Book excerpt: The land shimmers with sacred power. From prehistoric times on, our ancestors were aware of this. They sought healing, wisdom, and shamanic access to the spirit realm through interaction with the powerful forms of the natural world, and they built their ritual sites in intimate harmony with its contours. In this book, you'll join writer Paul Devereux as he travels the globe-from the Scottish Isles to the mountains of Tibet, from the Australian Outback to the deserts of South America-in a quest to unlock the potent spiritual meaning of hills, caves, and standing stones. Attending closely to the archaeological evidence and making use of the latest research technologies, Devereux shows us how to look at our surroundings through our ancestors' eyes-once again perceiving the sacred geography that is everywhere embedded in the landscape.