Magical States Of Consciousness

Available Once Again—the Groundbreaking Guide to Qabalistic Pathworking Pathworking is one of the most powerful techniques employed in the practical Qabalah, the core of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Llewellyn is pleased to bring back—by popular demand—Magical States of Consciousness, the classic text by renowned magicians Osborne Phillips and the late Melita Denning that first made the practice of pathworking widely available. Revealed here are the methods by which deep dimensions of the human psyche may be reached—dimensions that give you access to profound knowledge and the power of creation. Ascend the Tree of Life to enter the Sphere of Tiphareth, the seat of the Higher Self. Train your mind and imagination, enhance your physical and emotional health, gain knowledge and spiritual initiation, experience adventure and self-empowerment—all through Qabalistic pathworking. Designed for both the beginner and the established mage, this sought-after book includes the complete narrative texts for the inward journeys of classic pathworking. Plus, mandalas are included that serve as gateways to altered states of consciousness and magical images of the Sephirothic archetypes—the sources of mystical power which exist not only cosmically but in the depths of each person's own being.

How does a mind think magically? The research documented in this book is one answer that allows the disciplines of anthropology and neurobiology to come together to reveal a largely hidden dynamic of magic. Magic gets to the very heart of some theoretical and methodological difficulties encountered in the social and natural sciences, especially to do with issues of rationality. This book examines magic head-on, not through its instrumental aspects but as an orientation of consciousness. Magical consciousness is affective, associative and synchronistic, shaped through individual experience within a particular environment. This work focuses on an in-depth case study using the anthropologist’s own experience gained through years of anthropological fieldwork with British practitioners of magic. As an ethnographic view, it is an intimate study of the way in which the cognitive architecture of a mind engages the emotions and imagination in a pattern of meanings related to childhood experiences, spiritual communications and the environment. Although the detail of the involvement in magical consciousness presented here is necessarily specific, the central tenets of modus operandi is common to magical thought in general, and can be applied to cross-cultural analyses to increase understanding of this ubiquitous human phenomenon.

In Meta-Magick: The Book of Atem, Philip H. Farber combines traditional ritual sensibilities with contemporary concepts of neurolinguistics and memetics to create a unique entity - Atem. In this instance, the essence of an entity is encoded in a book and activated by the reader. At the same time, the book is a comprehensive manual of evocation, containing dozens of easy-to-follow rituals and exercises for exploring and creating magical entities of every sort. Farber teaches readers to wake up from their habitual trance, to reprogram themselves to stand in the Mystery without unnecessary mystification. This supercharged fusion of tried-and-true magical and psychological techniques moves beyond trauma, healing, and recovery into self-fulfillment and self-transformation. Combining both disciplines with methods such as intentionality, autohypnosis, visualization, personification, and experiential journeys, Farber creates a powerful system that opens the way to peak experiences, self-knowledge, even cosmic consciousness. Rather than importing standardized healing images, readers learn to create their own emergent metaphors, their own creative strengths and flexible freedom.

In this thought-provoking new book, Bruce Lerro offers a speculative reconstruction of the sacred beliefs and practices of cultures existing between 30,000 and 500 B.C.E. Lerro describes how material changes in various social formations--including hunting-gathering bands and horticulturalists in villages--were responsible for the shift from magic to realism, from the belief in earth spirits to faith in sky gods. Drawing from such diverse theorists as Marx and Engels, Vygotsky, Piaget, and George Herbert Mead, Lerro critiques and transforms mechanical, humanistic, new age, and countercultural perspectives on the history of sacred traditions. This study of comparative religion and mythology has important applications for the fields of archaeology, evolutionary anthropology, sociology, political science, and comparative psychology.

Planetary magick lies at the root of all astrological, alchemical, and Qabalistic lore. Although the planetary powers of the cosmos are far beyond our intervention, their correspondences in the depths of the psyche are within our reach through certain special meditative and ritual methods.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Consciousness, the last great mystery for science, remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, whilst also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.