Magick Matters

“The Wasp Factory” by Iain Banks

"I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me." Those lines begin one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels. The narrator, Frank Cauldhame, is a weird teenager who lives on a tiny island connected to mainland Scotland by a bridge. He maintains grisly Sacrifice Poles to serve as his early warning system and deterrent against anyone who might invade his territory. Few novelists have ever burst onto the literary scene with as much controversy as Iain Banks in 1984. The Wasp Factory was reviled by many reviewers on account of its violence and...>>

“The Seven Elemental Forces of Huna: Practices for Tapping into the Energies of Nature from the Hawaiian Tradition” by Susanne Weikl

"A full-color practical guide to connecting with the 7 elemental forces for empowerment, manifestation, and divination • Details how to connect your soul with Huna’s seven elemental forces of nature--water, fire, wind, rock, plants, animals, and beings of light, including angels • Provides simple exercises, techniques, and rituals to tap into the energies of nature, communicate with the elemental forces as well as nature spirits and the weather, manifest our dreams, and divine answers to life’s difficult situations • Explains how to build a wheel of the elements to anchor your connection to the energies of the elements In the Huna tradition of Hawaii, there are seven elemental forces whose all-pervading energies flow around us in abundance. Each...>>

“The Severed Head: Capital Visions” by Julia Kristeva

"Informed by a provocative exhibition at the Louvre curated by the author, The Severed Head unpacks artistic representations of severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Surveying paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Julia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a study of the head as symbol and metaphor, as religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical theme in her work—the power of horror—and the potential for the face to provide an experience of the sacred. Kristeva considers the head as icon, artifact, and locus of thought, seeking a keener understanding of the violence and desire that drives us to sever, and in some cases keep, such a potent object. Her study...>>

“Escaping from Eden: Does Genesis Teach that the Human Race was Created by God or Engineered by ETs?” by Paul Wallis

"The familiar stories of the book of Genesis affirm that God made the universe, planet earth, and you and me. However, various anomalies in the text clue us that we are not reading the original version of these stories. So what were the original narratives and what did they say about who we are and where we all came from? What was the earlier story of human origins, almost obliterated from the Hebrew Scriptures in the 6th century BC, and suppressed from Christian writing in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD? And what does any of this have to do with Extra Terrestrials? Escaping from Eden will take you on a journey around the...>>

“Samurai Wisdom: Lessons from Japan’s Warrior Culture—Five Classic Texts on Bushido” by Thomas Cleary

"The ancient warrior culture of Japan produced a sophisticated martial philosophy that we know today as Bushido—the Way of the Warrior. In Samurai Wisdom, author Thomas Cleary provides five critical new translations of major Japanese works on Bushido. The writings of the scholar Yamaga Soko and his disciples are among the most lucid expositions we have of the core ideas and philosophy underlying the Samurai's disciplined way of life and outlook. Together they provide an in-depth, practical guide to character building and conduct according to the precepts of Bushido—a code for professional warriors that retains as much relevance in today's world as it had when these works were written 400 years ago. Yamaga's writings inspired the...>>