Divination

Spirit Walking, A Psychic Handbook:

Spirit Walking, A Psychic Handbook: 
The Definitive Guide to Living and Working with the Unseen  
by Poppy Palin
O Books, 2007

 

While I wouldn’t necessarily call this book the definitive guide, it’s a fairly thorough guide to the basics involved in a magical practice. The author addresses a wide variety of subjects from protection to astral travel, from working with faeries to doing the necessary banishing and cleansing after all the magical work is done.

Read more: Spirit Walking, A Psychic Handbook:

Sacred Geometry

Sacred Geometry
by Janosh
Sounds True, 2007


 

Though it’s become something of a buzzword in today’s alternative spirituality circles, sacred geometry remains one of the least understood of the ancient occult arts. Too many recent presentations of the subject either zoom off into New Age platitudes or end up tangled in a web of exotic speculations about flying saucers, extraterrestrial reptiles, and the like. Both of these can be entertaining at times, granted, but neither one has much to do with the subtle meditative disciplines of traditional sacred geometry.

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Chinese Birthday Book

Chinese Birthday Book
by Ta- kashi Yoshikawa
Weiser, 2007

Most readers and, as far as I know, all authors agree that publishers now and then really need to be spanked. Among the offenses that justify such action putting a bad title on a good book ranks high. Additional swats are earned when the title is not only bad but misleading; when the cover art also leads potential readers to think they are holding a dull book on a familiar subject, rather than an excellent book on a subject most people in the Western world don’t know from Lao Tsu’s ox, it’s definitely time to take the publisher to the woodshed.

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The Mystery of 2012

The Mystery of 2012:
Predictions, Prophecies, and Possibilities
by Gregg Braden
Sounds True, 2007

Ever since a handful of Middle Eastern visionaries started proclaiming that their messiah was going to show up and teach those rotten Babylonians a thing or two, the end of the world has been a hot topic. There’s always a background hum of catastrophic predictions moving through the crawlspaces of our collective imagination, but every so often one becomes the apocalypse du jour.

Read more: The Mystery of 2012

Tea Leaf Reading for Beginners: Your Fortune in a Tea Cup

Tea Leaf Reading for Beginners: Your Fortune in a Tea Cup
Caroline Dow, Llewellyn, 2011

4/5 Broomsticks

This book is an adventure into the world of tasseography, but author Caroline Dow not only endeavors to teach us all about tea leaf reading, but also about the rich culture of tea around the world, tea etiquette, how to brew a perfect pot, using unique tea blends and much, much more.

As a diehard tea fan myself, I was very curious as to what Dow had to say. In her introduction, Dow starts by briefly outlining leaf-reading history, starting with its heyday in Victorian times. She follows this with some personal anecdotes, which are present throughout the book, along with an explanation on how tea leaf reading works.

Read more: Tea Leaf Reading for Beginners: Your Fortune in a Tea Cup

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