Mystics, Magicians and Medicine People: Tales of a Wanderer

Doug Boyd

This is the second book I have had the pleasure of reading this year by Doug Boyd. (I highly recommend the other, Swami I reviewed earlier.) Boyd is a very unique writer/seeker/commentator. He seems to be more objective and less married to point of view than others I have read.

This book consists of what the author calls seven “scenes”. Each is a story about an encounter over time with one or more people the author spends time with and gets to know. The scenes are eclectic. The personalities are cross-cultural—Korean, Japanese, Native American, and Caucasian. Each scene or personality is complete in its own fullness. Yet when woven together the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

Each of these scenes deals with a person who has mystical or magical powers or attributes, and this certainly adds to the interest and appeal, but the message in much deeper and more transcendent.

I don’t usually quote from the cover of a book, but in this case I am compelled to break my rule:

“This book opens the heart, enlivens the senses, and cleanses the mind.” Mathew Fox

This is book is low key and understated but has had a very profound effect upon my attitudes and me. It has helped me to transcend a number of the deepest paradoxes of life and its meaning and how we ought to act. I leave you with the very profound observation made by Spotted Fawn, a Native American who explains to the author why she stepped in to stop her kitten from killing a baby frog, when the author asked her why she was getting in the way of the kittens natural instinct. She said: “When we’re here we’re part of the picture.”