Soulcraft: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche -- Bill Plotkin, Paperback

Since 1980, depth psychologist Bill Plotkin has been guiding women and men into the wilderness--the redrock canyons and snow-crested mountains of the American West--but also into the wilds of the soul. He calls this work soulcraft.

There's a great longing in all people to uncover the secrets and mysteries of our individual lives, to find the unique gift we were born to bring to our communities, and to experience our full membership in the more-than-human world. This journey to soul is a descent into layers of the self much deeper than personality, a journey meant for each one of us, not just for the heroes and heroines of mythology.

A modern handbook for the journey, Soulcraft is not an imitation of indigenous ways, but a contemporary nature-based approach born from wilderness experience, the traditions of Western culture, and the cross-cultural heritage of all humanity. Filled with stories, poems, and guidelines, Soulcraft introduces over 40 practices that facilitate the descent to soul, including dreamwork, wilderness vision fasts, talking across the species boundaries, council, self-designed ceremony, nature-based shadow work, and the arts of romance, being lost, and storytelling.

Author: Bill Plotkin
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 08/29/2003
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 9.02h x 6.00w x 1.08d
ISBN: 9781577314226
Award: Nautilus Award - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 08/01/2003 pg. 91

About the Author
Bill Plotkin, PhD, founder of Animas Valley Institute, describes himself as a "psychologist gone wild." A cultural visionary, author, and guide to the entwined mysteries of wilderness and psyche, he's been blazing new trails for decades. His ecocentric re-visioning of psychology invites us into a conscious and embodied relationship with soul and with the more-than-human world. His other books are Wild Mind and Nature and the Human Soul. He lives in southwestern Colorado.