Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

  (White Bird Publications, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-63363-512-8 Authors, publishers, story analysts, reviewers, and readers often speak about a book being a “real page-turner.” Rarely do we elaborate on what that means. To me, having decades of experience in these areas, it’s about two things: (1) posing and answering Big Questions (without doing so too quickly), and immediately posing (and answering) new ones and (2) taking full advantage of the human mind’s tendency to think in terms of inevitability . In the case of Arthur Herbert’s page-turner (I got up early or stayed up late most days while reading it), The Cuts that Cure , the inevitabilities lie in the trajectories of the individual characters (based on their considerable flaws) and on how masterfully Herbert keeps storylines separate and motivations secret for so long. That’s precisely how the posing and answering of Big Questions also serve to keep the reader engaged. The opening scene finds the protagonist, Dr. Alex Brantle

    (Self-Published, 2021). ISBN: 9798570006294 Originally published in 2012, this collection of eight spooky tales combines the author’s considerable skills as a storyteller specializing in ghost walks with the intimate knowledge he has of Hawaii’s legends, myths, language, and lore. Having been the creative director of a ghost walk on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina for several years, I deeply appreciate the amount of work that goes into researching, memorizing, and performing sometimes as much as ninety minutes’ worth of material on a walk or tour. True storytellers also have much more than that in their heads, waiting for the opportune moment to share a particular story that is perfect for that moment in time. Kapanui’s writing holds the energy of the master storyteller that he is. I had the pleasure of seeing him on a podcast several months ago, where he shared several Hawaiian legends and I was quick to book him on my own weekly show for June 2021. Mysteries of Honolulu

    (San Francisco and Los Angeles: Spirit Rising Publications, 2015). ISBN: 978-0-9912064-4-5 Scanning the nine pages of blurbs at the start of this important handbook for making a difference in a dark and troubled world, you will immediately notice the names: His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Neale Donald Walsch, Arun Gandhi, Louis Gossett Jr., Ervin Laszlo, and Edgar Mitchell, among many others. This, and the fact that it is now in its fourth edition, creates big expectations for The Rainbow Bridge , and, to me, it meets them. To those who have been doing social justice and spiritual work for any length of time—for me it is more than two decades—you will find the age-old wisdom very familiar and the continually quoted names to be in many ways your standard fare. In balance, however, with this abundance of the familiar are sections of the book that are very original, profound, and most importantly, ambitious . Perhaps some readers might even think they are naïve . For thi

    (Santa Barbara, CA: Beyond Ever After Press, 2019). ISBN: 978-1-7331727-3-8 Once upon a time, and to a horrific and violent degree, anyone who was able to mediate between a Higher Power (God, the Source, etc.) that was not sanctioned to do so by one of the established, patriarchal religions was subject to exile, imprisonment, or even execution. The witch trials and purges of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went a long way toward weakening the remnants of the matriarchal society and strengthening the patriarchal system of medicine and religion that keeps personal experience of healing and understanding at arm’s length, regulated by Big Pharma and the fear of some eternal punishment in Hell. Thankfully, we are living in a time when those with the ability to tap into the Source, the Superspectrum, the Field, God/Christ Consciousness, the Holographic Universe, or however you wish to term it, are no longer vilified to such a degree. On the contrary—they are sought out and co