The Book of Fear or What's My Name?: Shamanism in the Peruvian Amazon and Andes

The Book of Fear or What’s My Name? takes the reader on a personal journey which investigates basic questions of human and individual existence, the approach to life and problem-solving traps, all told through the author’s own experiences of shamanic practices that she undertook during many years of work with shamans in the Peruvian Amazon jungle and the Andean Altiplano.The text subtly intertwines elements of different genres, including as popular psychology, travelogue, biography, social criticism and important questions of the environmental and cultural protection of ancient knowledge that barely survives inside the now rare and precious old shamanistic settlers’ communities around the globe.The book establishes a philosophical distance from the Euro-centrist worldview, drawing attention to the exploitation of Indigenous peoples and the destruction of their natural resources. It underlines the failure of modern society’s ‘spiritual plane’ together with the confusion of Western man and his value system.Through the primordial tools of tribal cultures, such as rituals with teacher plants – Ayahuasca and Wachuma – the author undertakes a journey into her inner world, various aspects of her personality, self-discovery, exploration and spiritual experience.