Joseph Lewis Henderson

Maud Oakes

The tribal initiation of the shaman, the archetype of the serpent, exemplifies the death of the self and a rebirth into transcendent life. This book traces the images of spiritual initiation in religious rituals and myths of resurrection, poems and epics, cycles of nature, and art and dreaming. It dramatizes the metamorphosis from a common experience of death's inevitability into a transcendent freedom beyond individual limitations. "This is a classic work in analytical psychology that offers crucial insights on the meaning of death symbolism (and its inevitably accompanying rebirth and resurrection symbolism) as part of the great theme of initiation, of which [Henderson] is the world's foremost psychological interpreter. This material is really the next step after the hero myth that Joseph Campbell has made so popular, and provides an understanding of how not to use the hero myth in an inflated way as a psychology of mastery, but as an attainment progressively to be died beyond. [Henderson] is helped by the presence of Maud Oakes, who is a trained anthropologist with exquisite taste in her choice of mythic materials and respect for their original contexts."--John Beebe

The Myths of Death, Rebirth, and Resurrection

The Wisdom of the Serpent

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Beyond The Windy Place - Life In The Guatemalan Highlands

Jeff King

This work takes its title from the richly symbolic creation legend of the Navaho people, which they incorporated into their blessing ceremony for tribe members headed to battle. Having observed this rite during World War II, when native Americans were for the first time drafted into the U.S. military, ethnologist Maud Oakes recorded the legend and made reproductions of the beautiful ceremonial paintings, given to her by the medicine man Jeff King. Originally printed separately in a portfolio, the text and eighteen paintings are now available as a bound book.

A Navaho War Ceremonial

Where the Two Came to Their Father

Joseph L Henderson

SHAMAN AND SERPENT In the tradition of Jungian analysis, a psychiatrist and an anthropologist explore the meanings and manifestations of death through ritual, religion and myth. The knowledge that he must die is the force that drives man to create. The tribal initiation of the shaman, the archetype of the serpent, exists universally in man’s experience, exemplifying the death of the Self and a rebirth into a transcendent, “unknowable” life. In The Wisdom of the Serpent: The Myths of Death, Rebirth and Resurrection, first published in 1963, the authors trace the images and patterns of psychic liberation through personal encounter, the cycles of nature, spiritual teaching religious texts, myths of resurrection, poems and epics. They translate these elements of common human experience into a them for modern man: the reinterpretation of the individual freed from the mortal boundaries of the Self. First published in 1963, this classic work in analytical psychology includes notes on the illustrations, appendix and references.

Maud Oakes

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