Search results for ""author ink"

An introduction to the beautiful world of meditation...This book will take you on a journey giving hints and tips on how to meditate succesfully, breathing exercises, chants and visualisation tips. Also included are lovely meditation tea and incense blends, how to meditate with crystals, make meditation beads and a whole host of guided meditations for you to experience. Together with introducing you to other meditation skills such as pathworking, shape shifting, astral travel and working with meditation to cleanse your chakras. The ability to bend into a pretzel shape and chant 'om' optional...

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Life under capitalism. Rampant debilitating denial for the many next to vile enrichment of the few. Material deprivation, denial, and denigration. Dignity defiled. Michael Albert's book No Bosses advocates for the conception and then organization of a new economy. The vision offered is called participatory economics. It elevates self-management, equity, solidarity, diversity, and sustainability. It eliminates elitist, arrogant, dismissive, authoritarian, exploitation, competition, and homogenization. No Bosses proposes a built and natural productive commons, self-management by all who work, income for how long, how hard, and the onerousness of conditions of socially valued work, jobs that give all economic actors comparable means and inclination to participate in decisions that affect them, and a process called participatory planning in which caring behavior and solidarity are the currency of collective and individual success.

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In the second age of the world, a time of prehistory, a time of myth, Mandodari, queen of the demon king Ravana, invents chess to carve out a role for herself in a world where male, martial virtues are paramount. As a chess player, she can play at warfare; as queen, she can be the most potent warrior on the battlefield. The Queen's Play attempts to write the origin of chess into the narrative cycles of the Ramayana, one of the two formative epics of ancient India.The cursory mention of a chess-like game in the Ramayana lore offers interesting parallels and openings between the game and the themes of the epic poem. At the centre of it is a queen, first entering and then growing from strength to strength to become the most powerful piece on the board, inventing a game which closely parallels the epic battle taking place not far from the royal palace, a battle which she is not permitted to join, a battle where she will lose her king. Foregrounding certain episodes from the vast tapestry of the epic, the novel develops new narrative variations that feed back into the classical text with freshly imagined material.

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The future is alongside us, sometimes closer, sometimes further away. Hidden Valleys starts from the perception that the human world is an eerie place, particularly in relation to its stories and dreams. It also starts from events that took place in North Yorkshire, in 1978. A work of philosophy, an account of experiences, and a biography of a year, it is simultaneously a challenging cultural analysis, drawing on novels, songs and films. It argues for lucidity over reason, becomings over conventional gender and familialism, groups over state politics, and for an escape to wider realities in place of the delusions of religion. Most centrally it breaks open a view of a futural dimension that coexists with the present, and which intrinsically involves a heightened awareness and evaluation of the planet, of women, and of the abstract. Inseparably it is also a detective investigation into the causes of the eerie human predicament. The book reaches the planetary by starting from a singular place, it reaches reality by starting from dreams, and it reaches the future by finding a doorway in the past.

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Beating thousands of others, the geeky boy they call 'Micky Moon' at home, is one of ten children from around the world accepted onto the 'Children's Moon Program' in Florida. If he can survive the g-force of a space-shuttle launch, overcome his secret fear of water and pass the other battery of tests, he could win a place on the next mission to the moon!

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Hearing the words "You have cancer" can be devastating-some cancer patients even say that the emotional pain and loss of certainty from hearing this are worse than the pains from the cancer, surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy, and other treatments. This is the intimate journey of a melanoma and breast cancer survivor who honestly, and sometimes even humorously, shares her own story and offers supportive emotional tools to help people diagnosed with cancer, and their loved ones and caregivers, work through the emotional pain and upheaval of a cancer diagnosis. You will be supported in knowing what it feels like to hear you have cancer and be given a variety of helpful ideas to start feeling better whether you are newly diagnosed, in treatment, or months or years after treatment. If you are a caregiver, friend, or family member who wants to help, you will get a better understanding of the cancer experience as well as tools to help the person you care about.

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In the age of global capitalism, vaporwave celebrates and undermines the electronic ghosts haunting the nostalgia industry. Ours is a time of ghosts in machines, killing meaning and exposing the gaps inherent in the electronic media that pervade our lives. Vaporwave is an infant musical micro-genre that foregrounds the horror of electronic media's ability to appear - as media theorist Jeffrey Sconce terms it - "haunted." Experimental musicians such as INTERNET CLUB and MACINTOSH PLUS manipulate Muzak and commercial music to undermine the commodification of nostalgia in the age of global capitalism while accentuating the uncanny properties of electronic music production. Babbling Corpse reveals vaporwave's many intersections with politics, media theory, and our present fascination with uncanny, co(s)mic horror. The book is aimed at those interested in global capitalism's effect on art, musical raids on mainstream "indie" and popular music, and anyone intrigued by the changing relationship between art and commerce.

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Are you ready to be the leader of your own life? We live in a time of unprecedented economic and social turmoil. In the face of uncertainty and fear, we look to our jobs for security and to our leaders for inspiration. We aspire to a prosperous, stable future and strive to remain optimistic, but the stress of simply surviving-financially, professionally, and emotionally-can seem a relentless struggle. Consequently, we doubt ourselves and our capacity to be the leaders of our own lives-often opting for the status quo-because staying stuck is easier than creating change. We overlook this simple truth: If we remain true to ourselves, we can control our own reality. Lead Yourself First! is filled with engaging stories and advice to help people everywhere live life to the fullest and take the lead in any work or personal challenge. By applying Michelle Ray's simple, powerful life-changing lessons, you will discover how to influence and improve the quality of all your choices. Michelle Ray's "One-Two Punch" approach will inspire you to: Address the fear of success and eliminate the fear of failure; Rise above toxic behavior and situations; Gain new insights into your values about money, opportunity, and success; Discover your dream career or business and live it!

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Is 'Romeo and Juliet' really a love story, or is it a play about young people living in dangerous circumstances? How might life under occupation produce a new reading of 'Julius Caesar'? What choices must a group of Palestinian students make, when putting on a play which has Jewish protagonists? And why might a young Palestinian student refuse to read? For five months at the start of 2013, Tom Sperlinger taught English literature at the Abu Dis campus of Al-Quds University in the Occupied West Bank. In this account of the semester, Sperlinger explores his students' encounters with works from 'Hamlet' and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' to Kafka and Malcolm X. By placing stories from the classroom alongside anecdotes about life in the West Bank, Sperlinger shows how his own ideas about literature and teaching changed during his time in Palestine, and asks what such encounters might reveal about the nature of pedagogy and the role of a university under occupation.

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Every plant, every flower, every herb and every tree has energy, and that energy has magical properties. This book is go-to guide on how to work with these magical herbs and plants, how to use them and what to do with them.

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Ancient teaching stories from the earth, together with meditations and step-by-step guides to sourcing your own tales from the spirits of the ancestors. Throughout time, indigenous cultures have used storytelling as a way of spreading important teachings to the tribe. Much of our own rich, ancient heritage has been lost over the years, eroded with the coming of mainstream religions and new ideas, yet those teachings and stories are still there, waiting to be rediscovered and told. Through years of working with the spirits of the land, shamanic healer, crafter and teacher Taz Thornton has gathered together a bounty of beautifully crafted stories from our own forgotten past. These teaching stories have been shared directly by the spirits of our ancestors, who have long been waiting for new story weavers to carry these threads from the past into the future.

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The Shamanic Plant Medicine series acts as an introduction to specific teacher plants used by shamans in a variety of cultures to facilitate spirit communion, healing, divination and personal discovery, and which are increasingly known, used and respected in Western society by modern shamans as a means of connecting to spirit. Ayahuasca is the shamanic medicine of the Amazonian rainforest and has been used by shamans for millennia to induce visionary states wherein they astrally travel to other locations, see the future or carry out healings for others. It is increasingly used in the West and is perhaps the best known of shamanic plant teachers.

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Our secular society seems to have finally found its new God: Work. As technological progress makes human labor superfluous, and over-production destroys both the economy and the planet, Work remains stronger than ever as a mantra of universal submission. This book develops a fully-fledged theory of radical atheism, advocating a disrespectful, opportunist squandering of obedience. By replacing hope and faith with adventure, The Last Night of our lives might finally become the first morning of an autonomous future.

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A sequel to the much-loved devotional books, I Am With You and My Burden is Light, in Many Mansions, Our Lord gives us many glimpses of Heaven and the realm of light which we all long for. Also, he shows us ways of preparing for life after death and that future existence while we are still upon the earth.

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A Shadow's Tale is an Urban Fantasy/Bildungsroman that follows the life of a half-demon girl as she comes to terms with who she is. The life of one of every two half demons is controlled by prophecy. The more powerful the demonic parent, the more impact the prophecy has on the hybrid's life. When the half-demon race wilfully became extinct, certain prophecies were deemed never to come to pass. They were wrong. Shadow has to learn how to cope with who she is, how to deal with people who won't accept her half-demon status, and what her future has in store for her.

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A Practical Guide to Poetry Forms is a practical handbook on poetry forms, giving informative details on the construction of the major set forms. It also includes exercises, all within the scope of the beginner, yet stimulating enough to engage the more experienced poet.

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A young man seeking to hack into his own unconscious mind. An academic conference on the metaphysics of flies. An apocalyptic world where punctuation has been outlawed. An eating disorder that produces collectible antiques. A mix of allegory, satire, randomly generated numbers, spam messages rearranged into haiku form, plagiarism, and bad writing presented in the more sophisticated if still unpalatable guise of literary experimentation, Phil Jourdan's collection of stories is infuriating, challenging and other marketing buzzwords.

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There is no middle ground with cats - we either love them or loathe them - but the cat adopted as a power animal represents independence, cunning, dexterity, agility, sensuality, inscrutability and ferocity. And whether the great wild hunter of forests, deserts or grasslands, or an ordinary domestic tabby, they are beautiful creatures. Some would dismiss them as merely killing machines, but we only have to look at the history of their evolution alongside mankind to realise there is nothing on this planet quite like them.

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Break into Travel Writing, Make it Pay the Easy Way.

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The Old Testament prophets were not just predictors of things that would happen long after their time. Nor were they purveyors of religious platitudes. They were people with an urgent message for their own generation and a passion to declare it whatever the risk. They were singers, poets, demonstrators and protesters, radical critics of their own society and dreamers of a world that could be different.

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Gabriel is a boy who has just lost everything. His parents have died and he's forced to move to a strange country, France, to find a new home. He dislikes his crazy aunt, who he has to live with, he doesn't want to learn French, and to make matters worse, the only real family he has left is his whiny baby brother. Despite all this, as soon as Gabriel enters his aunt's ancient castle, he realizes that all these disasters might be the beginning of a grand adventure. In the castle of Chateau Larcher, the walls groan and the attic talks. Shadows take on strange shapes and Gabriel becomes convinced the castle is haunted. But the ghosts in Chateau Larcher aren't what Gabriel expects and he soon learns that skeletons aren't always scary and ghosts can tell the most interesting stories.

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Parenthood can be the most pleasurable and worthwhile task in the world. But how can we be sure we are doing it right? 'Understanding Your Child' is an A-Z guide to the psychology of parenting. It covers over 175 key topics, from adolescence and working mums to thumbsucking, dyslexia and discipline, in an easily accessible and reassuring way. Also included are overviews of the important issues for each developmental stage: birth to six months, six months to a year, one to three years, three to six, six to twelve, twelve to sixteen and over.

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Facing the Darkness aims to support those going through times of crisis and depression - primarily Pagan, but accessible to all. Utilizing Pagan spiritual imagery, skills and perspectives, a combination of inspirational text and easy exercises work with images and stories to distract and encourage for short-term relief and long-term healing. From the apparent hopelessness of deep night through to the inevitable return of sunrise, Nature imagery, tales of mythology and Deity combine in accessible meditations, activities and anecdotes to remind the reader that they are not alone on their path through the darkness. Cat Treadwell acts as a guide through the forest, working with the Druid skills of Bardic tales and Ovatic land/spirit connection. Darkness and despair can lead to peace and inspiration...through the simple bravery of stepping forward.

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'Surfing the Rainbow' is for anyone who has tried and failed to create the novel of their dreams. If you have been held back by negative messages from the past, or feel your imagination has gone away, then the exercises in this book will help to guide you back to the path of creativity and exploration. Color code your writing - follow the rainbow until you find the gold.

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Part true love story and part how-to guide, Maggie Kay's book Diving For Pearls takes the reader with her on the spiritual adventure of her life and shares how she eventually found what she was longing for - deep trust in her own inner wisdom and a soul mate life partner that meets her on all levels.

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Twenty-two-year-old Ellie Stewart would much rather forget that she can see into the past lives of those she meets, but when she crosses paths with Declan O Shea, an attractive yet troubled artist, flashes of 18th-century Britain begin to plague her mind and push Ellie to uncover the mystical connection that she and Declan share. Enlisting the help of her childhood mentor and psychic, Mrs. Dawes, Ellie is brought back to a time when she was Louisa, saintly and beautiful, and Declan was William, handsome and driven by a shameful past. Will Ellie be able to face the truth of all that happened so long ago? And if she can, will Declan believe her? Weaving between present-day Tobermory, Canada and 18th-century Tobermory, Scotland is a tale of love, loss and forgiveness across time.

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Attracted to the wrong men and don't understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life? Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men - while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions). Until one day an unsavory business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine...

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A Circle of Light is a self-help book as much about redemption as it is about grief. In 11 steps, Adele teaches readers how to transform grief into a healing experience using easy-to-follow techniques and exercises. Each step empowers readers to take charge of not only their spirituality, but also their decisions.

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God and religion come in for bad press these days. Is religion worth keeping? Are militant atheists misguided? Do religion and spirituality need each other? Is it possible to build tolerance and respect in a divided world? And can science play a role? Eleanor Stoneham explains why the answer to all these questions is a resounding 'yes'. It is true that religions need to change and become more relevant for today's needs. But supposing science also changed, shed its shackles of conventional materialistic dogma based on some shaky assumptions and looked with new eyes at religious beliefs such as prayer, distance healing and life after death? Is it possible that the latest ideas on empathy and consciousness could be narrowing the gulf between science and religion? In our quest for a more just and peaceful society, could these same ideas help us find stronger inter-religious bonds of respect and understanding at the level of heart and soul? This book will help lay persons and clergy alike relate church tradition to the wider world of science, spirituality and interfaith issues. It will challenge the 'spiritual but not religious.' It will make the faithful think. And it will test those convinced that their religion or faith is the only way to enlightenment, the only path to Truth.

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This book will guide readers to read more about hedge witchcraft as a pathway, or are already following such a path and wish to progress. It only has a little about hedge riding as this book has too small a scope to include it. Please read the accompanying book in the Pagan Portal series, Hedge Riding.

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As we consider the plight of our consumer-driven economy, it is easy to forget that money is about relationship: between individuals and between communities. In our current financial mess, it is worth reminding ourselves of community-based alternatives, and to look closely at microcredit, a model of peer lending to enable people to move out of poverty. From Bangladesh, from South Africa, from Ghana, and from the East End of London, we are given a worm's eye view of small scale work, of personal transformation, and the building of community. Small and local is still beautiful, and has much to teach us.

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If Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal have a Greek analogue, it is Nikos Dimou, one of the most fertile minds of his generation. This book is a series of 193 mostly brief, often cutting and at times satirical aphorisms about Greece and Greeks. In the postscript, Dimou writes: I have tried, simply, to articulate my observations in such a way so that serious people will find them to be serious, while less serious ones will find them less serious. I am now tortured by the possibility that the exact opposite will occur. First published in 1975, this book has been translated into French, German, Turkish and Bulgarian, and is published in Germany and France in 2012. The English translation was done by esteemed Greek-English translator, David Connoly. This book has also earned Dimou the label anti-Hellene, and he came to be known as a gadfly at best and a traitor at worst. While he is at times viciously blunt, and while many of his observations are clearly debatable, Dimou always exudes a love for Greece in his text, a love more pure, many readers have observed, than that of the most ardent (self-proclaimed) patriots.

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Despite being located on the extreme eastern boundary of Europe, and having been frequently conquered by invading people from Asia, including Arabs, Turks, Persians, Mongols, and more recently Russians, Georgians still regard themselves very much as Europeans and it is to becoming a future member state of the EU that the majority of the people now aspire. As for the traditional folk-tales from the region, one of their main characteristics is that they are packed with action: Whilst a written, 'literary' novel or short story might devote paragraphs to descriptions of people or places, these tales usually settle for an adjective or two; 'a thick impassable forest', 'a handsome stately man', or a formula such as 'not-seen-beneath-the-sun beauty'. Many of the heroes and heroines do not even have names (Hunt, 1999, p.8). Safely cocooned, or so we like to kid ourselves, in our sanitised western urban environment, we tend to take the elements for granted. However, tales from a time when the Earth was new help to jolt us out of our daily lethargy, as do the stories in this collection - a number of which have never been translated from Georgian direct into English before.

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A Bridge to the Other Side is a collection of articles and traditional folk tales that deal with our feelings about and attitudes towards Death, both our own death and that of those nearest and dearest to us. A bridge between earth and heaven, this world and the next, features in the mythology of many different peoples. For example, in Norse legends, Bifrost or Bilrost is a burning rainbow bridge between Midgard, the world, and Asgard, the realm of the gods. The bridge is known as Bilrost in the Poetic Edda; compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and as Bifrost in the Prose Edda; written in the 13th century by Snorri Stureuson. Both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda alternately refer to the bridge as Asbru (Old Norse Esirs means bridge). The Persians believed in a bridge between earth and paradise too. In his prayers the penitent in his confession would say: I am wholly without doubt in the existence of the Mazdayacnian faith; in the coming of the resurrection of the latter body; in the stepping over the bridge Chinvat; as well as in the continuance of paradise.

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When Phil Jourdan's mother died suddenly in 2009, she left behind a legacy of kindness and charity - but she also left unanswered some troubling questions. Was she, as she once claimed, a spy? Had she suffered more profoundly as a woman and parent than she'd let on? Jourdan's recollections of his struggles with psychosis, and his reconstructions of conversations with his enigmatic mother, form the core of this memoir. Psychoanalysis, poetry and confession all merge to tell the story of an ordinary woman whose death turned her into a symbol for extraordinary motherhood.

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Bard Song is a collection of poetry, mostly in medieval Welsh and Irish metres, and reflections on the nature of the Bard in early Celtic society and the role of poetry within modern Druidry and polytheism generally.

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The Sacred and the Profane is a work that combines local and global analysis to examine our age's often-talked about, but mostly misunderstood, 'mainstream subculture': the hipster. This book seeks to answer questions like, 'Why don't hipsters want to be called hipsters?' and 'Why do they act like they are different when they are just like all the other hipsters?' If you can't stand hipsters, are a hipster, or don't know what a hipster is, this book is for you.

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The Deeper Quest introduces us to philosophical concepts that were instrumental in developing our Western cultural background and deciding who we are as a people. Without knowing them we experience a personal and cultural deficit that is detrimental to present needs and those of the future. We feel lost, angry, incomplete. Regaining these concepts places us back on the path of our own evolution by giving us purpose and meaning. It also allows us to heal many of our social ills from the base up. Social problems are merely symptoms that point to our loss. As we correct who we are, they will naturally subside.

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In the last few decades, new technologies have brought composers and listeners to the brink of an era of limitless musical possibility. They stand before a vast ocean of creative potential, in which any sounds imaginable can be synthesised and pieced together into radical new styles and forms of music-making. But are musicians taking advantage of this potential? How could we go about creating and listening to new music, and why should we? Bringing the ideas of twentieth-century avant-garde composers Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage to their ultimate conclusion, Infinite Music proposes a system for imagining music based on its capacity for variation, redefining musical modernism and music itself in the process. It reveals the restrictive categories traditionally imposed on music-making, replaces them with a new vocabulary and offers new approaches to organising musical creativity. By detailing not just how music is composed but crucially how it's perceived, Infinite Music maps the future of music and the many paths towards it.

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Four guns. Four presidential assassinations. Four potential conspiracies. Four alternate histories. What are the four weapons that changed the course of American history?

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A semi-mystical immersion into wild wetland habitats: their myths, magic, and meaning

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It has been observed that the traditions, philosophies and beliefs that enjoy historical longevity are not those that remain static and unchanging, but rather those that evolve and adapt to meet the needs of different or changing societies. And that truth, of course, can be extended to religions and spiritualities that by necessity must remain relevant to peoples’ lives or become intellectual museum pieces. With topics ranging from CyberWitches to Activism, from Web Weaving to Urban Witchcraft, from the Arts to Kitchen and Solitary Witchcraft and more, What is Modern Witchcraft? considers contemporary developments in the ancient craft and discusses a number of questions and issues that are frequently raised today. What is Modern Witchcraft? is edited by Trevor Greenfield and features essays from Morgan Daimler, Annette George, Irisanya Moon, Rebecca Beattie, Philipp J. Kessler, Amie Ravenson, Rachel Patterson, Mélusine Draco, Dorothy Abrams, Arietta Bryant and Mabh Savage.

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The Shamanic Plant Medicine series acts as an introduction to specific teacher plants used by shamans in a variety of cultures to facilitate spirit communion, healing, divination and personal discovery, and which are increasingly known, used and respected in Western society by modern shamans as a means of connecting to spirit. Other books in the Shamanic Plant Medicine series include Ayahuasca: The Vine of Souls, Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers and San Pedro: The Gateway to Wisdom.

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The Shamanic Plant Medicine series acts as an introduction to specific teacher plants used by shamans in a variety of cultures to facilitate spirit communion, healing, divination and personal discovery, and which are increasingly known, used and respected in Western society by modern shamans as a means of connecting to spirit. Salvia is the shamanic plant of Mexico. It is known particularly for its divinatory powers but it also has the ability to heal and, more extraordinarily, in modern usage it provides access to inter-dimensional travel and the ability to move through time. The shamanic applications of Salvia are currently little known outside of Mexico but, along with Ketamine and Ecstasy, it has become one of the most popular 'drugs' on the planet among teenagers who have little or no understanding of how to use its powers in a positive and effective way or the potential dangers of using it recreationally. This book therefore serves as a much-needed introduction to this powerful plant.

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