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenke. These three things changed my life, without any shadow of doubt. The shrine became a healing thing for me, and it all began with this book.
This book is about Martin's acceptance into a tribe in Guatemala as a apprentice shaman - yea all very woo-woo I hear you say, but bear with me - this book then goes into the purpose of the work, how it functions, and the beauty of grief and how their village dealt with it. "Grief is Love" has to be one of the most profound things I ever heard once I understood it, and it is a quote from Martin. I spent many hours and days listening to the stories he tells, and he has a story to tell that everyone in modernity needs to hear, imo.
People tend to romanticise the idyllic assumptions of "indigenous wisdom". That is a big mistake. Their life was hard, violent, dangerous, often short, and far more difficult than ours is in modernity. The only real difference is they were better connected to Nature, the forces of Nature, and the terror of it. There is absolutely no good reason to want to live like indigenous people did, except for one: they knew how to embrace death, and they knew how to grieve well. We, in modernity, do not. We, in modernity, carry our troubled ghosts around and completely ignore their cries, preferring to supress the emotional hubbub with drink, drugs, television, and possibly the worst of all - ambition. We are spiritually lost amnesiacs, and I include all the monotheistic organised religions in that list of broken beings.
I read a number of the other books from Martin, but no book, not his others, or any before or since, did for me what this book did for me. If you are ready to consider what is missing from modernity, why your life feels empty, and wonder what the spirit world is all about. Try this book as an opener, but dont expect it to be the fix. It's all around us, we just miss it. This book is a window into our indigenous ancestors methods of connecting back to Nature, but more importantly, to ourselves. That is the purpose of a shrine: we can manifest our grief there, and have a conversation with the dead that still exist - in a way - inside of us. Some of the most powerful influences in our lives come from dead ancestors we never even met. Think about that.
Or maybe reading this book will do nothing for you, and you will wonder what I was talking about. My girlfriend at the time kept falling asleep reading it, so who knows.
I just know it set me off on a solo adventure that eventually changed my life, and the root of it all was that I actively began working with a shrine. That same shrine has now grown to hold my life-story, my grief, my loss, my love, and all my memories of everyone I ever met, or forgot. I have spent a lot of time in front of it since. All thanks to this book, found at the beginning of that journey.
This book is about Martin's life in a tribal village learning to become a shaman, and it was eventually destroyed, and he was forced out of Guatemala. But another part of this book is about his other task. He then carried a piece of the "village heart" with him, to take it out into the world and spread it like seeds in the hope it might find a new home before the forces that still seek to destroy the indigenous on our planet, succeeded.
A little piece of that, I feel honoured to carry in my world today. I will forever be grateful to Martin for helping me re-discover my connection to that world and teaching me how to breath it back to life with my grief.
A hundred thousand thank-you's, sir, and honey in the heart.
March 5, 2022
This book expanded my understanding of this Planet and all that we are able to experience in this short lifetime. It reconnected me to the mystery of all that exists in the natural Earth plane. It reconnected me to my ancestors and how humans have the possibility of coexisting with the natural world around us. It’s a matter of creating the & allowing in the possibility of consciousness in animals and plants. Martin Prechtel expanded my heart through his life experience and I am so grateful for his writing.
February 21, 2024
While I think the information on the tribal beliefs, language, and cultural practices are incredible insights, it is far too difficult for me to overlook some of the ridiculous events claimed to have occurred in the narrative. For example, pulling a whisker out of a jaguar as it is pissing on him in the jungle. I’m also having a very hard time with a foreigner being not only accepted as a villager but as a shaman and leader? Never mind the fact that by all appearances he is a white man from America. The whole thing just seems rather incredulous.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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June 22, 2017I read most of this book. I still have the last third to go or so. The chapters I remember were vivid and magical; surreal. The book was returned to the library because I mostly just listen to and read evolutionary herbalism lectures/notes these days, rather than reading books. The alchemical spagyric herbalist life takes commitment. That being said, I do have one book that I read perpetually, whose secrets the talking Jaguar might understand.
March 18, 2018
True story indigenous shamanic culture philosophy and world view by a person raised as an outsider in our culture who through trials and initiations is accepted into another, and then must leave it and return to ours.
Essential. Cannot speak highly enough. Synchronisticaly my reading overlapped my journey into my most powerful shamanic experience so far, and was a really helpful guide and inspiration for my process.
Essential. Cannot speak highly enough. Synchronisticaly my reading overlapped my journey into my most powerful shamanic experience so far, and was a really helpful guide and inspiration for my process.
February 28, 2024
Martin Prechtel’s storytelling offers glimmers of a life lived through soulfulness and the lost art of connection to a greater world than modernity could give name to. I loved every moment of this book & Martin’s wise seeing energy. I had the opportunity to listen to a talk that he gave in Duluth, Mn after his book, “The Smell of Rain on Dust” and I cannot give enough praise to the well-being he puts back into the world. A sacred art.
October 19, 2024
I think a little leeway on the writing style as far as the rating is concerned. I've seen a few reviews here question the authenticity? I'm not sure all the tales are meant to be taken entirely literally.... I feel Prechtel does sort of relax and stop focusing so much on his prose about 1/3 of the way through and it becomes much more readable.
July 5, 2019
Loved it. An incredible story of his journey and worldview. This was my introduction to his work and it blew my mind. I have listened to him speak several times but I still haven't gotten my hands on another of his books.
January 14, 2022
DNF: this author came off as oblivious of his privilege, egotistical and ignorant in his language in the first 50 pages I read. His description of women were uncalled. It wasn't what I was expecting, could've been condensed down to 150 pages max.
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