Wisdom Traditions

Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death.

The Ancients lived by a feminine cosmology of creation, where everything was birthed and dissolved through a sacred universal Womb. Within each of us, whether female or male, lies a holographic blueprint of this Womb of Creation, connecting us to the Web of Life. By awakening your spiritual Womb, the holy of holies within the temple of your body, you can reconnect to the transformative energy of Womb Consciousness and reclaim your sacred powers of creation and love.

In this new translation of the Gospel of Thomas, Leloup shows that the Jesus recorded by the "infinitely skeptical and infinitely believing" Thomas has much in common with gnostics of non-dualistic schools. Like them, Jesus preaches the coming of a new man, the genesis of the man of knowledge. In this gospel, Jesus describes a journey from limited to unlimited consciousness. The Jesus of Thomas invites us to drink deeply from the well of knowledge within, not so that we may become good Christians but so we may attain the self-knowledge that will make each of us, too, a Christ.

This audiobook is about connecting with nature and nature beings to help heal us and the earth. By communing and musing with nature, we learn how to speak to the spirit that lives in all things, bringing balance to us and the planet. By tapping into the feminine wisdom of the earth, we evoke a deep sense of belonging with the natural world and cultivate our inner landscape, planting the seeds for harmony and a natural state of joy.

"Drawing on resources as diverse as Sufism, Benedictine Monasticism, the Gurdjieff Work, and the string theory of modern physics, Cynthia Bourgeault has crafted her own unique vision of the Wisdom way in this very accessible book, nicely balanced between concept and practice." (Gerald May, senior fellow, Shalem Institute, and author, Addiction and Grace and Will and Spirit)

Reveals how these scientists, doctors, therapists, and teachers have applied their entheogenic experiences in their professions, leading to therapeutic advancements, scientific discoveries, and healing for thousands.

With his creation of the infamous Church of Satan in 1966 and his bestselling book The Satanic Bible in 1969, Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997) became a controversial celebrity who basked in the attention and even made a successful career out of it. But who was Anton LaVey behind the public persona that so easily provoked Christians and others intolerant of his views?

Angels are loving forces in our lives. Each of us has the ability to communicate with them if we open our minds to their teachings. Belinda Womack was a believer in Angels until the age of 12, when she decided she wanted to become a scientist. Years later, working in a biology lab, she found herself in the presence of the Archangel Gabriel and realized her calling as a spiritual conduit. Here, she shares lessons, practices, and daily guidance from the 12 Archangels to help us listen to and heal our wounded inner child, release our fears, and enact deep subconscious transformation.

The co-editors of Gnosis magazine explore the many esoteric traditions that Western culture has to offer. While terms from Eastern spiritual practices such as Zen, mantra, and karma have become part of our daily lexicon, the traditions of Western spirituality have been largely unexplored by people searching for non-mainstream routes to spiritual experience. But for those who identify with Western culture, Western religious traditions have their own wisdom teachings that are more suitable to their needs and expectations.

Sharing enlightening moments from her journey with a half-wild husky, Denali, The Wisdom of Wildness shows how only when emotional awareness and authentic leadership link in with your own wild parts can an authentic relationship between human and animal—or between oneself and another person—be possible.

Within each of us is a spiritual longing that prompts us to unite with something greater than ourselves, to awaken to our unity with all of life. Yet, no matter the spiritual path we choose, we inevitably encounter our own shadow, those unconscious aspects of ourselves that we suppress or deny, or the shadows of our teachers and their secret desires about money, sex, and power. Meeting the shadow can derail the journey, but, according to Connie Zweig, Ph.D., we can learn to recover from loss of faith and move from spiritual naivete to spiritual maturity.

The Womb is the seat of our primal power and intuition—our “wild knowing.” Spirit weavers are those who have heard this wild voice from within and have followed that call—embarking on a grail quest to follow the feminine path of magic, awaken to the depths of their soul, and embody their true feminine essence. Inviting you onto the spiral path of the spirit weaver, Seren Bertrand shares wisdom teachings and rituals from the feminine path of magic and her own ancestral lineage of old European witches and faerie folk, spirit keepers and story weavers.

Through his extensive research into the interconnected wisdom of the ancients, Scranton shows that the forgotten instructional tradition at the source of this knowledge was deliberately encoded to survive for countless generations. By piecing it back together, we can discover the ancient plan for guiding humanity forward toward greater enlightenment.

Rich with storytelling, history, folklore, and Marshall's own personal experiences, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and the 12 core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of living: bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion.

The Inner Smile is a practice that focuses gratitude and joy on the internal organs to resolve the physical and mental tensions that can lead to illness. In Taoism negative emotions - anger, sadness, depression, fear, and worry - are seen as low-grade energy that causes chronic disease and steals our major life force by creating energy blockages. Master Mantak Chia shows that the internal awareness produced by the simple yet powerful Inner Smile meditation practice flushes the organs of negative energy that may be blocking chi energy flow in order to nourish the entire body.

Heroes, gods, and mortals. The Greek myths are the founding narratives of Western civilization: to understand them is to know the origins of philosophy, literature, art, science, law, and more. Indeed, as Luc Ferry shows in this masterful book, they remain a great store of wisdom, as relevant to our lives today as ever before.

As a young father and a self-proclaimed “radically assimilated immigrant,” opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari realized that when it comes to shaping his young son’s moral fiber, today’s America is woefully lacking. For millennia, the world’s great ethical and religious traditions have taught that true happiness lies in pursuing virtue and accepting limits.

Drawing on her more than 20 years’ experience working with present-day Mesoamerican curanderos/as and the ancient shamanic healing traditions of the Mexica and Maya, Erika Buenaflor, MA, JD, provides a step-by-step guide for the curanderismo practice of soul retrieval. She explains how the soul is a form of sacred energy that can escape when someone experiences trauma or is threatened by challenging and stressful situations. Its absence can be responsible for a host of negative conditions including physical ailments, depression, insomnia, and dysfunctional behavior patterns.

Walk down the streets of Chinatown in any American or western European city and look around. She is there. Walk through the downtown streets, look in a shop window. She is there. Go to any city in China and open your eyes. She is there, too. Kuan Yin is the most ubiquitous Chinese deity - and the most loved. She is the living expression of compassion whose gentle face and elegant figure form the center of devotion in most Chinese homes and workplaces. Until relatively recently, she was barely known in the West, and few studies had been made of her.

As Julia Gordon-Bramer reveals in profound detail, the miracle of tarot is how the right cards show up, time and time again, to provide guidance or symbolically illustrate your story—whether you believe in the tarot or not. In these real-life tales of tarot wisdom, Gordon-Bramer explores the modern applications and the living wisdom of the tarot, based on her more than 40 years’ experience as a professional tarot reader.