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"María Sabina's Selected Works introduces and enhances the understanding of one of the world's most remarkable poets. Mr. Rothenberg frames her work within the larger context of 'ethnopoetics' with no academic reductionism whatsoever, a rare and indispensable service to a 'world poet' such as Maria Sabina. The translation of Maria Sabina, her 'autobiography' and her oral poetry, is exquisite, powerful, rendered with linguistic dignity."—Howard Norman "This book transmits not only a full and rich experience with one of the most extraordinary personalities and poetic voices of our time, but also a great lesson in our understanding of the relations between religious inspiration and its artistic expression. It enriches our perceptions of the nature and possibilities of oral composition, complementing what we already know of it from the study of the Homeric and other poems in its great tradition."—George Economou "María Sabina is one of the great figures of American shamanism. Her Chants is a masterpiece of indigenous visionary poetry. Her Life is the account of a woman who transcended her own culture and its material poverty to become one of the great women of the twentieth century. The veneration of her work continues beyond her death. To read her is to embark on a journey to the world of the extrasensorial."—Homero Aridjis "In the chants of María Sabina, we can appreciate the interplay of individual invention and traditional liturgy within the oral creativity of a non-literate society. The recordings of her words that have saved them from oblivion give us the opportunity to glimpse the emergence of a genius from the soil of the communal, religious folk poetry of a native Mexican campesino people."—Henry Munn

Combines the chants of María Sabina, a noted Mazatec tradional healer, watercolors by María Tzu, a weaver and folk artist, and information about them and their world.

Los usos ceremoniales del hongo Sagrado Teonanacatl, practicado por uno de los grupos indígenas del estado de Oaxaca, los mazatecos, forman parte de la riqueza cultural de nuestro pasado prehispanico. Este escrito esta formado por una serie de relatos sobre experiencias rituales con curanderos maztecos. La Ceremonia Sagrada de los hongos implica un enfrentamiento directo con el mundo de lo sagrado, que nos obliga ha hacer una revaloracion de todos nuestros conceptos sobre el Universo y sobre el hombre. Por medio de la Ceremonia, el curandero o chaman puede lograr el despertar de la conciencia mística, así como la adquisición delos llamados poderes ocultos de la mente, tales como la clarividencia, la telepatía, y el magnetismo. Perdida en las montañas de la sierra mazateca, se encuentra enterrada una gran sabiduría, que debe ser rescatada del olvido. Debemos tratar de preservar estos conocimientos, antes de que los mazatecos sean totalmente integrados a la sociedad del consumo, perdiendo su identidad cultural. Estos relatos son total mente verídicos, están basados en mis experiencias personales con curanderos mazatecos. no se trata de ficción literaria; los personajes y los sucesos son auténticos. El misterio y la grandeza de las Ceremonias, hacen que deban ser consideradas parte importante de la herencia cultural indígena de México.