Category: Reviews

In 1951, at a time when the vast majority of Americans were busy supporting the spiritual status quo, Robert and Earlyne Chaney, an actress and a spiritualist medium, started Astara, one of the first New Age organizations in the country. Through hard work, prudence and perseverance, Astara would eventually grow into one of the largest and most influential of the entry level New Age organizations.

Several months back, when I received an email advertisement for Gail Evans’ then unpublished book Meditations In My Favorite Places In Southern Africa: A Travelogue For Inner And Outer Jounries, I became excited. This book, I figured, would offer insight into sacred places and practices on a continent that remains largely unknown to most Americans. Unfortunately, Evans’ offering turns out to be New Age pabulum at its worst.

Article Continues After Illustration

Sometimes I feel a little bit like great grandmother must have felt when the first automobiles showed-up or when her house was electrified. What a wondrous world that must have seemed, and what a wondrous world we live in today. I'm reminded of this everyday as I use the Internet, which puts more information at my fingertips than any library.

Article Continues After Illustration

Back in the sixties, as the spirit of the counter-culture spread across the land, there emerged a breed of business person, the hip capitalist. The hippies, freaks, student radicals, black nationalists and other assorted types that made-up the counter culture of the day learned to have a love/hate relationship with these hip merchants, who sometimes made fortunes hawking everything from t-shirts and waterbeds to concert tickets.

Last year, two excellent books were published that address in very different ways the same subject: the role of the feminine in ceremonial magick. The first, Lioness of the Sun, by Lorraine Tartasky, (editor's note: see The Relationship of Modern Paganism to Ancient Egypt on this site) is a novel approach to the ancient traditions of Egypt, while the second, Path of the Priestess, by Sharron Rose, presents a modern, memoir-driven how-to book on what it takes to really follow the path of a priestess. When read together, a curious sense of continuity can be felt; the past is not so far away after all, and some human aspirations and practices have changed very little indeed.

The first time I listened to a recorded hypnotic session was back in the sixties. Hypnotism was then still associated with smoke and mirrors, since hypnotic demonstrations had been a mainstay of vaudeville. It was also considered somewhat sinister, due to movies like The Manchurian Candidate which associated the practice with brainwashing techniques. In many movies of the day, the sight of a hypnotherapist swinging a watch in front of a person's face was something of a cliché.

When I tore open the envelope and saw the review copies of two CDs from Agnus Dei from Austria, I immediately wanted to love them, as the cover art appealed to my mythical and mystical leanings. One CD was called Lemuria, after the mythological land that was supposed to have existed in the Indian Ocean. It's cover art was like something from a good fantasy comic book, depicting a crystalline city on a craggy mesa rising out of a mirror smooth plain. The other CD was called Merlyn, after Arthur's magical CIA agent, with a cover drawing of a beautiful wilderness waterfall and a giant planet hanging in the sky.

Before he was even born, Joshua's mother knew that he was destined to be a very special raven. She couldn't explain it, but she knew that there was something different about the egg that lay nestled against the others in the nest that she'd built with her mate, even though this egg was really just like the rest. Then there was the internal voice that had gently told her, “...all of your offspring are precious, and my love enfolds each of them. But I have a special task for one of these youngsters whom you are bringing into the world.”

The mom-to-be kept these feelings and thoughts secret, not even daring to tell her mate, for she knew this to be nonsense. After all, there was nothing special about ravens. They were just ungainly birds that fed on dead meat, damaged crops, and adored maggots and dead fish. Not since the days of Noah, when the mythical El-Shikur had given his life trying to guide the ark to safety, had ravens been held in high esteem.

As I've delved into the world of spirituality, I've learned to look for paradoxes. In my experience, a spiritual truth isn't worth its salt unless it comes packaged in a riddle of contradiction. I've found this to be so much the case that whenever I hear or read about a so-called truth, I immediately look for the paradox, the opposite component that would seem to disprove the validity of the original idea. If it's not there, I remain skeptical about this new "truth."

Take meditation for example. The sages of the east tell us that meditation is an important component of any spiritual practice. Meditation, they say, is an extremely simple process that takes little more than a few minutes of your time. Almost in the same breath, they will add that meditation is a very difficult process that may take years to learn. Voila, we have a paradox!

The 60s On The Big Screen

by Christine Hall

Soon after NBC aired their miniseries The 60s, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick died at the age of 70. Although I would only include one of his movies on a top ten list of 60s films, a more extensive study would include nearly all of his work from that time of his career, for all but one of the movies he made during that period in one way or another captured the spirit of the decade.

As anybody who was there knows, the sixties was not a single issue decade. The many issues that dominated our lives during that time included racial equality, the cold war (including the war in Vietnam which was anything but cold), sexual freedom, free speech and the erosion of personal freedom in American life. If there was any single issue that defined the decade artistically, it was the breaking of new ground, with honesty of expression being the catchword of the day.