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Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America: The Lost Kingdoms of the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippians, and Anasazi
Frank Joseph
$18 QP, 9781591431077, Bear & Company www.bearandcompanybooks.com

Using a combination of historical records, archaeological evidence, and language remnants found in present Native American groups, this book offers a close examination of four civilizations that flourished in America, roughly from 1200 B.C. to the 1300s A.D. The result is a “mosaic of proofs that amount in the aggregate to a prehistoric drama as rich as it is unsuspected.” It is a drama that includes structured social systems, engineering marvels, human sacrifice, genocide, earth upheavals, and internal decay. Early written accounts include descriptions of manmade features throughout the landscape, many of which were destroyed when land was leveled for agriculture and the contents of many mounds were sold or dispersed as souvenirs. These included skeletons, artifacts, and cultural anomalies, many of which can be dated and traced to their probable inspiration or even source in Japan and Europe.

For each of the four kingdoms, the author opens with a section detailing exploration into the nature of its culture, the physical area it covered, its relation to other native tribes, and its years of existence. Additional sections then establish the origin of each kingdom, the reasons for its expansion into North America, its similarities in culture and architecture to its place of origin, and the reasons for its decline. The Adena, for example, are thus understood to have been a society of settled farmers, far-ranging traders, innovative artisans, and public works engineers whose society survived for 1700 years, and the Kelts from Europe are traced to the Ohio Valley where they became a Mound Builder culture, the Hopewells, whose metaphysical focus led them to sculpt the landscape to be viewed from above. Each of the cultures then died out as a result of climate change, internal collapse, or conquest by other alien cultures. The Anasazi society, whose society depended on the proper distribution of water and who built massive hydraulic systems, collapsed when their water sources literally dried up.

The author, who has written four other books and is editor of Ancient American magazine, suggests that a study of these early kingdoms, all of which died out because of internal decay and reliance on limited resources, might serve as cautionary tales for our present day. His carefully researched details, together with his bibliography of over 300 sources, will appeal to readers and researchers interested in accounts of early advanced civilizations often omitted from standard historical study. – Richard D. Wright, Tranquil Things, Derby Line, Vt.

This book, which has to do with the multi-dimensionality of life on this planet, is based primarily on the author’s own experiences working with nature spirits. Marko Pogacnik, whose previous books include Touching the Breath of Gaia and Healing the Heart of the Earth, finds that “many of the figures in the old legends are above all an expression of distorted human thinking rather than true stories about elementals and their qualities.” First published in 1997, the present edition contains 65 new commentaries that update discoveries and understandings since the earlier edition. In addition, it contains a rewritten introduction and a new last chapter, “In the Whirlpool of Change.”

According to the author, as spiritual beings elementals “are free from dense form, but human consciousness can comprehend them only if they take on a specific shape through which they can be identified.” Their variety, based on their level of unfoldment, includes gnomes, who enliven planetary matters; dwarfs, who maintain fertility in the earth; fauns, who represent the intelligence of individual trees; earth elementals such as the crone and sage, Pan, sylphs and fairies; and water and fire elementals. The first chapter follows the author’s account of his entrance into the unknown world of elementals, while other chapters cover the realm of elemental beings, the goddess and her dwarfs, classifications in the elemental world, the evolution of elemental realms, nature temples, and personal elementals of animals and human beings. The author includes 56 free-form drawings representing his perception of elemental beings.

Readers interested in nature spirits and other realms of intelligence in nature will enjoy the author’s detailed accounts of his experiences communicating with these other realms, especially since they often shed light on ways to bring our present misalignment with nature back into proper harmony. – Richard D. Wright. Tranquil Things, Derby Line, Vt.

Jacob Needleman has been a highly regarded professor of philosophy at San FranciscoStateUniversity for most of his teaching career and, covering a wide variety of esoteric traditions, has written 14 books including Why Can’t We Be Good, The American Soul, Lost Christianity, and The New Religions. What Is God? traces his lifetime quest toward understanding the nature of the Divine, a quest that began in his youth and continued through graduate studies, classroom exchanges and breakthroughs, meetings with a wide assortment of people, explorations into the heart of many spiritual traditions, and evidently more than a few sleepless nights. The understanding reached is that “It does not matter whether we deny or affirm the existence of what the conventional world calls God. What matters in only that we are deeply and authentically concerned with questions of ultimate reality and ultimate value.”

Many of his experiences are deeply moving, and some of them reflect upon his own limitations. For example, he thinks back to early graduate days as a budding philosopher when he thought he knew a thing or two and how, with a few well-chosen questions, the good Zen master D. T. Suzuki reduced the young graduate student’s edifice of thought to rubble. The questions turned out to be ones that became basic to Needleman’s lifetime of study as he emerged from the rigidity of his intellectual approach. He also tells how his reading of various religious texts changed over time as he slowly uncovered their essential unity of meaning, so that eventually he understood that “God cannot be known or approached beyond a certain point by the ordinary self” because of what he terms metaphysical amnesia, a state that he says explains the endless conflict and horror in all aspects of human life. He further states that “We do not live out lives; we are lived and we may die without ever having awakened to what we really are.” An absolutely essential part of awakening, he understands, is inner development, such as that used in the system developed by Gurdjieff, which must be carried out with an absolute degree of attention.

Although the subject matter may at times seem challenging to the casual reader, the author’s informal, chatty style makes it appealing to anyone interested in exploring spiritual matters and following one distinguished writer’s quest to develop some understanding of at least a trace of the essential nature of the Divine. – Richard D. Wright, Tranquil Things, Derby Line, Vt.

A restored classic—this one has truly withstood the test of time. The original copyright date is 1908. (I discovered it in the late 1980s.) This new edition is based on the earliest existing version (1911). It has been reformatted but otherwise is published intact.

Levi Dowling was a Church of Christ pastor and a Civil War chaplain for the Union Army. Schooled in New Thought and homeopathic medicine, he was also a publisher of religious books. He “channeled” this book from the Akashic records while in trance. Readers will find many similarities to the traditional Christian gospels, but it was called The Aquarian Gospel because it was meant to carry the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings into the Age of Aquarius. (“And then I heard the Aquarian Cherubim and Seraphim proclaim the Gospel of the coming Age … And then the goddess Wisdom spoke, and with her hands outstretched she poured the benedictions of the Holy Breath upon the rulers of Aquarius. I may not write the words she spoke, but I may tell the Gospel of the coming age … This Gospel I will tell, and I will sing this song in every land, to all the people, tribes and tongues of earth.”)

I’ve always thought that The Aquarian Gospel is the New Testament with the wisdom teachings left in. (“And then the spirit begged that he might go into the body of a dog that stood near by./But Jesus said, Why harm the helpless dog? Its life is just as dear to it as mine to me./It is not yours to throw the burden of your sin on any living thing./By your own deeds and evil thoughts you have brought all these perils on yourself. You have hard problems to be solved; but you must solve them for yourself.” I still refer to it often when I teach. I’m delighted to have this new, restored edition on my shelf. —Anna Jedrziewski, www.SpiritConnectionNewYork.org, New York, N.Y.

The author of this book, a trained modern dancer and Jungian therapist, is uniquely qualified to explore the relationship between physical development and the development of self/Self, as well as the use of physical movement to channel divine energy. Using dancers and dance training, she explores the connection between the body and the psyche and the ability to reach a transcendent balance. (“When I was studying analytical psychology and learned that Jung felt a third world war might be avoided if enough people could stand the tension of the opposites within themselves, I was reminded of this difficult work to achieve balance within my own body.”)

Because the subject is dance, the issues of dance as an expression of men’s idealized version of women versus women’s natural sense of themselves is a prime topic. (“Even now it is difficult for an individual woman to make her own way—to find herself—in the forest of anima projections which grasp for her ankles like the tangle roots and vines of a primeval forest. A man’s unconsciousness of his inner feminine side, coupled with a woman’s weak consciousness of herself, weaves an almost impenetrable thicket similar to the one surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The time has come for a path to be opened through the thicket.”)

I am generally a big fan of Inner City Books. This one did not disappoint. A serious study within the field of depth psychology, it is written plainly and in language a non-therapist can easily understand. I consider it a must-read for yoga instructors, sports trainers, and physical therapists. —Anna Jedrziewski, www.SpiritConnectionNewYork.org, New York, N.Y.

The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards
Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa
$26.95 QP, 9781594772634, Destiny Books, www.destinybooks.com

The beginning of this book reads like a sophisticated treasure-hunt adventure. It also happens to include a history of tarot cards, which will be invaluable to people who are studying tarot seriously. It might, however, be a little too much information for the novice. Not to worry. Beginners can start at the end of the book, Part Five, The Reading of the Tarot. It contains detailed instructions with examples.

Those of us who came of age during the 60’s will remember Jodorowsky as the creator of the film, El Topo. He brings the same sense of mystery and magic to this book. Combining that with his skills as a psychotherapist, and with the help of his co-teacher Marianne Costa, he has created a thorough and insightful new work about tarot. As the title indicates, the message is always to seek insight and growth through the cards, and to treat them with the respect a sacred text deserves. Jodorowsky recounts that at one point he asked the Tarot “What kind of power are you able to give me?” and he heard the Tarot answer that “You should acquire only the power of helping others. An art that does not heal is not an art.” The tarot is meant to mirror and challenge and that is the approach this book takes.

It is not a book for “dabblers,” but it will be a good investment for anyone seeking a reference they can go back to over and over again as they gain experience with the cards. Jodorowsky uses cards from the beautifully reconstructed Tarot of Marseille, published by Camoin Éditions, throughout the book. —Anna Jedrziewski, www.SpiritConnectionNewYork.org, New York, N.Y.

The Truth About Psychics–What’s Real, What’s Not, and How to Tell the Difference
Sylvia Brown
$23.99 HC, 978143914720, Fireside, www.simonandschuster.com

Although psychic Sylvia Browne has written more than 50 books, this was my introduction to her writing and an impressive one at that.

The Truth About Psychics is a must for anyone considering seeing a psychic as well as an excellent reference for those working with psychic phenomena. As a certified past life regression therapist, I found especially valuable information in chapter nine on past lives that I have already incorporated into my own practice.

Brown reveals ways in which fraudulent mediums and other “psychic” workers can maneuver situations to convince the vulnerable “want- to- believer” that the effect is real. This information is particularly valuable for the reader who is in a state of grief and wants to believe someone can connect him/her with a deceased loved one.

The book is written in three parts. Part I is the writer’s own spiritual odyssey into the unexplained. This is especially comforting for readers who may be discovering psychic talents of their own and wondering, as often happens, if they are going crazy. The author assures the reader she felt the same until she learned she was not crazy but normal with paranormal abilities.

Part II, The Tricks of the Trade, explains a variety of divination techniques, among them astrology, numerology, palmistry, psychometry, and remote viewing with the author’s comments on which are good, which are bogus, and which can actually be dangerous.

Part III, What’s Real, What’s Not, and How To Tell the Difference, explains how fraudulent “psychics” create their effects, along with offering tools for readers to develop their own spiritual arsenal. It includes several easy-to-do psychic experiments, a script one can use to safely uncover his/her own past lives, and an exercise (that this reader tried with good results) called The Lab, which is a self-health mental exercise.

In 240 pages, Browne manages to put together a primer of pretty much everything readers would want to know about psychics, whether they are working with psychic phenomena or are considering seeing a medium or other type of psychic for resolution to a problem.

Erich von Daniken is well known as the author of Chariots of the Gods. In this book he continues the story of mysterious objects and how they tend to lead us to believe there were extraterrestrials on Earth that contributed greatly to the development of human civilization. This time he focuses on ancient writings. Von Daniken explains how the Voynich Manuscript, the Crespi plates in Ecuador, stones in Glozel (France), and stone relics in Illinois are connected. He claims they all have similar symbols engraved or written on them. They are all untranslated as of yet, but his theory indicates they are all related. Erich then goes on to relate how both the Book of Enoch and the Book of Mormon talk about tablets or books of metal or stone that are divinely revealed to the authors who are the only ones able to decipher them.

Von Daniken proposes that those untranslatable stone and metal plates that have been found often underground (as was the case with the Mormon metal plates) could be the very writings of the so-called “gods” of the ancients that then became a basis for religious texts and beliefs. He also infers that these “gods” could easily be extraterrestrials. Erich makes sure to let us know he’s not referring to the Supreme Creator, which must be a much greater Source than the “gods” who came to Earth (those who made man in their image). He elaborates a bit too much about his trying times with Juan Moricz in Ecuador who claimed to have discovered a cache of metal plates in a cave. Von Daniken felt that he had to defend himself to keep his good name in that situation and spends a lot of time explaining himself to the reader. Otherwise, this book contains a great deal of amazing information that can help prepare us for the time when we must accept that “Divine” does not necessarily mean “not humanoid.” And “heaven” could mean “mothership!”

Fine Print Online--February 22, 2010