Magick Matters

“The Living I Ching: Using Ancient Chinese Wisdom to Shape Your Life” by Deng Ming-Dao

"Known widely as a tool for predicting the future, the I Ching is also a repository of three thousand years of philosophy. Its basic premises are simple: that all the world changes, that change is driven by impersonal forces that can be seen in terms of yin and yang, and that all change is cyclical. The wise person harmonizes with the great cycles of change, and, in order to be a master of change, must understand the I Ching. With this new translation, Deng Ming-Dao, a leading authority on Taoist practice and philosophy, recovers the true wisdom of this ancient classic. The language is friendly, open, and welcoming, and a breathtaking watercolor by the author...>>

“Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds” by Joseph P. Laycock

"The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that included representatives from the Christian Right, the field of psychology, and law enforcement claimed that these games were not only psychologically dangerous but an occult religion masquerading as a game. Dangerous Games explores both the history and the sociological significance of this panic. Fantasy role-playing games do share several functions in common with religion. However, religion―as a socially constructed world of shared meaning―can also be compared to a fantasy role-playing game. In fact, the claims of the moral entrepreneurs, in which they presented themselves as heroes battling a dark conspiracy, often...>>

“Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock” by Vere Chappell

"Sex, Magick, Aleister Crowley, Orgasms, Erotic Dances, Angelic Beings, Revolutionary Activism, Liberation, Persecution, Defiance, and Suicide. Persecuted by Anthony Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice, this turn-of-the-century heroine was also a spiritualist who learned many secrets of high magick through her claimed wedlock to an angelic being. Born in Philadelphia in 1857, Ida Craddock became involved in occultism around the age of thirty. She attended classes at the Theosophical Society and began studying a tremendous amount of materials on various occult subjects. She taught correspondence courses to women and newly married couples to educate them on the sacred nature of sex, maintaining that her explicit knowledge came from her nightly experiences with...>>

“Mary K. Greer’s 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card” by Mary K. Greer

"Drawing on nearly forty years of tarot experience, Mary K. Greer has developed a new energizing approach-made up of twenty-one stimulating techniques to interpret or deepen your understanding of each card. Just as the twenty-six letters of the alphabet can be combined to form billions of words, Greer's twenty-one methods can be used in any combination for gaining amazing new insights and perspectives. Emphasizing both traditional and personal methods of interpretation, Greer's techniques involve storytelling, sketching, symbols, metaphors, dialogues, acting, and other imaginative exercises. Designed to bring about interaction, transformation, and empowerment, this twenty-one-pronged approach to tarot can help readers expand standard interpretations and evolve new ways of connecting to the cards."...>>

“The English Lenormand” by Mary K. Greer, Tali Goodwin and Marcus Katz

"The original English language instructions from 1796 for reading what is now called the Lenormand Deck. In this piece of ground-breaking research, discovered by Mary K. Greer, you will learn the simple roots of this fortune-telling tradition, in English, by an anonymous author, who claims to have read them in Germany, from a Latin translation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs! This booklet also contains definitive proof for the first time that the Lenormand deck was created from a selection of coffee grind reading symbols, and the Lenormand methods such as dark/light, near/far, reading in a line, etc., are all cartomantic versions of coffee-grind reading methods. There are TWO fully worked examples of what is now called...>>