Martin W. Ball, Ph.D., is a writer, independent publisher and musician, currently living in Ashland Oregon. He is the author of the epic fantasy series, Tales of Aurduin, published by his independent publishing company, Kyandara Publishing, and has also authored two books on entheogenic spirituality, Mushroom Wisdom: How Shamans Cultivate Spiritual Consciousness, by Ronin Publishing, and Sage Spirit – Salvia Divinorum and the Entheogenic Experience, by Kyandara Publishing.

Martin has lived most of his life in California, with the exception of having lived in New Mexico for a little over a year while a graduate student in Religious Studies. He grew up in Northern California in Chico and Santa Cruz. He started playing music with friends in high school, playing keyboards and guitar for his first band, "Mild Euphoria," and later bass guitar in "Marianne's Last Dream," both of which were alternative-style bands (a style of music that Martin still pursues with his “Lucidium” music project www.myspace.com/lucidium).

Martin entered Occidental College in Los Angeles and there became a Philosophy Major and Religious Studies Minor. He took up Zen meditation with a group led by Noriaki Ito, the head priest of the Pure Land Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo. He also played in an acoustic guitar duet with his friend Kevin Feely, and played keyboards in a reggae band.

From Occidental, Martin went on to UCSB where he earned his MA. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Shamanism, Native American Traditions, Entheogens, and Eastern Philosophy and Meditation. For his dissertation project he lived for over a year just off the Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico where he studied with several traditional medicine people, learning traditional Mescalero medicine and ceremonialism. This was both a personal and scholarly enterprise, being initiated by some of his medicine teachers into their particular medicine lineages. His dissertation, Mountain Spirits: Embodying the Sacred in Mescalero Apache Tradition centered on Mescalero ritual, oral traditions, sacred geography, and spiritual ecology.

It was also in graduate school that Martin first met Sudama Mark Kennedy, a fellow graduate student and healer in Religious Studies. It was Sudama who first introduced Martin to the Australian didjeridu. However, Martin credits a dream for teaching him the true technique of circular breathing. Martin played didjeridu, percussion, and Native American flute in Sudama's band, Dreamtime Continuum, which is a regular feature of the Santa Barbara musical scene and festival circuit.

Martin first began to post his music on the internet in early 2000 on the then-dynamic Mp3.com. His music proved popular on the site, and for some time he had the top rated song in the Santa Barbara area, as well as on the goth and shoegazer charts. When Mp3.com collapsed and was gobbled up into the mainstream music site that it is today, rather than the burgeoning independent community that it had been, Martin had to look elsewhere for places to host his music. Currently his most popular music pages are Orobai and Shaman's Path, hosted on myspace.com (www.myspace.com/orobai and www.myspace.com/mushroomwisdom). The music featured on these pages is more world fusion in character and both collections are from CD's (Music of Aurduin and Infinite Horizons) that are meant to accompany Martin's books, Tales of Aurduin and Mushroom Wisdom, respectively. Both CD's are also available on iTunes. Additionally, Martin has another musical projected titled Salvia Sound System on myspace (www.myspace.com/salviasoundsystem), where he is promoting the companion CD to Sage Spirit, Divinorum, a dynamic world fusion/electronica/throat singing mix of music.

It was 2001 when a good friend introduced Martin to the fantastic world of Burning Man. In 2003 the God Box, Martin's theme camp, came into being and has brought radical mystical experiences to the good citizens of Black Rock City for the past five years now through the grace of the Mystic Toad. Martin also offers didjeridu and throat singing workshops at Burning Man at his theme camp, which has proved to be very popular among the citizens of Black Rock City.

In 2002 Martin began writing his fantasy series, Tales of Aurduin. He started the first of the series of four books, Orobai's Vision, while teaching graduate seminars in Native American religions at UC Berkeley. The series eventually expanded into four books in all, with the additional titles of The Fate of Miraanni, The Alchemist and the Eagle, and the final book, The Fifth Temple. The books are highly inspired by Martin's work in Religious Studies, especially his time studying with Mescalero Apache medicine people, his experiences at Burning Man, and his own personal spiritual explorations and shamanic experiences. The central theme of the series is a complex tale of ecological spirituality, world transformation, and the depths of human consciousness and spiritual transcendence. More information about Tales of Aurduin is available at www.aurduin.net.

After completing all four books of his Tales of Aurduin series, Martin distilled their spiritual essence, and the foundation of his own shamanic spiritual experience, into the book from Ronin Publishing, Mushroom Wisdom, published in late 2006.

After releasing Mushroom Wisdom, Martin was interviewed for the journal, Shaman's Drum. Inspired by this interview, Martin decided to write a book about Salvia divinorum, which resulted in his self-published book, Sage Spirit, which was officially released one week before Burning Man in 2007 and has now been doing quite well in sales both internationally and domestically.

Recently, Martin has been working with Ayahuasca and 5-MeO-DMT and has completed a new book, The Entheogenic Evolution, named after his globally popular podcast, which is due for publication in late 2008.