Christian Rätsch

Christian Rätsch (born 1957) is a German writer ethnopharmacology and psychoactive plants and animals. Rätsch is an anthropologist and author. He was born in 1957 in a Bohemian community in Hamburg, Germany. His father was an opera singer, his mother a ballet dancer. He started learning about shamanism and sacred plants at 10 and had his first drug experience at 12.^{[citation needed]}

Ratsch earned a doctorate in Native American cultures. He conducted field research for three years while living with the Lacandón Indians in Chiapas, Mexico investigating shamanism first-hand, and completed his doctorate on their incantations and spells. Rätsch resides in Hamburg with his wife Claudia Müller-Ebeling. He is the founder and co-editor of The Yearbook of Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness.

Works

• Müller-Ebeling, Claudia and Christian Rätsch and Surendra Bahadur Shahi (2002). Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas. Transl. by Annabel Lee. Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International.

• Rätsch, Christian (1998/2005). The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants, Enthnopharmacology and Its Applications. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. 

See also

• Christophe Wiart
• Dennis McKenna
• Terence McKenna

External links

• Erowid: Christian Ratsch
• Christian Raetsch
• John Horgan article on Ratsch

Persondata
Name	Rätsch, Christian
Alternative names	Raetsch, Christian
Short description	German ethnopharmacologist, anthropologist, author
Date of birth	1957
Place of birth	Hamburg, Germany
Date of death
Place of death