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| View Larger Image | Sage Spirit: Salvia Divinorum and the Entheogenic Experience
by Martin W. Ball
| | List Price: | $14.95 | | Price: | $13.45 | | You Save: | $1.50 (10%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 362537 | | Studio: | Lulu.com | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 140 | | Publication Date: | August 11, 2007 | | Publisher: | Lulu.com |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Salvia divinorum is a unique and profoundly powerful visionary herb from the Mazatec region of Mexico. Now widely available in the western world via the internet, but still little understood, this legal entheogen is becoming ever more popular among those who follow the shamanic path of plant based spirituality. In this work, artist, musician, writer and shamanic explorer, Martin Ball, navigates his way through the strange world of sage space, from Burning Man to overtone singing and cosmic serpents, bringing back guidance and advice for the use of Salvia divinorum as a true entheogen and ritual sacrament. Sage Spirit is bound to be a valuable resource for all those interested in exploring salvia responsibly as a spiritual catalyst and consciousness-expanding agent of personal transformation. Filled with personal accounts, practical advice and philosophical reflections, this book is a must for anyone wanting to learn more about this amazing visionary plant. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 4 reviews)
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Salvia Divinorum 
In the book, Martin Ball discusses "driving" the Salvia divinorum experience with sound. He talks about using rattles, the didjeridoo, and vocalizing to enhance and extend the effects. I found this part of the book particularly interesting. I also write and speak about using mantras and songs that I learned during my entheogenic experiences to assist me in maneuvering through my experiences. I like how he uses the word driving; it describes this phenomena perfectly.
He also mentioned that, "...the context in which entheogens are used greatly influences the nature of the experience that will unfold. When one treats psychedelic substances as entheogens, that is what they become." This concept rang true to me, because I like to spiritually center myself before a trip (I haven't always done this, but I have found that it helps invoke a more desirable experience). I find it helpful to spend a few moments to pray, ask for guidance and safe passage, purify my intentions, and remind myself why I am about to take an entheogen. I also accomplish this through a pre-trip meditation.
The only thing the book was lacking was a section on the pharmacology of Salvia Divinorum - that is why I only gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
June 14, 2008 | |
Sage Spirit: Salvia Divinorum and the Entheogenic Experience 
This "book" was a huge disappointment. I put "book" in quotes to warn you that--because of the author's peculiar choice to make most of the text double-spaced, and because the text is quite repetitive--the book's 129 pages could actually have been presented in less than half that space--the length of a long essay.
Ball's treatment of the salvia divinorum experience is sophomoric, self-absorbed, and poorly written. It is likely to be misleading for anyone who has not experienced salvia but wants to learn more about it before doing so. For such readers, Daniel Siebert's excellent site (http://sagewisdom.org/) and Erowid (http://erowid.org/) will be much more useful.
As for those experienced in the use of salvia who are seeking some insight or assistance in understanding/working with this often difficult ally, they will find little to inform or enhance their own work with salvia. For them, this book is likely to be a waste of money, but even more a waste of time.
February 29, 2008 | |
A Shamanic Guide 
Today we in the West need more guides for entering deep spiritual experiences. Martin Ball is proving to be such a shamanic guide for the contemporary world. If you are interested in finding a "textbook" for navigating alternative consciousness journeys or deep trance experiences, Sage Spirit ( as well as the author's previous book Mushroom Wisdom) will help immensely. Tribal societies have had guides for seeking deeper wisdom from the plant teachers for thousands of years, but we in "modern culture" often lack the kind of detailed information about entering into more intimate relationships with entheogens and the shamanic worldview that they open up.
I found this book applicable to many types of plant teacher experiences, not just Salvia, which the book does a wonderful job of demystifying. Even if you do not work with plants, this book offers an interesting foray into Earth-centered spirituality from an earnest searcher who is attempting to bring Beauty and healing from the "Otherworld" back to our world.
I was particularly intrigued by the author's experimentation with sound, vibration, singing, and music while in deep altered conscious states. He found that certain forms of music could actually help build and form the architecture of the vision, and in many cases stabilize it. Sound in our dimension seemed one-dimensional, he observed, but in the other dimension of the sage vison sound became three-dimensional. Read the book to learn more about this fascinating topic that the Amazonian ayahuasca shamans know so well, and that we are now just learning about.
A must-have for any library on Earth religions, shamanism, and entheogens.
October 03, 2007 | |
Practical cognitive phenomenology of entheogens
Sage Spirit is the most relevant, practical book about actually using the Salvia Divinorum cognitive state. Like Benny Shanon's book Antipodes of the Mind, this is a practical insider's book, oriented around cognitive phenomenology of using the plant; this book provides a description of the realm of salvia from inside the realm of Salvia, rather than standing on the outside. Throughout the entire book, each page has the feeling of reading a book that is genuinely about the intense mystic altered state -- not run-of-the-mill pop New Age self-help philosophy.
Ball's mentality is in the right, relevant, experientially based place, and he is up-to-date on current thinking about entheogens and their practical use. This is a needed complement of other existing Salvia books, which read like a rationalist observer outsider's distanced, remote, external discussion; the other books focus on details about the external, objective, surface history of the physical plant. In contrast, Ball's book is filled with useful, subjectively practical, descriptive explanation of the subjective experiencing induced by the plant -- he designed this book, like his book Mushroom Wisdom, as an experiential user's guide.
Sage Spirit provides in-depth reportage of the author's experience of being taught vocalization and music techniques by Salvia as a plant teacher. The book includes excerpts from the author's mystic altered-state fiction.
The author is an authority on visionary plants in American Indian practice, having written a graduate thesis on that subject. His treatment and usage of practices from shamanism is relevant and insightful, not a boring 3rd-person anthropological approach; he gives insight into why one would use musical instruments and singing in a shamanic fashion during an entheogen session. He meaningfully connects the modern use of psychedelics with shamans' practice.
Ball characterizes McKenna and Pinchbeck as adventurer-heroes and entertainers, in contrast to his own call for regular and serious integration of entheogens into Western culture. Sage Spirit has solid, experientially based, well-developed commentary on ideas about entheogens and their role, with forward-looking but practical and clear-headed recommendations about re-integrating entheogen-based initiation into culture and religion.
September 11, 2007 | |
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