Retrato do autor

Martin Prechtel

Autor(a) de Secrets of the Talking Jaguar

16 Works 384 Membros 12 Críticas 2 Favorited

About the Author

Martin Prechtel's life took him from his native New Mexico upbringing as a half-blood Native American from a Peublo Indian reservation to the village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. There, he was trained as a shaman and eventually served the Tzutujil Mayan population as a full village member, mostrar mais becoming a principal in the body of village leaders. Martin once again resides in his native New Mexico where he is a writer, teacher, speaker, musician, and heale mostrar menos

Séries

Obras por Martin Prechtel

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Críticas

Unlike many of Prechtel's past books, this book is rather humble in scope. It is a memoir, telling a few stories of relationships he's had with horses over his lifetime (the first of three volumes on the subject).

The book's subject area—horses—strikes a chord with a wide range of audiences. Similar to the way that everyone has a story about a tree in their lives, it would seem that everyone has a story about a house—if not from their own personal experience, at least from a film or a book that struck them as a child.

Horses are often used in therapy work. As this is a book about horses, reading it has a therapeutic effect.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
willszal | Jul 10, 2023 |
A lyrically beautiful view into a spiritual journey. To say much more would spoil the experience of the reader. This is a must read for any spiritual seeker.
 
Assinalado
Windyone1 | 1 outra crítica | May 10, 2022 |
A year ago my grandfather died. He was the last of that generation in my family.

I can remember him clearly at eighty five, five years ago, out in his quarter-acre back garden, pushing the rototiller. That I might be growing my own food when I'm his age...

I borrowed this book from a friend back then. My partner and I have been slowly reading it aloud to each other since then, and just finished it.

It is the most concise of Prechtel's books. Like none other, Prechtel speaks to what it is to be human, in the fullest sense of the term. As the subtitle suggests, it is an exploration of grief and praise—two sides of the coin of remembrance and participation.

The book alternates between poignant stories and outright sermons on what does and doesn't work when it comes to the practice of grieving.Contrary to convention, grieving is not an optional or archaic rite; it is a demanding practice that is necessary to balance of the world in order.

Across my study of myth, there is something I'm learning about an older calculus of significance. Can you think of a fairytale or a parable where that which is forbidden isn't partaken? Beauty and sorrow are like this; they travel together. Grief and sorrow are not something to be avoided; in actuality, it is through their full range and expression that beauty and joy are fed. Grief is rich with meaning.

More than any other, it seems this book is an essential distillation of Prechtel's teachings. May it be a guide to you during these uncertain times.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
willszal | Apr 14, 2020 |
"Like victims of an ancient spiritual and cultural shipwreck, we have been adrift for four thousand years, floating on people-centered rafts of provisional civilizations that have convinced themselves they are the real thing and the cutting edge of human evolution, while designating our true magical origins of deep small cultures as some dirty, half-evolved, grunting, primitive past.

But no matter how far we’ve drifted away from those real indigenous shores, the spirits of our last happy, intact, indigenous ancestors from before we began to drift are effortlessly coursing right along with us. Having merged with the vastness of the natural wild tossing sea we so fear to drown in, they follow each of us like a pod of giant sea turtles, their big sweet scaly heads thumping up under us, trying their best to get our attention and tow us home to our real selves, knocking on the hull of the lifeboat of today’s assumed culture, while we drift along figuring that the anxiety of civilization’s never-ending feeling of emergency is normal."

This passage is from page 310 of the book. It sums up Prechtel's almost-desperate thesis; help is available to those who ask. Indigeneousity is a fundamental capacity of humans; what is forgotten is not lost. There's a fierce hopefulness to this book, overtaking the beauty and grief found in Prechtel's previous texts.

This is Prechtel's longest and most literal and prescriptive book. Whereas his past book have been written for a general audience, this book is very clearly aimed at his students in his school—Bolad's Kitchen. For these reasons, it also took me longer to read than any of his other books.

As the title suggests, the central theme of the book is the interconnected co-existance of plants and people. To take a plant discussed heavily in the book—what we are maize and maize is us? What if these two species are part of a kind of reciprocal maintenance, where each is sustained and evolves with the other? The Maya lived in such a world, and there’s a lot we’ve left behind by stepping out of such a story, to a place where food could be a commodity rather than a peer.

A subtext surrounds the importance of authenticity. There is merit to the hipster inclination towards provenance. We like to turn away from stories which displease us. “I can’t afford those handmade pants,” is the sort of statement you might hear, speaking of some artisanal denim from California or New York. But the speaker is unlikely to disavow pants altogether. They will purchase handmade pants—made by the hands of an eleven-year-old in Malaysia getting paid a dollar an hour. There’s a reason you don’t see the label “Handmade in China;” we don’t like to think about those hands, the hands that we are unwilling to pay enough to afford basic human dignity. Prechtel explores this thread by discussing a “House of Origins,” a place where we can tell the complete story of everything inside. How many objects in your life hold this significance? One facet of the sacred is a familiarity so deep that something becomes a part of ourselves.

If you sometimes find yourself picking at the chinks in the wall of Western culture, you will find this book a fortifying tonic.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
willszal | Jul 25, 2018 |

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Associated Authors

Robert Bly Foreword

Estatísticas

Obras
16
Membros
384
Popularidade
#62,948
Avaliação
½ 4.4
Críticas
12
ISBN
26
Línguas
3
Marcado como favorito
2

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