Sources & Further Reading

The pages of this course synthesize well-attested traditions using correct native terms. Primary texts are the bedrock; the secondary works below are widely cited, reputable references — not an exhaustive bibliography. Where a tradition is oral (Q’ero, San, Aboriginal, many shamanic lineages), sources include ethnographic and fieldwork accounts, and the tradition’s own emphasis on person-to-person transmission is honored. Interpretive or debated points (Zoroaster’s dates, Huna as modern revival, Munay Ki as a modern transmission) are flagged in the pages themselves.

Eastern Traditions: Rigveda; Chandogya Upanishad; Bhagavad Gita; Shankara’s Vivekachudamani; Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras; Tao Te Ching; Zhuangzi; Heart & Diamond Sutras; Dogen’s Shobogenzo; Tibetan Book of the Dead; Kojiki & Nihon Shoki. — Easwaran’s The Upanishads / The Gita; Deutsch’s Advaita Vedanta; Wing-Tsit Chan’s Source Book in Chinese Philosophy; Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture; Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

Middle East & Abrahamic: Hebrew Bible; Zohar; Sefer Yetzirah; Quran; Rumi’s Mathnawi; Meister Eckhart’s sermons; Gospel of Thomas; Philokalia; Pseudo-Dionysius; Palamas’ Triads; Nag Hammadi library; Avesta (Gathas). — Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Chittick’s The Sufi Path of Love; McGinn’s The Presence of God; Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels; Boyce’s History of Zoroastrianism; Plotinus’ Enneads.

The Americas: Luna & Amaringo’s Ayahuasca Visions; Dobkin de Rios’ Visionary Vine; Popol Vuh (Tedlock); Maffie’s Aztec Philosophy; Witherspoon’s Language and Art in the Navajo Universe; Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks; Rasmussen’s Across Arctic America.

Africa & Diaspora: Odu Ifa corpus; Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; Pyramid & Coffin Texts; Katz’s Boiling Energy (San); Some’s Of Water and the Spirit (Dagara); Drewal & Verger on Orisha/Orixa; Gyekye’s Akan Philosophical Thought; Budge & Assmann on Egypt.

Asia & Oceania: Eliade’s Shamanism; Baldick’s Animal and Shaman; Kendall’s Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits; Batchelor’s The Ainu; Lawlor’s Voices of the First Day; Stanner’s The Dreaming and Other Essays; Chatwin’s The Songlines; King’s Kahuna Healing.

Northern Europe: Poetic & Prose Edda; Tacitus’ Germania; the Mabinogion; the Cauldron of Poesy; Lonnrot’s Kalevala; the Rune Poem; Latvian dainas. — Price’s The Viking Way; Davidson’s Gods and Myths of Northern Europe; Lehtola’s The Sami People; Pentikainen’s Kalevala Mythology.

Q’ero / Andean: Wilcox’s Masters of the Living Energy; Villoldo’s Mending the Fractured Self, The Four Insights, Shaman, Healer, Sage (and the Munay Ki rites — a modern transmission framework); Jenkins’ Journey to Q’ero. For the comparative thesis: Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane; Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions; Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy; Schuon’s The Transcendent Unity of Religions; Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces; Wilber’s The Atman Project.

This course compiles real, verifiable sources — no fabricated citations. The regions flag interpretive or debated points rather than presenting them as settled. May the West open gently, and the field stay clear.