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Book & Oracle Card Box Review – The Shaman Box: Tools for Healing Protection and Good Fortune with Animal Oracle Cards by Nicholas Breeze Wood (author) & Sarah Bartlett (oracle cards)
Book & Oracle Card Box Review The Shaman Box Tools for Healing Protection and Good Fortune with Animal Oracle Cards by Nicholas Breeze Wood (author) & Sarah Bartlett (oracle cards) Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing 96 Pages, 36 Card Deck Publication Date: 9/01/2020 Opening The Shaman Box is like opening a medicine package. It presents as a hardback book, but then you open the cover. The paperback book, written by Nicholas Breeze Wood, is tucked into a sleeve on the right hand side of the cover and the oracle deck, with illustrations and key words by Sarah Bartlett, is in a soft box placed into an opening on the left…
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Book Review – Shamanism for Every Day: 365 Journeys by Mara Bishop
Book Review Shamanism for Every Day 365 Journeys by Mara Bishop Publisher: Citadel 464 Pages Publication Date 3/20/21 Shamanic practitioner and intuitive consultant Mara Bishop’s Shamanism for Everyday: 365 Journeys is a book of daily meditations which present opportunities to connect with inner wisdom and helping spirits in the midst of our busy lives. The Introduction is titled “Coming Home” and sitting down with this book indeed feels like settling in, calming down and having a break from the intense outward focused activity and distraction we experience in the 21st century. The main content of the book is the 365 daily entries referenced in the title. Each daily…
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Book Review – Pagan Magic of the Northern Tradition: Customs, Rites and Ceremonies by Nigel Pennick
Book Review Pagan Magic of the Northern Tradition Customs, Rites and Ceremonies by Nigel Pennick Publisher: Destiny Books 352 Pages Publication Date: 5/21/2015 Like many of Nigel Pennick’s books, Pagan Magic of the Northern Traditions, is a scholarly survey of the cultural uses of magic in the everyday world of pre-Christian Northern Europe. It is not a “how-to” book. It’s better than a how-to book; Pennick explores the practices and customs that underlay our understanding of telling time, the powers and associations of the days of the week, the seasons and the year, household magic and protection, colors, planetary magic, and the power of sigils and objects, among…
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Tarot Deck Review – Visionary Path Tarot by Lucy Delics
Tarot Deck Review Visionary Path Tarot by Lucy Delics Publisher: Park Street Press (Inner Traditions) 32 Pages Publication Date: 11/03/2020 The Visionary Path Tarot invites us to explore the vibratory nature of the universe and how it shimmers in our dreams and visions. Lucy Delics has created a portal to the mysteries into which sacred plant medicine guides us. This is a black and white deck, with intricate line drawings and images described on the box as “psychedelic.” The black and white drawings are alive and animate against solid black backgrounds. With a softened gaze, the drawings move and come alive. The images containing many references to plant…
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Book Review – Shamanic Alchemy: The Great Work of Inner Transformation by James Endredy
Book Review Shamanic Alchemy The Great Work of Inner Transformation by James Endredy Bear & Co. 277 pages Shamanic Alchemy: The Great Work of Inner Transformation, tracks the parallels between the “Great Work” of classical alchemy and the shamanism’s work of aligning the inner and outer worlds through the process of initiation and transformation. Endredy’s introduction to the book sets out his thesis: “both alchemy and shamanism are practical gnostic systems of enlightenment…The predominant reason for practicing gnostic systems…is that direct experience is highly effective in relieving suffering, ignorance and fear of death. The direct experience of practicing shamanic alchemy has the power to invoke peace of mind, a healthy…
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Book Review – Shamanic Healing: Traditional Medicine for a Modern World by Itzhak Beery
Book Review Shamanic Healing Traditional Medicine for a Modern World by Itzhak Beery Destiny Books 226 Pages Shamanic Healing: Traditional Medicine for a Modern World is a great introduction to the power and scope of traditional medicine techniques from cultures that stand outside of Western medicine. Itzhak Beery opens the book, his third, with a compelling chapter on the need to integrate the wisdom and personal approach of shamanic healing wisdom with the benefits of Western medicine. He then takes the reader on his personal journey to shamanism, starting with his first workshops with Michael Harner and John Perkins, both of whom were instrumental in popularizing cross-cultural shamanic practices and…
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Book Review – Demons and Spirits of the Land: Ancestral Lore and Practices by Claude Lecouteux, Translated by Jon E. Graham
Book Review Demons and Spirits of the Land Ancestral Lore and Practices by Claude Lecouteux Translated by Jon E. Graham 212 Pages In Demons and Spirits of the Land: Ancestral Lore and Practices, Claude Lecouteux has written a fascinating and well-resourced exploration of pre-Christian Europe’s relationship with the spirits of the land. The writing is academic in nature, with many quotations from and cites to original sources deftly weaving centuries of cross-cultural traditions from Northern and Western European. Lecouteux describes the practices by which humans first respected the spirits of natural places, then colonized and “civilized” those places, changing their relationship with the local beings. With numerous references…
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Book Review – Magic in the Landscape: Earth Mysteries and Geomancy by Nigel Pennick
Book Review Magic in the Landscape Earth Mysteries and Geomancy by Nigel Pennick 176 Pages Nigel Pennick’s new book, Magic in the Landscape – Earth Mysteries and Geomancy, opens with a lament for the loss of a cultural sense of humans’ place in the natural world. We spend most of our time physically separate from the natural world, in artificial environments, oblivious to what we cannot see on our screens. The worldview of “developed” cultures is that we live in a “world of dead matter, there to be used and used up.” And, as Pennick emphasizes, we have rejected not only the natural world, but the ways in…
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Book Review – Navigating the Financial Universe: Prospering and Preparing for Challenges Ahead by Christeen H. Skinner
Book Review Navigating the Financial Universe Prospering and Preparing for Challenges Ahead by Christeen H. Skinner 221 Pages Financial astrologer Christeen H. Skinner’s 2004 book, The Financial Universe, set out the relationships between stock, bond and other financial markets and planetary events and cycles through 2020. In that book, she alerted readers to the 2008 Great Recession based on astrological events. In her newest book published in 2019, Navigating the Financial Universe – Prospering and Preparing for the Challenges Ahead, she describes the extraordinary astrology between 2018 and the early 2030s, and leads readers through what look to be tumultuous financial times ahead. Skinner uses the “navigation” metaphor…
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Book Review – Make Magic of Your Life: Passion, Purpose and the Power of Desire by T. Thorn Coyle
Book Review Make Magic of Your Life Passion, Purpose and the Power of Desire by T. Thorn Coyle 256 Pages I will admit to pre-judging this book, thinking it yet another New Age tome on how to “attract” your best life. But, John Waterhouse’s painting of Circe Invidiosa, the one of her staring into the bowl of iridescent water as if to see the whole of creation, persuaded me to give it a try. Circe has never led me astray, and she didn’t this time. Once I started, I didn’t put it down, finishing in one sitting. T. Thorn Coyle’s book is a masterpiece of magic, a weaving…