Since the passage of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Native American Church (NAC) members have continually had to defend their legal right to use the sacred cactus peyote (Lophophora williamsii). This legal right was established with the passage of 21 CFR 1307.31, which exempts peyote's Schedule I status for NAC members. The exemption, however, continues to be...
In this paper, I discuss the results of a large‐scale archival and data base research project that investigated the history of the scholarly use of the terms shamanism and shaman in English‐speaking North America. This was done to provide a historical grounding in the hope of arriving at an operationally sound definition of the term. Twomajor findings emerged from the data: first, current uses...
Among the newly enchristianed "extreme sports" category, ultrarunners and the sport of ultrarunning is on the fringe edge. What makes ultrarunners and their "sport" interesting is that ultrarunners regularly report experiences that can be equated to various types of mystical experiences during their "sporting" events. This paper briefly discusses ultrarunners, a hypothetical mystical (mythical)...