Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1717473 in Books
• Published on: 1981-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 238 pages

Language Notes
Text: English, Spanish (translation)

Customer Reviews

A Natural Pathfinder
I lived with her in the late 60's. I met someone who was well acquainted with Maria Sabina; he introduced me to her family, and I spent quite a bit of time in Hautla de Jimenez with her, participating in and learning about the Velada. Maria had a view of the world and the cosmos that was much closer to archaic than modern realities. She had journeyed into the heart of the Collective Unconscious so many times that she was a wide open transmitter, and would become possessed of a Divine ecstasy when she chanted and sang. Maria had a very special spatio-temporal map, whose pathways she followed when she sang--the rhythms that she made and her tones were like a key in a lock to spring open other dimensional Gates along the winding way of the magician at midnite. I was surprised to discover that her Catholicism had formed a strange gnostic hybrid with her indigenous spiritual heritage. The Eucharist was a quite literal reality, for her. She was many things to many people, healer, guide, prophetess, pscyopomp. It is difficult to talk about the visionary, mystical character of the Night Vigil, because it is dependent upon a personal karmic dynamic. I won't extrapolate from my experiences to a set of general principles. This book may be important for someone who wants a little more background information about her and wants a good translation of one of her veladas. The woman was an existential Saint. The significance of this is hard for sophisticated modern urbanites to entirely grasp--we have few parallels in our culture. She was an extremely advanced and individuated master of spiritual healing. When she sang, it was as if her voice shaped space and time in such a way as to draw the perceptible boundary of other, superluminal, dimensions. There really is no parallel in modern western culture. This book provides a little insight into her personal history, but if you are unfamiliar with her original cultural context, you will not be able to read between the lines, which is essential to understanding.