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Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but lacking in presentation and theory.
Review: I give this book 3 stars because of its dense amount of information and its potential to be a landmark book in the field of entheogens and religion. This book, however, reads more like an encyclopedia of anthropological eras, than anything else. The book has no introduction, and no conclusion, and no thesis to tie any of it together. The book is ultimately a hodge podge of information waiting for somebody to make some sense of it. In this regard it may be a good resource, but it offers little else. I hope that the author will at least go back and add an introduction to this book so that the readers will at least know what his purpose in writing it was.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but lacking in presentation and theory.
Review: I give this book 3 stars because of its dense amount of information and its potential to be a landmark book in the field of entheogens and religion. This book, however, reads more like an encyclopedia of anthropological eras, than anything else. The book has no introduction, and no conclusion, and no thesis to tie any of it together. The book is ultimately a hodge podge of information waiting for somebody to make some sense of it. In this regard it may be a good resource, but it offers little else. I hope that the author will at least go back and add an introduction to this book so that the readers will at least know what his purpose in writing it was.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting book
Review: This book consists of two parts. This first documents that psychoactive plants have been used in religious experience dating back to prehistoric times. The book is thoughtful and well researched, with a number of illustrations not usually presented even in graduate level texts.The second part is an angry denunciation of orthodox Christianity in favor of gnosticism. Using rather creative methods the author develops a picture of Jesus as a military leader who sought to overthrow the Roman empire. This is certainly different than the description one usually encounters. He continues to find in gnosticism the "true" tradition of pharmacological shamanism. The book suffers three major flaws. First, the author never really describes what shamans are or how they function in society. The reader is left wondering if the term isn't simply used as a catchall to describe people who take drugs. Second the author never distinguishes between sacramental use of psychoactive plants and recreational use. Thirdly, in the middle ages there was validity in railing against the temporal power of the Christian church. Writing in America today, hundreds of years after the reformation, in a judicial climate openly hostile to the expression of Christianity in a public forum, blaming the injustice of the world on the Christian faith hardly makes sense. Still, in the end, the author's principal thesis holds. As he argues, for the government to wage war on the sacraments of other cultures is to wage war on those cultures. In a society that advertises itself as multicultural and open to diversity it is unclear why this is the case.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: This book is great. The only reason I didn't give it full five stars is because some of the graphics are poor quality (at screen resolution with a lot of moire patterns). The actual content of the book is really excellent. The author gives a very clear picture of the evolution of human relationships to entheogens and the pro and cons of the politics of the related eras. Very well researched and written from the viewpoint of an anthropologist/historian in a very wholistic way. It is one of those rare books that has really changed the way I look at the world - both current and historic. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Essential leading-edge entheogen scholarship
Review: Top-notch content. Explains how entheogens were ubiquitous but were suppressed by the institutional Church. Definitely recommended. Covers ancient Western entheogenic origins of religion. The book lacks statements of how the line of argument proceeds through the chapters and sections, but the content is excellent and much needed.
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