Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

 (New Brunswick, NJ: Global Communications/Conspiracy Journal). ISBN: 9781606112489 Over the past few years, there have been dozens of documented sightings of flying humanoids over the city of Chicago, IL, reigniting interest among the general public in this phenomena, which has been a part of human art and culture since the earliest civilizations up through the well-known Mothman sightings on the Ohio River in the late 1960s. I am what is referred to among crypto-zoologists and paranormal investigators as an “experiencer,” as is my wife. In August 2009, while exploring outside of Point Pleasant, WV, where the Mothman was first seen, we saw a flying humanoid cross the road in front of us. Since that time, we have also witnessed interdimensionals. All of these experiences are detailed in our upcoming book from Visionary Living. I grew up at the Jersey Shore, near the fabled Pine Barrens, home of another winged cryptid—the Jersey Devil. If you consider human fascination with...

“Between Life and Death There is Nature”: A Review of Smoky Zeidel’s Garden Metamorphosis (Deltona, FL: Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC, 2018), ISBN-13: 978-0-9979517-4-5 Smoky Zeidel has a way with words. This five-time Pushcart nominee is able to plumb the depths of human experience with a simplicity of language that makes accessible what the philosophers, rhetoricians, and many poets render (at times on purpose) vague and therefore useless. Garden Metamorphosis is much more than a book of poems (and a bonus short story that rends the heart); it is a meditation made in nature’s Cathedral—the garden. As Voltaire advised in Candide , we each must “tend our own garden.” Gardens have served for centuries as masterful metaphors for the soul, the human condition, and the mystical nature of Nature. Zeidel’s powerful poetry captures this alchemical mixture-in-a-bottle in book form, and the reader is wiser for the journey. Monarch butterflies figure prominently in the collection, in bo...