Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

(Dimensionfold Publishing, 2023). ISBN: 978-1-989940-77-8 As a spiritual practitioner, I believe in using a wide variety of tools in the quest for a fulfilling experience as I walk the “good red road.” Over the past two decades, I have collected a variety of Tarot and other guidance decks for my toolbox. Ranging from the traditional Tarot, to thematic versions (from baseball to pirates), to pathmaking, oracle, angel, archetype, and dream decks, I have used them with varying degrees of satisfaction. Some decks are akin to fortune cookie messages and horoscopes—too general to be of any use. Some get by solely on their images and themes. Several months ago, Barbara M. DeLong, podcast host, author, artist, ordained minister, and “seeker of the mysteries of spirituality,” after being a guest on my podcast to talk about the book she cowrote with Ken Goudsward, Before Roswell (based on the extensive research of her deceased husband), asked me to work with her Cosmic Deck of Initiation. I r...

(Larson Publications, 2014, for the www.larsonpublications.com, for the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation). ISBN 978-1-9360120-30-5 “You cannot acquire what is already here. So drop the ego’s false idea and affirm the real one” (p. 15) I was first introduced to the work of philosopher Paul Brunton in 2012, when I was asked to review The Gift of Grace: Awakening to Its Presence . I found it to be a profound and moving read. The Short Path to Enlightenment , like the previous book, is compiled and administered by the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation (PBPF) and it culls passages from some of Brunton’s earlier publications. Paul Brunton (1898–1981) was, like Joseph Campbell, of whom parts of his philosophy remind me, a student of the world’s sacred wisdom teachings. Trying to encapsulate his well and broadly lived life is nearly impossible in a book review, so I encourage the reader to spend some time researching Brunton on his or her own. The Short Path to Enlightenm...

(2014, Homebound Publications, ISBN: 978-1-938846-15-1) In 2009 I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing the first novel in the New Dimensions Trilogy, Journey to the Heart , followed by 2013’s New Dimensions of Being earlier this year. In the third book of the trilogy, Lucina undertakes a classic Hero’s Journey to try and locate her former love, Teleo, whose last contact had been from Guatemala City. No longer content to sit and wait for him to come to her, Lucina follows her heart through the city, the jungle, and on the edge of the ocean to win back his love and once more walk upon the path she had so dearly paved at the start of New Dimensions of Being . Aided as ever by the old wise woman, Señora Labotta, Lucina also enlists the aide of a British shop owner and a jungle guide named Alejandro who functions in a way similar to Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan or Dan Millman’s Socrates from Way of the Peaceful Warrior , serving as a threshold guardian and mentor as she cr...