Books like The Sacred and Profane — picked by fans

I wanted to build a psychopath character from the ground up (day 1, to be exact), and this book took me right to the brink.

I loved it because it’s less technical than Blair et al. yet digs down into the roots of how a psychopath could develop, what they behave like, and—critically for me—the sometimes all too subtle differences between them and the non-psychopaths among us.

This is a bit more of a technical archaeology book dealing with the ethnographic and archaeological Pueblo communities of the American Southwest. For those interested in secret societies, it deals extensively with the nature of Pueblo ritual organizations (sodalities) and deftly provides critiques of views that these were egalitarian communities and ritual organizations. In fact, he argues that some were among the most non-egalitarian societies in North America, beginning with the Chacoan culture about 1,000 years ago. Puebloan ritual organizations are prime examples of secret societies.

Crystals in the Sky is a remarkable documentation of the astronomical knowledge developed by secret society members in the traditional native Chumash culture of southern California. In fact, the detailed astronomical knowledge was developed as part of the secret knowledge of the Antap Society (the Chumash secret society consisting of elite community members, the head of which was the "Sun Priest"). This provides an important clue to recognizing prehistoric secret societies since it explains why and how detailed astronomical knowledge developed, such as the astronomical observations involved in erecting Stonehenge. Similar astronomical knowledge occurred in other examples of secret societies in the world as well. 

This remarkable work was first printed in German in 1923 and was only translated and published in English in 1996. It is largely concerned with the secret societies in the New Hebrides Islands of Southeast Asia. Speiser documents the lavish initiation rituals, the megalithic constructions that were part of the secret society ritual locations, the power of the ritual organizations and their leaders, the special burials of secret society leaders, the plastering of their skulls, and many other fascinating aspects of these secret societies. It is just one outstanding example among other ethnographies that document the special nature of secret societies including Philip Drucker's Kwakiutl Dancing Societies, Walter Hoffman's The Midewiwin, or 'Grand Medicine Society' of the Ojibwa, and Amaury Talbot's In the Shadow of the Bush.

I’m so sick of the culture wars in America. That’s why Makoto Fujimura’s call towards Culture Care was so refreshing and encouraging.

He acknowledges how artists may end up as border walkers, gaining inspiration by living on the edges of society. But mere rebellion isn’t enough. I was so inspired by his encouragement to see cultural care as comparable to environmental work. How do we create estuaries where new growth and ideas can emerge? As a painter, Mako brings his visions to life on canvas. Yet, this book challenged me to usher more beauty into my community through any medium.

This book is a tome of Ken Wilber's lifetime wisdom. His book thoroughly explores a vast range of states of consciousness that helped me navigate the vastness of psychedelic experiences. More importantly, Wilber’s wisdom helped me integrate years of psychedelic experiences through his philosophy of integral theory and concepts of Growing Up, Waking Up, Cleaning Up, and Showing Up. And, funny enough, Wilber does not discuss psychedelics, yet his book is a psychonaut's guide to the universe.

This book rates in the top five books I have ever read. I felt heavily rewarded for the time and effort required to work through this epic book.

A turning point in my spiritual path was the discovery that the mystics of all traditions, in all eras, have reported similar or identical spiritual experiences. They used different terminology, hailed from different cultures, practiced different methods, and even had different belief systems, but experientially, they found that all paths lead to the same mountaintop of spiritual illumination.

Scholars have a name for this perspective: perennialism. Huxley published the classic account in the mid-40s, offering as evidence excerpts of writings from both well-known and obscure mystics. The book taught me (and millions of others) that spirituality is universal and there are treasures to be found in all the wisdom traditions. It remains a source of inspiration and illumination to this day. 

Freedom of speech means many things to many people, but often the advocates of free speech have not thought very clearly or deeply about the purposes for protecting speech and the reasons for the American free speech system.

Of all of the books on free speech theory that I have read, I appreciate Fred Schauer’s book the most. It is truly a classic about the philosophical foundations of freedom of speech. Do not be intimidated by the idea of free speech theory: Schauer’s book can be understood by any serious nonfiction reader, and I highly recommend it for its powerful reasoning and beautiful prose.  

This rocked my world.

As an analytical person, I loved Carse’s precise logic—that every human activity can be seen as either a finite game, played to win and end the game, or an infinite game, played to keep playing. Simple. Devastating.

What stopped me cold was seeing myself in it—when I was playing to dominate, demean others so they’d shrink, and I could feel bigger, transacting rather than connecting. Carse gave me a framework to see that honestly, and to choose differently—to play to connect, to stay in the game with everyone around me.

I have never seen life the same way since. The ideas contributed profoundly to my work on personal and shared responsibility, especially in consulting with teams and leaders.

This book is luminous. The world of everyday reality and the world of magic overlap and interact and influence each other. There are philosophers and gods, leprechauns and (once again) taking animals, and women wiser than all of them put together. The plot concerns a crime that never occurred and various types of bizarre trouble that result from it. Adventures follow adventures in a picaresque manner, not all of them necessarily connecting with any other, a free and easy approach that gives great fluidity to the whimsical narrative.