—PLANTS OF THE GODS:
Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers,
Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, and Christian Rätsch
Thanks
For their inspiring lives of curiosity and dedication I thank master kumus Margaret Machado and Glenna Wilde, of Hawaii; Don José, of Peru; and ethnobotanist and preserver of ancient medicine Mark Plotkin, of New Orleans. For their legacies, their books, their talks, and their generosity in sharing knowledge and experience, I thank Maria Sabina, Richard Evans Schultes, and Jeremy Narby, whose book The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge contributes important insights to our time. I also thank Michael Harner for his ongoing work in the study and interpretation of shamanism, and Terrence McKenna, whose Food of the Gods offers a radical and rather cheerful vision of human development, deeply influenced by our primordial use of entheogens.
Kuma = teacher (Hawaiian)
Entheogen = Goddess/God within
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALICE WALKER won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple, which was preceded by The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian. Her other bestselling novels include By the Light of My Father’s Smile, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar. She is also the author of three collections of short stories, three collections of essays, six volumes of poetry, and several children’s books. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker now lives in northern California.
Also by Alice Walker
FICTION
The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart
By the Light of My Father’s Smile
Possessing the Secret of Joy
The Color Purple
You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down
Meridian
In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women
The Third Life of Grange Copeland
NONFICTION
Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit
Anything We Love Can Be Saved
The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult
Warrior Marks (with Pratibha Parmar)
Living by the Word
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
POEMS
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth
Her Blue Body Everything We Know
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful
Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning
Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems
Once
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Alice Walker
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walker, Alice.
p. cm.
1. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. 2. Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico)—Fiction. 3. Separation (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Amazon River Region—Fiction.
5. Shamanism—Fiction. 6. Travelers—Fiction. 7. Hawaii—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.A425N69 2004
813′.54—dc21 2003054766
The author is committed to preserving ancient forests and natural resources and wishes to acknowledge Random House for printing this book on paper that is 100 percent postconsumer recycled fibers and processed chlorine free. For more information about Green Press Initiative and the use of recycled paper in book publishing, visit www.greenpressinitiative.org.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-396-1
v3.0