THE EYE: THE SEER AND THE SEEN by Francis Huxley

The Eye - The Seer and the Seen by Francis Huxley
Thames and Hudson
978-80500-810347

---

Recommended Read this week is 'The Eye - The Seer and the Seen' by Francis Huxley, Thames and Hudson.  Not  a huge book but a good general overview of the importance of the Eye as a symbol in different cultures. Also because Huxley was an effective advocate and activist for indigenous peoples and the Eye is my favourite symbol.

Francs Huxley (1923 - 2016) was an anthropologist and botanist with diverse interests and a lifelong interest in shamanism and the altered states of consciousness often experienced by sacred 'healers'. In the 1950's his pioneering fieldwork among the Urubu people of the Amazon basin and his book 'Affable Savages' (1956) resulted in new personal reflective approach to the study of culture, rather than objective. He was also an activist for indigenous peoples, founding Survival International with fellow anthropologists. Survival International provides a platform for exposing genocide, violence, slavery and exploitation.

---

Francis was the son of Julian Huxley, biologist and first director general of Unesco. He was part of a dynasty that included Julian’s brother, the author Aldous Huxley, and half-brother, the physiologist and Nobel laureate Andrew Huxley. Francis was also the great-grandson of Charles Darwin’s friend Thomas Henry Huxley.

Works of interest
The Invisibles: Voodoo Gods in Haiti (1969), he describes his encounter with possession, magic and psychic healing.
The Way of the Sacred (1974) he expands this personal perspective on healing to include the study of myths, religious rites and sacred symbolism.
​With his fellow anthropologist, Jeremy Narby, he co-edited Shamans Through Time (2001), a collection of five centuries of writing on the subject.
​Tribes of the Amazon Basin in Brazil (1973), identified groups threatened by Brazilian economic expansion and described the sad impact on their religious, spiritual and psychological health and wellbeing.

---

---