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Alchemy is best known as the age-old science of turning base metal into gold. But it is much more: essentially, it is a path of self-knowledge, unique in the Western tradition, with vital relevance for the modern world. The symbols of Alchemy lie deep in the collective unconscious, in the world of dreams and imagery: the practices of alchemy are rooted in an understanding of the oneness of spirit and matter through which we celebrate our sexuality and spirituality. Jay Ramsay takes us step by step through the stages of the alche-mical process using a wide range of original exercises to create a memorable journey that challenges, inspitres and transforms us at every stage. We too can be kings and queens: we too, once we leave our dross behind, are gold. It's full of fi ne things... --Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate 1984-1998, playwright and author. So much good work... --Robert Bly, award winning poet, essayist, activist and author. Jay Ramsay has written a luminous and wise guide to the mysteries of soul, and to the images and texts of alchemy, which explores these mysteries... --Anne Baring, philosopher, visionary and author of several books including: The Dream of the Cosmos: a Quest for the Soul and The Myth of the Goddess. Ramsay is among those who have been working most assiduously to share this archetypal language of the soul... --Lindsay Clarke, review in Caduceus. The clearest account of the alchemical process I've read... --Peter Redgrove, poet, novelist and playwright. Extremely wonderful and important... --Robert Sardello, author and co-founder of The School of Spiritual Psychology.

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This book is a `MUST READ' for all play therapists and professionals trained to work therapeutically with children.

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A fascinating new look at Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Not the 1943 version quoted by trainers, coaches and business psychologists, but the completed hierarchy only published as a paper just before his untimely death in 1970. This book redresses the balance.

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Many English-speaking people who want to be educated try to read Dante, the 'best known, least read' of all the classical poets, and find him impossible. In my thirties I did just that: 'Where do I begin?' The library yielded a translation of 'The Divine Comedy' - a great fat epic in three volumes. Wading into the Inferno, I struggled through a couple of sections and decided this wasn't for me. Too gloomy, too stilted, too difficult to grasp - and above all - too many words. I gave up almost at once. I cannot be the only one who as a result of that kind of experience thinks the work of this great Master is exclusively about Hell. 'Dante? - oh, you mean Dante's Inferno!' they say. NO! That's not it. There's far, far more. Dante wrote in Italian in order to reach ordinary people who, like me, needed the story itself. He wrote in the vernacular about the famous of the time - well-known entertainers and politicians, poets and artists, churchmen and musicians, the great and the awful. He wanted to be understood by everyone, including those not too well-versed in Latin. 'What a story this is,' I thought, when finally I was properly introduced to it. 'Why don't we all know this story? Dante is so warm-hearted, so exciting, so full of hope and humour, justice and joy - but, like me, my friends hardly ever get into Hell, let alone out of it and on.' My aim is to tell Dante's story in the way I remember it - not primarily for its history, or its theology, or even its most gracious poetry, but for the unfolding journey he made through those amazing landscapes. It was all in his imagination, yet so vividly brought to life in his poem that irresistibly it invites us to accompany him on a life-changing, life-saving adventure of our own. The tale begins when, depressed and lost in a Dark Wood, Dante meets Virgil, his hero among much earlier poets. At the request of Beatrice - his great love, now in Heaven - Virgil has come from Limbo to guide him on a huge journey. Sure enough, they start by going down through Hell; but they emerge, ascend the Mountain of Purgatory through many adventures, and rise to the threshold of Paradise. There, human knowledge fails and Virgil leaves him. Meeting people all the way, he flies on into Heaven with Beatrice, and up through the stars to God. I hope that by travelling with him, we too may come to find in the poetry something of the depth of the vision. I hope we may come to love Dante as a person, with all his directness, his immense compassion for those he meets on the way, and his chuckling ability to laugh at himself. I hope we shall rejoice that his passion for Beatrice, who leads him through Heaven, is at last so blissfully fulfilled in the divine. May our own landscape of the mind be enhanced - even transformed - by the journey.

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This book presents rich source material; it makes no claim to being academic, though referring whenever possible to works available to the authors (the bibliography more or less stops with Ian Gordon-Brown's death in 1996). However, those interested in Transpersonal Psychology as an academic discipline will be able to avail themselves of the wealth of original material here and take it into the world of comparative study. Its origins could be traced back way beyond Jung, Frankl, Maslow and Assagioli to Far Eastern and Aboriginal sources, to Greek and later Western teaching, to other great transpersonal pioneers of the twentieth century and forward into the twenty-first.

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This new book is written for already qualified professionals who want to add the use of Clay Therapy in their work with children and adolescents.

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I have brought together these Messages in memory and in love for my mother and love for the Higher Assembly of Beings who watch over the life of this planet. They have been the foundation and the inspiration of all my own work. May they reach those who can assimilate their teaching and take it further. Their words are witness to the fact that we do not live in a dead, insentient universe that is without consciousness, purpose or meaning. On the contrary, we live in a universe that is alive, sentient, full of wonders, peopled with countless beings in higher dimensions, as well as in other galaxies and on other planets - all directed by an evolutionary intention.

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In lucid dreams, spiritual traditions across the world teach that within the dreaming state there resides a more serene experience of pure consciousness - one of profound joy. Unlike the turbulent emotions of the ego, this is our original soul nature.

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In the past few years there have been some gradual but perceptible changes in our collective attitude to menstruation, perhaps shown most obviously in television commercials and magazine advertising, which are less coy and more realistic and explicit in their portrayal of the menstruating woman. People seem less affronted by the subject matter than they were when the research for this book began. They are more willing to examine the possibility that in Western materialist culture our commonly held notions about the menstrual cycle have been infected by centuries of misogyny. The taboo about discussing menstruation still exists, but it appears to be gradually dissolving, along with other prejudices about the body and sexuality and gender. I hope that these subtle changes in attitudes to menstruation presage a greater shift in how we collectively value, affirm, and accept female experience. The relationship between menstruation and power is still held very much under the surface of mainstream awareness, and most cultural references to menstruation continue to be couched in the terminology of pathology. Reintegrating a truly feminist, woman-honoring perspective on menstruation means turning a whole system of thought upside down. It means saying that a cyclical change in feelings and body sensations is valuable and interesting; it means saying that the emotions women experience premenstrually carry useful information and should be paid attention to; it means acknowledging that a menstruating woman has access to sacred energy, and that if she wishes, she should have space and time to explore this dimension of experience. The ramifications of such a shift would be truly radical. For many reasons, including ecological and cultural survival, I believe the system of thought which has caused women to adapt to a non-cyclical reality needs to be turned upside down, for the good of us all. We menstruate more now than at any time in human history. Girls are starting to menstruate earlier due to protein-rich diets and hormones in food; women are less likely to die young; we have fewer children and therefore spend less time not menstruating. Increased work and family stresses, in addition to more periods, mean that women are more physically and psychologically vulnerable to negative attitudes to menstruation. So it is more important than ever that we investigate ways to make our periods physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy.

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Our hero is bound by honour and family tradition to avenge a past wrong, for this is a tale of vendetta. Long-lasting family feuds often do not work out well. Vendettas can also sour relations between tribes and between nations; we need only recall the long-standing conflicts all over the world.

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The Dream of the Cosmos is the story of a multi-layered quest to understand the causes of human suffering and to reconnect with a deeper reality than the one we inhabit in this physical dimension of experience. It seeks to answer the questions: "Who are we?" and "Why are we here, on this planet?" It is offered to those who are looking for something beyond the superficial values of our culture, who may be disillusioned with religious and secular belief systems as currently presented and who question political values which are deeply mired in the pursuit of power. It is written with two voices: one the voice of a personal quest and the other which explores the historical and psychological causes that have brought into being our present view of reality.

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Barbara Somers leads us into this world with a sure touch. Those among us who were fortunate enough to hear her in person remember the ease, elegance and wisdom with which she handled the weightiest subjects. Here, too, she guides us into the very centre of the symbolic Alchemist's den and through the phases, trials and tribulations of the inner process that helps us to become what we truly are. It's not an easy journey, it has its risks and dangers, but also its moments of joy and glory. And the gold that eventually manifests in the flask of the psyche is an indestructible treasure. Let Transpersonal Alchemy do its work through this book and spread its message far and wide. The world is in dire need of the gold that is, paradoxically, not of this world.

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