When I grabbed Sylvia Fraser’s The Green Labrynth – Exploring the Mysteries of the Amazon, I thought I was in for a typical travel book about someone’s trip to the Amazon Rainforest. The Green Labrynth was that but so much more.
This 321 page gem released back in 2003 describes Fraser’s journey to Peru in search of spiritual enlightenment and healing. Specifically, the spiritual enlightenment and healing that comes from Ayahuasca. This was a hard book to put down and Fraser’s thoughts on life certainly kick the brain into motion.
Buy it now on Amazon! The Green Labyrinth: Exploring the Mysteries of the Amazon
Ayahuasca is a plant found in the jungles of the Amazon region and contains the powerful psychedelic drug DMT. The Ayahuasca plant is harvested and brewed for several hours, sometimes with other narcotic plants.
What results is a brew that is ingested under the watchful eye of locals at ceremonies performed by Shamans. Ayahuasca can cause powerful altered state experiences where there is a total loss of connection to reality. As Sylvia describes, ingestion also comes with vomiting and defecation.
In the book, Fraser visits several locations in Peru, staying at widely varying shamanic retreats catering to visitors from the ‘civilized western world’. The accommodations differ as do the Shamans but the each visit results in experiences with Ayahuasca for the author that do take her to spiritual realms and possibly unknown dimensions. She even meets the Green Goddess during her psychedelic journeys.
The author meets several characters in her journey who are also seeking elightenment and healing. Included among those are members of the traditional world of western medicine. More and more, the western world is looking to the mysterious world of the Shaman to find alternate cures. Fraser also gives the reader into her personal past and the relationship that has with the healing she seeks.
Of course, the book is not just one continuous drug trip. Fraser’s descriptions of the remote locations in the Amazon basin that she visits are spectacular. You will find yourself unable to put the book down as she visits Iquitos, Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Nazca and Arequipo. She takes these worn down tourist attractions and adds her own brand of excitement.
Sylvia Fraser is a Canadian author born in Hamilton, Ontario. The Green Labrynth is her tenth of ten book she published between 1972 and 2003.
