Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

  “Spiritual Combat in a Gritty Thriller”: A Review of The Karma Factor by Thomas Lane (2023). ISBN: 978-1-958848-21-0 Beautifully bound in a 7.5 × 9.25 inch hardcover edition, Thomas Lane’s debut novel is a fast-paced thriller with deep, compelling roots in the spiritual realms of Karma, reincarnation, and the Akashic Record. With the popularity of the timeline-jumping, what’s-the-nature-of-reality, can-you-change-the-future programming created by the likes of JJ Abrams, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, and Steven Moffat, audiences in the 2020s are more knowledgeable about nontraditional storytelling than ever and are eager to take the leap into the dark, churning waters at the nexus of spirituality, philosophy, and advanced technology. Netflix series like Russian Doll , Archive 81 , and the German-language Dark and 1899 rely on this audience education and interest, pulling no punches on the profound implications of our choices, the nature of reality, and the dangers of mani...

  (2022). ISBN: 978-989-53812-2-7 I want to warn you at the onset—Patricia Cori’s Hacking the God Code: The Conspiracy to Steal the Human Soul might very well be a challenging read. Not because of any lack of skill on the part of the writer—Cori is the author of 12 other books and her writing style is passionate, articulate, and clear. However, as you can see by the title and subtitle, Hacking the God Code: The Conspiracy to Steal the Human Soul is provocative and boundary pushing and requires that you have both an open mind and a belief that humanity is not yet doomed. You might also have noticed that thorny word Conspiracy . Before you roll your eyes, I encourage you to consider the meaning of this word outside of its corrupted context. In my lectures on what I call “fringe theories” and nefarious government programs such as MKUltra and Operation Paperclip, I define conspiracy theorists as “a group of people who think something nefarious may secretly have been perpetrated ...

   (Once Upon a Dance 2022). ISBN: 978-1-955555-53-1 As a longtime creative dramatist and youth theatre specialist, I am always on the lookout for books like Frankie’s Wish , which has everything I could ask for—a celebration of imagination, interesting places to explore, adventures to physicalize, and new friends to meet—and best of all, it has the added element of a ballerina called Konora. Konora is featured at the bottom half of every right-hand page (the left-hand pages being devoted to illustrations), offering suggestions for how to physically interact with the story, whether it be a dance move, stretch, or transformation into a dinosaur or gorilla. Frankie’s Wish is the brainchild of Once Upon a Dance. It is described on the copyright page as a “Dance-it-Out Creative Movement Story.” The illustrations are by Emilia Rumińska, and the story is based on one by Eva Stone. This particular book—the latest of 19 in the series—is perfect not only for creative dramatists, bu...

   (Cardiff, CA: Waterside Productions, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-958848-03-6 When I first received this memoir, I wondered at its subject matter. Dr. Saugstad led the fight for decades to replace pure oxygen with air for newborns in need of resuscitation. In all honesty, I was unaware that there ever was such a fight. I certainly was unsure if this was a medical history piece from which my lack of sufficient background and context would keep me at a distance. Would it be accessible to me at all? Having read this heartfelt book with the kind of page-turning interest one would expect from a tale of high adventure, I can state with full assurance that Dr. Saugstad’s story is not only far broader than the fight for which he is internationally known; it’s one of the most inspiring and human memoirs I’ve read in quite some time. This humble Norwegian doctor—the grandson of the president of the University of Oslo during World War II who spent time in a concentration camp—took part i...

   (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-948803-50-2 A few months ago, I had the opportunity to review Constance Victoria Briggs’s Encyclopedia of Moon Mysteries: Secrets, Conspiracy Theories, Anomalies, Extraterrestrials and More and to have her as a guest on my weekly podcast. The author of several other encyclopedias, Briggs specializes in the mysteries of the Moon, as well as angels and the survival of consciousness after death. Her research is exhaustive and, even when dealing with controversial and fringe subjects and theories, her reporting is largely impartial, especially in her encyclopedias. During this time of the UAP Disclosure debate and launching of the Artemis 1 mission by NASA, which recently took video of the Moon and broke the record for most miles traveled (at least officially) by a human ship, more researchers than ever are considering the origins, composition of, and presence of possible structures on this anomalous satellite or...