"I'm in love with it. It's mesmerizing, dances with creative energy, truth, and hard-earned wisdom." - Dr. Gabor Maté on Wild Medicine: A Journey to Zimbabwe, award-winning author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
'Wild Medicine: A Journey to Zimbabwe', follows the author's story of fifteen years of a crippling autoimmune disease (diagnosed variously from juvenile arthritis as a child, to lupus later in life); at the age of 27 years old, in a stubborn spirit of faith that there was a purpose to the fire in her body, the author refused all medications and systems, and was launched by her own spirit on a journey of initiations across four continents - North America, South America, Africa, and Europe. Her dreams directed her specifically to the Shona people and Zimbabwe, where she was later initiated. The book details the journey of many lessons and ceremonies in many places to finally arrive and accept the calling within the fire in the body.
The book describes not only the journey - it is also a collection of stories and shaman's tales from North America, Peru, Poland, Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe. It is a book bringing ceremony and the principles of creative and living ceremony closer to the Western audience. Wild Medicine takes all healing systems to task and argues for illness being our soul's call to transformation, rather than simply punishment, or karma, or bad energy, or even a 'life lesson.' The book travels through realms of addiction, and how the dead come and talk to us and care for us, and who the Ancestors are, and what the Earth needs from us at this time.
Through allowing and walking the journey of the fire in the body as well as the literal journey of dreams (rather than thinking of them purely as a metaphor) the author eventually makes it to Zimbabwe, where she went through a traditional Shona initiation, and is now a 'graduated' healer working to demystify the often playful language of Ancestors. In the end, one thing only is sure: Love itself, the key, the over and under, the reason, the cause, and the consequence.
This book is for all people crippled by illness or tragedy in some form, as well as any person interested in shamanic cultures and initiations of spirit in various cultures, (most specifically, the spirit language of Africa.)
