Swimming in the Sacred

A revelatory look at the previously unseen world behind today's psychedelic renaissance: contemporary Western women who have long guided people on shamanic, visionary journeys into healing and the self. The use of entheogens, or psychedelics, is out of the closet today. Bestselling author Michael Pollan wrote about his trips, and the National Institutes of Health is studying the efficacy of psilocybin and MDMA for treatment of PTSD, addiction, depression, and end-of-life anxiety. Once associated only with 1960s counterculture, they are now being legally studied for their healing properties. But as Rachel Harris shows, there has long been an underground use and study of psychedelics by women, dating back to the time of the Eleusinian Mystery Schools of ancient Greece. The modern women carrying on this tradition, interviewed by Harris, have. a nuanced quality in their relationship with the medicines. a more subtle, energetic connection with the spirit world that the medicines open. As psychedelics edge closer to the mainstream, she hopes we don't lose the hard-won wisdom of the longtime practitioners she profiles; theirs is a wisdom of time and experience that cannot be replicated in a lab, and they have much to teach us. They've been guiding journeys for decades,. Harris writes,. since long before the psychedelic renaissance opened up research into entheogens and began to discover what these women have known all along. Any reader interested in inspiration, healing, and enlightenment will find here a wonder-filled narrative packed with provocative and perhaps life-changing insight.