My book — Touch the Earth, Kiss the Sky: Allowing the Rational Mind to Welcome Magic and Spirituality — has finally been released! Here’s an overview as well as a look at the Table of Contents and the first section of the Introduction so you can decide if you want to add it to your collection.
OVERVIEW
Touch the Earth, Kiss the Sky provides a fascinating approach to spiritual practice that integrates cutting-edge scientific theories. Following the eight stations of the sun through one year, each chapter includes “touch the earth” exercises designed to help ground your experience in nature and the seasonal cycles as well as “kiss the sky” exercises that will help you get in contact with the divine and your own inner sense of the sacred.
Science is coming closer and closer to understanding the reality of magic and the spirit world. This book explores a scientific account of consciousness and shows how it relates to magical practice, spirituality, energy and subtle realms. With the fascinating meditations and exercises found within these pages, you will develop a deeper sense of personal meaning and learn how to make magical changes in your life and the larger reality around you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
Stations of the Sun
CHAPTER TWO
Science on the Bleeding Edge
CHAPTER THREE
Magic(k)
CHAPTER FOUR
Yule—The Winter Solstice
CHAPTER FIVE
Self and Cosmos
CHAPTER SIX
Imbolc—The Winter/Spring Midpoint
CHAPTER SEVEN
Energy, Ritual, and Practice
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ostara—The Spring Equinox
CHAPTER NINE
The Temple of the Soul
CHAPTER TEN
Beltane—The Spring/Summer Midpoint
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Animism, Gods, and Offerings
CHAPTER TWELVE
Litha—Summer Solstice
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Connecting with the Land
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lammas—The Summer/Autumn Midpoint
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Taking Psi Out for a Spin
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Harvest Home—The Autumn Equinox
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Communicating with Spirits
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Samhain—The Autumn/Winter Midpoint
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Finding Your Path
INTRODUCTION
If you have often found yourself torn between science and spirituality, if you’ve felt a holy and sacred connection to the stars, to Earth, to Nature’s soaring creations but not followed your heart into a deeper psychic, poetic connection because you feared you might have to sacrifice your rationality, then I’ve written this book for you.
If you sense a depth and brilliance to life that is often veiled as you navigate your way through your daily routines in consensus reality and you want to explore that depth, to tear the veil away, but you don’t quite know how to go about doing that, then I’ve written this book for you.
If you’ve always been deeply curious about the workings of this world and think science is one of the coolest creations of the human race but the materialist conclusions of scientific orthodoxy depress you, then I’ve written this book for you.
You may already follow a particular religion or spiritual tradition but don’t feel that it really fits you. Maybe it puts religious orthodoxy over science, and that just doesn’t seem right to you. Maybe you don’t get any real sense of inspiration or connection from it, or perhaps its precepts don’t really agree with your own ideas but it gives you a spiritual community, so you stick with it anyway.
Or perhaps you have no defined spiritual path or acknowledged religion at all, though you feel the lack of some kind of higher guidance in your life. Perhaps you’re not really sure what you believe. You may have imagined going off on a retreat to think about these things and get clear on it all—someday.
But “someday” is usually a little white lie you tell yourself because there always seems to be something else to spend the time and/or money on. But you don’t need to sit in a cave in India, go on a vision quest in the forest, find shamans in Peru, or meditate on the patio of a luxury “spiritual resort” to map a path ahead that leads to fulfilling your soul’s vision for this lifetime. Nor do you need to abandon rational, logical thought to pursue spiritual goals. You can map out your own path, your unique, creative engagement with reality and the universe itself, by simply committing some time to a considered sequence of thought and practice that fits within the demands of your daily life.
My work as an astrologer—learning about people’s dreams and visions, their challenges and sorrows, their soul-level longings—has made me very aware of how many people are conflicted and uncertain about their spiritual beliefs. This is unsurprising, since the high priests of our cultural religion, science, mostly deny that there is any spiritual reality or consciousness outside of the confines of physical reality, while the high priests of the majority religions mostly say there’s only one true way—theirs, of course. But my own experiences and my conversations with others have convinced me that we all have a timeless and vibrant existence outside of physical reality—a soul, in other words—and we come into this world of time and space “trailing clouds of glory,” with a plan for that soul to create, grow, and expand its awareness.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time studying science, both formally, in college and grad school, and informally, through reading and classes. I think it’s one of the most remarkable and useful inventions of the human mind—even though we do tend to make a religion out of it, in direct contravention of its own tenets. I’ve also been actively pursuing my own spiritual journey for well over half a century. I’ve managed to learn a few things as I stumbled along, looking for and finding a synthesis of science and spirituality that makes sense to me.
So I can say with some certainty that to explore the sacred connections you sense, to expand your awareness into the realm of spirit requires only your curiosity and a determination to follow where reason, experience, intuition, and results lead you. There are things you’ll need to spend some time thinking about and things you’ll need to actually do. (Experience is important.) This book offers some fruitful lines of intellectual investigation, some experiential and spiritual practices, and a framework for a year of spiritual study and exploration woven around the cycles of the Sun and natural seasonal changes. Hopefully, by the end of the year you will have begun to uncover an intellectually and emotionally satisfying way of approaching your daily life with a greater spiritual awareness and a greater sense of joy and fulfillment.
This is also a book about magic—about influencing and changing the physical world through subtle energies of Consciousness and connection. We’ll look at both the theory and practice of magic as well as how it changes us and the world around us.
Personally, I structure my spiritual life around a path that might be described as “Eclectic Wicca.” Wicca’s basic structure of the seasons—the Sabbats, the Wheel of the Year—define my spiritual year, and I still work with many of Wicca’s symbols, myths, and magical techniques, though the many other magical systems, philosophies, and religions I’ve studied are incorporated into my path as well. Fortunately, Wicca’s underlying structure is flexible enough to allow for this.
But this is not a book about Wicca. After investigating a number of Earth-based religions that fall under the umbrella of modern Paganism, inquiring into most of the world’s great religions and exploring some of them in depth, studying under teachers in indigenous and modern shamanic traditions, learning magic from talented magicians, books, and personal experience, the conclusion I have come to is that each one of us must find our own way through the Great Mystery—the origins and meaning of life.
Discovering our own way involves work we must do to determine our personal answers to the eternal question of “How should I live?” It involves work we must do in order to learn to use the power of our free will, to come to full awareness of our soul’s plan for this lifetime, to create change within this shared reality of time and space. It involves facing our earthly lives head on, with courage, gratitude, curiosity, an open heart, and a willingness to create change as we make the daily choices that form our lives.
This is what our search for a spiritual path boils down to. What we do, what we say, even what we think—these are choices we make, every hour of every day. If we do not want our choices to be driven by unconscious, karmic forces, we need to create an intellectual and spiritual foundation on which we build our lives so that we create and choose consciously.
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Want to read more? Hopefully it’s available at your local bookstore, but if not, you can purchase it from Llewellyn directly, or on Amazon and other online outlets as well.
