Articles by José Stevens

The smoke from several huge fires hung menacingly over the New Mexico horizon like a toxic shroud. The forests, still burning out of control, for a time threatened the Los Alamos nuclear labs with incineration. Other fires raged in Arizona consuming over half a million acres there while Texas burnt as well. In many parts…

Sometimes, even after doing everything right, Essence throws curves at us just to see how we will manage them. This is the tale of such a test and perhaps an example of one way of managing it along with lessons learned. After an extraordinary trip to Huallay, the stone forest in the Andes of Central…

Welcome to 2011. Dictators topple in Egypt and Tunisia, civil war breaks out in Libya, social unrest boils to the surface all over the Mideast, floodwaters drown towns and countryside from the United states to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Australia, volcanoes erupt, and now a record breaking and devastating earthquake and tsunami strikes Japan. It…

Many of you have written requesting an explanation of the recent and ongoing events in Egypt. As of this writing Mubarek, the long term dictator of Egypt has been deposed and Egypt is under the temporary control of the military. Egyptians are ecstatic at their success in ousting the oppressive Mubarek regime that many have…

My recent rather short eleven day trip to Vietnam was a much larger event than I could have imagined even though I knew that at some point in my life I was going to have to travel there for some completion. The trip was conceived of as both a family vacation and as a kind…

Recently I returned from The lake Titicaca region in Bolivia and Peru, more alive than ever. This is the story of a miracle, but then, miracles have become the norm in my life. This is not to say I take these events for granted or that I am not amazed each time something like this…

The current vampire craze is a most interesting phenomenon that is becoming a bigger and bigger theme, especially among young people. Let us look at a brief history of where vampires originated, some of the particulars of vampirism, and recent developments to understand how this craze mirrors deeper processes in the human psyche. A brief…

During the month of October I had the extraordinary opportunity to travel from the Peruvian Andes to the Amazon jungle, visiting in sequence the Q’ero people in the mountains and the Shipibo of the upper Amazon. This amazing trip was only partially a result of long term planning. While the trip to the jungle was…

This is a personal story of recent events in the Amazon and the extraordinary experience I had there. The upper Amazon region of Peru is the home of the Shipibo people, a tribe of indigenous people who practice their ancient shamanic traditions and are known as the go to people for training shamans from all…