Praise for SOULCRAFT

“Here is an abundantly wise and carefully crafted survival guide for the wild soul currently dozing (or dying) at the heart of your civilized life. Plotkin has wandered again and again into the nourishing darkness, and has returned with this earthly bundle of insights and images — talismanic tools for awakening to the outrageous depths both within us and all around us. He has bound them into a book that is immensely practical, alive with ritual intelligence, thick with useful tools from a host of courageous comrades.”
— David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous

“Radical, embodied, and mature, Soulcraft lays a map for those seeking to launch beyond the psychic and social limitations assumed in modern society. Please read this book. Please live it.”
— Chellis Glendinning, Ph.D. author of Off the Map and My Name Is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization

"The fundamental worldview of industrial society is that Earth is like a gravel pit or a lumberyard — just a resource for human use. We live disconnected from the evolving earth community, but our deepest allurement is a rich, intimate participation in nature and the ongoing adventure of the Universe. In this stunningly original and inspiring guide book, Bill Plotkin shows us how to reconnect with the sacred powers of life, of nature, of soul, and the ways that each one of us can reinvent ourselves and discover our unique way to flower forth."
— Brian Swimme, cosmologist and author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, The Universe is a Green Dragon, and co-author with historian Thomas Berry of The Universe Story

“Soulcraft is an inspiring and practical resource guide in how to be more fully connected to outer wilderness as a mirror and teacher of our own inner wilderness.”
—Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist, author of The Four-Fold Way and Signs of Life

“Bill Plotkin has skillfully interwoven the tools and insights of depth psychology with the mysteries and ecstasies of wilderness rites. Soulcraft grounds soul psychology in the natural world and creates a contemporary path of initiation into soulful adulthood.”
— Robert Johnson, author of He, She, We, and Inner Work

“Those who allow Bill Plotkin’s musings to pass have allowed a diamond to fall from their pockets. Those who value the mystical secrets, the magic and mysterious in nature and the human soul better check their pockets, for there are priceless items here, rarer far than diamonds. There are huge questions here, and wisdom worthy of the 21st century. For in Soulcraft we find a new language, a new therapy, and a burning passion to get to the very heart of the universe. The answer to our difficulties? If not, a very important part of the answer. Check your pockets!”
— Steven Foster, Ph.D., and Meredith Little, directors emeritus, School of Lost Borders

“The oldest of our developmental metaphors is the ‘journey.’ Soulcraft is a challenging invitation to the journey — full of wisdom, syncretic insights, and openings to greater consciousness. As Nietzsche observed, before one takes the journey, one must first find the lantern. Soulcraft is a lantern.”
— James Hollis, Ph.D., author of On This Journey We Call Our Life

“I am grateful to Bill Plotkin for his deeply moving exploration of what it means and how it feels to follow one's soul path. If we are to survive, more and more of us must embark on this journey. This excellent book provides a clear map to help people to begin.”
— Derrick Jensen, author of A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe

“Every now and then a book is birthed into the world that is destined to irrevocably alter the spiritual face of modern culture. Bill Plotkin's Soulcraft is just such a book. Charting a course through the underworld pathways with the heart of a shaman, mapping the powers of myth and psyche with all the soul and interpretive skill of Jung or Campbell, Plotkin's guide to the journey of initiation is to nature-based soulwork what Huxley's Doors of Perception was to consciousness studies. This book is an immense treasure that will provide wisdomseekers, psychologists, shamanic practitioners, and seasoned wilderness guides alike with a fresh heart-opening soul language, a new mythos for fathoming the depths of change, as well as time-tested practical methods for navigating the landscape of authentic transformation. In essence, Soulcraft is Plotkin's "soul gift," a user's manual for the journey of the human soul, as well as a guide to the futurescape of why we are all really here. It is the book I wish I could have had at my fingertips when I began to feel the ancient call for rites of passage in my early youth. It is required reading for anyone guiding other people in soulwork, or delving deep into their own. As philosopher Parker Palmer has said, "The way to God is down." Plotkin shows the way.”
— Frank MacEowen, author of The Mist-Filled Path: Celtic Wisdom for Exiles, Wanderers, and Seekers

“A poetic and yet intellectually rigorous exploration of the essential relationship between the human soul and wild nature, Soulcraft guides the reader on a journey of descent, to return with gifts for a hungry world.”
— Molly Brown, author of Growing Whole: Self-Realization on an Endangered Planet and co-author (with Joanna Macy) of Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

“I believe that within the concepts, principles, and practices embodied in Soulcraft rest the foundation of a possible future that is worthy of humanity’s coming of age. . . . Soulcraft is a culmination of a quest for understanding that goes back 6000 years and required both the events and the insights of our collective journey and the personal vision and understanding of Bill Plotkin (and others) to bear fruit. . . The conceptual framework expounded by Soulcraft will permeate the collective consciousness of the future in the same manner as Childhood and Society (Eik H. Erikson) shaped the 1950s and the work of Abraham Maslow shaped the 1960s.”
— Dan Popov, Ph.D., author of The Family Virtues Guide

“How can we begin our life’s deeper conversation within the greater world of nature? Bill Plotkin shows us the path.”
— Dolores LaChapelle, author of Earth Festivals, Earth Wisdom, and Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep—Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life