The Goddess and the Shaman: The Art & Science of Magical Healing by J.A. Kent

“I discovered the presence of a mystical and magical tradition that was largely concealed within our culture that had its roots in ancient pre-Christian Paganism, alchemy, Hermetic philosophy, the holy Qabalah, and elements of Greek, Egyptian, and Gnostic mysticism. It is generally referred to as the Western magical tradition. I tend to see it as the lost shaman tradition of the West.” -From the Preface

J.A. Kent, PhD, examines various occult and healing practices from a variety of traditions by interviewing practitioners as well as providing case studies of her own patients in order to present, what I can only call, her doctoral thesis of her personal magical paradigm. Her paradigm is the title of her book, The Goddess and the Shaman.

“There are strong social and medical pressures in Western-style thinking that regard those who have psychic experiences to be either fraudulent or psychotic.” pg 16

Let me briefly explain this paradigm, though I highly recommend reading the book to get it in Kent’s own words.

“The Goddess” is another name for what Kent calls the “Elphame,” essentially the other non-physical worlds that exist either alongside or on top of (depending upon who you speak to) our normal every day world. “The shaman” are the lightworkers and healers who explore these realms for various reasons including healing others of sicknesses both of the body and spirit.

I think it took a great deal of bravery to write a book like this, especially with the prevailing worldviews at work today. Well done, J.A. Kent!

The world is an enchanted, mysterious, and magical place that will reveal its many secret powers and energies to those who have the persistence and determination to unlock them.” pg 64

The trouble with spiritual healing or any type of work in the Elphame, Goddess, or whatever you want to call it, is that the practitioner exits the consensual reality of the every day world and enters non-consensual reality- the abode of the dreamers, lovers, poets, musicians, mad, etc. I have come to believe that the Western world, Western medicine especially, is not kind to those who venture outside the bounds of the normal.

Kent discusses this in depth in multiple places of this book. Suffers who could find no mundane explanation for their troubles turn to her in order to find some relief. And, encouragingly, many found healing.

“Ultimately they rejected the reductionist psychiatric explanation and embarked on their own magical journey of healing.” pg 159

Recommended for therapists and spiritual healers who are looking for more ideas about how to assist those who come to them seeking help. I enjoyed this book very much.

Thanks for reading!

The Book of Hedge Druidry: A Complete Guide for the Solitary Seeker by Joanna van der Hoeven

Joanna van der Hoeven, a practicing Druid, has written an excellent introduction for anyone interested in creating their own similar spiritual path.

The book has four parts: Theory, Practice, Study, and Skills and Technique

The first part, Theory, discusses various aspects of Druidry including the mysterious Awen, the role of gods and ancestors, the three realms, the world tree, the wheel of the year, the cycles of the moon and more.

“Druidry is the quest to find our place in the world and to work in the world in balance and harmony.” pg 2

Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Pexels.com

I loved how the author presented this section, which could have been mammoth, very succinctly. She gives so many aspects of the practice because she’s encouraging readers to find the parts that work for them. You don’t have to embrace everything, only what speaks to you.

The second part, Practice, outlines various rites and rituals to incorporate one’s practice into daily life.

She talks about how the ancient practice of Druidry has been lost and how practitioners today are creating their own versions of what that might have looked like. I liked that she emphasizes that unbroken lineage doesn’t lend credence to the practice as much as personal exploration and empowerment. Again, she encourages readers to make these rituals their own.

“We don’t know what ancient Druids really did, nor do we wish to emulate them in every aspect. We seek to find out as much as we can and learn from it, thereby creating wisdom in our being.” pg 66

The third part, Study, looks into herblore, ogham (a type of alphabet that can be used like runes), and spellcraft. Practitioners are encouraged to study and learn these various topics in order to deepen their knowledge.

The final part, Skills and Technique, was the most interesting to me. In it, Joanna van der Hoeven discusses ethics, peace, voice, body and movement, as well as leadership roles.

I found the topics of ethics and peace to be timely.

“We cannot control how others behave. We only have control over how we behave in the world, how we act and react to others. We can lessen our reaction to others to a more intentional way of being through mindfulness of our thoughts, our bodies, and the world around us.” pg 296

Change ultimately starts at the individual level and goes from there. Thank you, Joanna, for the reminder.

Highly recommended for spiritual seekers who may be looking for an earth-based spiritual practice.

Find Your Goddess: How to Manifest the Power and Wisdom of the Ancient Goddesses in Your Everyday Life by Skye Alexander

Find Your Goddess by Skye Alexander is a compendium of goddesses and their various aspects as well as attributions from all over the world. She covers the well-known goddesses from the Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Norse pantheons, and also delves into the lesser known (at least to me) Shinto, Hindu, and Native American deities.

And more.

Some of the entries have corresponding artwork opposite the deity information- but not all. I wish every listing had some artwork because, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Though I picked this book up for entertainment’s sake, I could see this being a useful tome for spiritual seekers who are looking for a tradition that fits their inner reality.

On a different note, I could see gamers discovering the information contained in Find Your Goddess quite handy. Anyone looking to roleplay characters in their tabletop games or dungeon masters who want to craft a scene with new (to players) world powers could utilize this book.

This could also be a useful reference book for pagans on the forefront of recreating rituals and knowledge bases from long ago. I find it interesting that once upon a time the goddesses in this book were recognized and worshipped, and now society has forgotten not just about the deity herself but also how she was honored or her role in keeping civilization together.

Many of the goddesses have roles in the home or schools- goddesses of the hearth, learning or heart. But some have spheres of influence that were primarily held by male gods, at least in the western world.

One of these that comes readily to mind is Amaterasu Ōmikami, a goddess of the sun and the Japanese imperial family. The Greek and Roman god Apollo has always occupied that role in my classically-educated mind.

*Japanese Sun goddess Amaterasu emerging from a cave.*

I enjoy considering other viewpoints because my own biases come to the forefront when I do so. Though I may not be able to rid myself completely of these biases, knowledge and wisdom helps me to see the blind spots. My hope is to know where they reside so I may easily brush them aside when they raise their ugly heads.

Highly recommended for pagans, spiritual seekers or readers with a curious mind, like me.

Thanks for reading!

Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images by Sara Salvadori

“What I do not see I do not know,” an elderly Hildegard wrote to the Cistercian monk Guibert of Gembloux, describing the visions from which she gained her knowledge of the cosmic, human and divine dimension, from childhood until the end of her life.” From the preface.

Hildegard von Bingen, born 1098-died 1179, was a female mystic of the Christian tradition. She had extraordinary visions, which she recorded, and in her later years, she shared with others.

“The ‘Sybil of the Rhine‘ appears to us in the 21st century as a real woman who developed the many aspects of her femininity: worldly and joyous, learned and visionary, profoundly human yet open to the divine, inclined to dance, friendship and leadership.” pg 6

But this is not all Hildegard accomplished. She also composed the music she heard in these visions. She traveled extensively at a time when travel was not a simple task in order to bring together communities of believers.

All in all, Hildegard was a pretty cool lady who experienced fairly trippy visions.

“Our historical human condition enables us to appreciate her fascinating, layered personality, which made her equally at home with plants and flowers, angelic powers and the virtues that courted them; and capable of dialoging with the powerful of the Earth both inside and outside the Church, without feeling in any way intimidated or inferior.” pg 7

The visions themselves are organized into sections. Hildegard gave each a title, summarized list of chapters, description, explanation and Biblical passages to go along with each. In a time when very few were literate, Hildegard’s illustrated visions were used as teaching tools, similar to medieval bestiaries. (Which I learned about here: Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World)

The colorful visions of Hildegard are meant to be experienced rather than enjoyed second-hand, so I won’t bore you with extensive descriptions about them. But I will share my impression of her work.

I found Hildegard to be transportive. I didn’t understand all of them, but the images speak to my subconscious mind through their beauty and repetitive patterns. “Look at the mystery of existence,” they seem to say.

I think its fascinating that Hildegard was a female mystic in a tradition where the divine feminine was relegated to a backseat role. (No offense meant to the tradition by the way, just an observation.) It makes me wonder where such mystics are today, if they exist.

And if they do, would we listen and learn from them like Hildegard? Or dismiss their experience as a brain malfunction and put them on medication.

Something to consider. Highly recommended for spiritual seekers.

Thanks for reading!

On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious by Douglas E. Harding

Douglas Harding had a strange experience when he was a young man. As he was hiking in the Himalayas, Harding had a moment he would later describe as of “no thought”, and where he perceived his body as having no head. In addition, he had a vision of his body as a house with a single window, but inside the house, there was nothing looking out at the world.

That nothingness is where Harding envisioned his consciousness resides.

Trippy, I thought. If that had happened to me, I might have been pretty freaked out.

Photo by Asep Syaeful Bahri on Pexels.com

Not necessarily so for Harding, who described the experience as incredibly peaceful and enlightening. When he came back from this experience, he applied his insight to various Eastern schools of philosophy, notably Zen.

The result is this book- a discussion of not only what happened to him, but an examination of consciousness itself. Where does consciousness reside? Where is the ‘me’ of our constant thoughts and emotions?

It’s somewhat of a winding path to get there, but Harding eventually points to the idea that consciousness is space in which reality is perceived.

When I first hopped into this book, I thought, how ridiculous. We all have heads attached to our necks. We can see them and feel them. Not only that, we can see and feel the heads of other people if we really wanted to.

Harding takes this idea of ‘seeing’ and ‘touch,’ and questions what it is that people actually perceive. Yes, he says, you can see your head in a mirror. But that is a reflection of your head and not the head itself.

Everybody says these constructs are the thing itself. However, as Harding points out, they’re not really, are they? If you look down your own face, you can usually ‘see’ your nose as a series of splotches and shapes. Is that your nose though, or just splotches?

And he goes on from there.

By the end of the book, I was nodding my head a little and felt like I could understand something of what he was saying. But now that I’m trying to write a portion of it down, it just sounds like nonsense.

Perhaps this is a book to be experienced rather than described. Rather, I might humbly suggest, like consciousness itself?

Recommended for spiritual seekers or anybody who enjoys pondering koans.

Thanks for reading!

Educated by Tara Westover

Educated is a gripping memoir by Tara Westover about her unconventional upbringing in remote Idaho, how she left that life, and discovered both physical and emotional freedom through a world class education.

“(My father) never told me what to do if I left the mountain, if I crossed oceans and continents and found myself in strange terrain, where I could no longer search the horizon… He never told me how I’d know when it was time to come home.”‘

This not a simplistic life story and Tara takes the time to look at what happened as truthfully and clearly as she can. This has led her to some difficult conclusions.

For example, Tara’s father embraced a survivalist lifestyle not only because of his religious convictions, but also because of a deep-seated paranoia. It wasn’t until Tara attended a college level psychology class that she realized her father’s particular way of thinking could be indicative of a mental disorder.

In addition to his erratic and paranoid behavior, the conservative nature of her father’s view on the roles for women has had a long-lasting impact on Tara. It led her to minimize physical abuse that took place in her childhood home as well as struggle to find her own place in the world. And, until a life-changing accident affects her father’s health permanently, Tara never saw her mother as an equal in her parents’ relationship, which, in turn, seriously affected how she viewed herself in relationship to the people around her.

All of the various events and family members Tara describes have far reaching consequences for her eventual life away from her family’s mountain home. Her journey from the past to the future was extraordinary and makes for a great read.

I had heard a lot of bookish chatter about Educated over the last two years and was skeptical about how good it might actually be. Those fears were ill founded- I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir, reading it in only a handful of days. I highly recommend it.

There are some trigger warnings for readers who have struggled with mental disorders or been victims of physical abuse. This book also contains some slightly graphic descriptions of life threatening injuries.

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman

Authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman examine archaeological evidence in an effort to shine further light on the writing and creation of the first five books of the old testament of the Bible or the Pentateuch.

From a historical perspective, this book was fascinating to me.

“Recent developments in archaeology have finally allowed us to bridge the gap between the study of biblical texts and the archaeological finds. We can now see that the Bible is – along with distinctive pottery forms, architectural styles, and Hebrew inscriptions – a characteristic artifact that tells a great deal about the society in which it was produced. pg 22, ebook

This was the first time I had read a non-fiction book about the actual history of events and leaders from the Bible rather than a theological interpretation. This may have been one of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much, but, despite my inexperience with books on such topics, I still believe it is very well done.

The Bible Unearthed could be a challenging read for some. For example, it doesn’t hesitate to look at potential political reasons for why the Bible was written and constructed in the manner that it was.

The authors also don’t shy away from discussing when there is a lack of historical evidence for long-held assumptions or ideas.

“As far as we can see on the basis of the archaeological surveys, Judah remained relatively empty of permanent population, quite isolated, and very marginal right up to and past the presumed time of David and Solomon, with no major urban centers and with no pronounced hierarchy of hamlets, villages, and towns.” pg 132

Religion doesn’t seem to be a topic that invites inspection or examination. This book does, in my opinion, a brilliant job of looking at only the evidence.

The Buddhist on Death Row by David Sheff

David Sheff examines the life and spiritual transformation of Jarvis Jay Masters, a man who has spent years on death row and in solitary confinement for a crime he says he didn’t commit.

“Even if Masters was innocent, I didn’t know what to think about the claims that he was, as his supporters described him, an enlightened Buddhist practitioner who had changed and saved lives.”

It is a powerful non-fiction account not only because Masters is honest and open about how he came to be where he is today, but because the spiritual lessons he has discovered throughout his experience are applicable for all of us. You don’t have to be sitting in a literal prison to feel like you’re locked in a cell and can’t get out.

The mind and heart can create suffering wherever in the world you are.

“Set in a place of unremitting violence, insanity, confusion, and rage, Masters’s story traverses the haunted caverns and tributaries of loneliness, despair, trauma, and other suffering- terrain we all know too well- and arrives at healing, meaning, and wisdom.”

I don’t think you need to be a practitioner of Buddhism to appreciate the wisdom in this book. Spiritual lessons like the knowledge that can be found in self awareness and how to obtain freedom from suffering can be helpful for all of us.

I enjoyed the book so much that I read it in only a few sittings.

The lama wrote that all people have been sentenced to death- in that way, Jarvis wasn’t unique. … “We all live in a prison, and we all hold the key,” Chagdud Tulku wrote.

Highly recommended for spiritual seekers of all types.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free digital copy of this book.

Masks of Misrule: The Horned God and His Cult in Europe by Nigel Jackson

My mind has been going in circles as I’ve pondered, for days, how to review this book. It is a poorly organized and bewildering publication that could be tremendously important for pagans or religious scholars who are looking for information about The Horned God.

“The Knell of Inbetweenness hath been struck,
The Bell of MISRULE soundeth;
Reverberating the Thirteen Angles,
Echoing through the Nine Spheres”

It begins with a foreword by Michael Howard speaking of the scarcity of information about a male god within the existing neo-pagan revival movement. Then, the author, Nigel Jackson, goes into what could almost be called a tirade against established religions and the current neo-pagan movement in a chapter entitled, “In the Sign of the Horns.”

“The old time is passed away and the ‘age between the ages’ is begun: the Aionic Twilight falleth over the world and the day of the cross and the mitre is wholly done with.” pg 11

Honestly, that type of tribalism and fear-mongering is a poor look for any type of spiritual movement. Why immediately alienate readers from other spiritual paths who are coming to your materials with an open mind and a willingness to learn?

Photo by Vladyslav Dushenkovskyi on Pexels.com

Despite his initial hostility, Nigel Jackson quickly turns his attention to what he believes are different aspects of a male pagan god, throughout history, and includes various rituals to invoke this ancient being.

As I mentioned earlier, it is a bewildering hodge-podge of material with only the thinnest of connecting threads between. Newcomers to occult matters or pagan practices may lose their way within the quickly shifting time periods, places, names and associated mythologies.

However, I found information in “Chapter Three: Cycles of the Midnight Hunt” and “Chapter Seven: Wudewasa, the Knowledge of the Green Man” that was completely new to me and interesting.

“It was held that when nocturnal thunder broke over the wildwood and the forked lightning-flash clove the darkness and the night-tempest roared and tossed the boughs, that the wild host of Woodwoses came forth in primal panoply, raging through the hoary oaks and pines, their eldritch voices mingling with the storm’s tumult.” pg 107

The printing of Masks of Misrule is a travesty for any lover of books. The font is irregular and fades, seemingly at random, within the text. The cover is ridiculous and does nothing to convey the seriousness with which the author treats his subject.

But if you set all of these concerns aside, some of the mythology contained within this book is entirely original, at least to me, and could be incredibly useful for seekers who are looking for a new movement within paganism that celebrates the male side of nature.

Thanks for reading!

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Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Category: Dewey Decimal 200s

The Goddess and the Shaman: The Art & Science of Magical Healing by J.A. Kent

The Book of Hedge Druidry: A Complete Guide for the Solitary Seeker by Joanna van der Hoeven

Find Your Goddess: How to Manifest the Power and Wisdom of the Ancient Goddesses in Your Everyday Life by Skye Alexander

Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images by Sara Salvadori

On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious by Douglas E. Harding

Educated by Tara Westover

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman

The Buddhist on Death Row by David Sheff

Masks of Misrule: The Horned God and His Cult in Europe by Nigel Jackson

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