Review: Lightning in My Blood: A Journey Into Shamanic Healing & the Supernatural by James Endredy. Llewellyn Publishing, 2011. ISBN 9780738721477.

This is possibly the most enjoyable book I have read this year so far. James writes with an engaging, fluid style on subjects which for some might have proven more difficult to deal with. Don't have an interest in Shamanism? You will after this. Or rather, you'll be swept up in the mystical path that James has followed since that day in his teenage years when the man who had been talking to him for five minutes about his future path as a Seer suddenly hadn't. James' journey, as documented in Lightning in My Blood, hardly requires categorising as shamanistic or anything else. It's uniquely personal, and the fluidity of the writing carried me along in its stream of information, never to see the world in quite the same way again. 


What is presented is basically Memoirs of a Shaman Seer (or something) – a collection of milestones on the spiritual journey of the author. At the book's beginning, James informs us that we may choose to regard it either as fact or fiction, but that he has recorded each fantastic tale to the best of his memory. It hardly needs it. Each tale is told simply, with modest integrity. Each leads on from the last without a jerk or a falter. And each restores that feeling that magickal folk can sometimes lose in the humdrum of mundane life – that the world, and each of us within it, is truly magickal. As a European, I found one of the most fascinating aspects of the book to be its insight into Native American, South American and Mexican religious and shamanic practices.

Llewellyn begin their description of Lightning in My Blood thus: “Join James Endredy, noted author and shamanic practitioner, on a bizarre, brutal, and exhilarating excursion into realities that few people have had a chance to explore.” I think 'brutal' is the wrong word. A friend once described the spirits of the natural world as 'fierce,' rather than benevolent or malevolent. This fierceness comes through, but so too does a nurturing side – nature's desire for James (and us) to learn, grow, understand – to become a Seer. Six out of five stars!