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...

(Ithaca, NY: Delok Publishing). ISBN: 978-1794535985 (paperback) Modern life is admittedly complicated and complex. I am just old enough, having turned 50 last November, to say that it wasn’t always like this. Not to this degree. Ubiquitous technology, overpopulation, climate change, and shrinking resources have resulted in a fast pace, profound changes lurking like subtext between the sure-faced politicians assuring Business as Usual, and multiplying reasons to not be hopeful for the future. Tools of divination and insight—such as runes, astrology, Tarot, the Kabala, and the I Ching—can be helpful as organizing principles. If you listen closely and take what is useful, they have a way of burning away the blinding, disorienting, low-lying fog the artifacts of the twenty-first century have produced. Given, as stated in this book, that we take in much more information than we can process, tools such as these are essential to creating Stillness and taking stock of where you are. Gl...

by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden (Larson Publications, 2009, www.larsonpublications.com) There is an ancient Eastern curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” A quick glance at the daily headlines tells us that, a decade or so into the twenty-first century, these times certainly fit the bill. As an artist who uses the principles of shamanism and aspects of other spiritual systems to both create and to teach, I am always looking for new sources of inspiration and insight. As a father, husband, and mentor to young people, I am continually seeking means to clarification and ways of making sense and gaining peace in highly stressful and complicated times. Over the past two decades, I have found ways of using tarot, runes, and other devices to help. I have stayed away from the I Ching because of all the many tools for insight and divination, I have found the hexagrams and casting of the coins to be complicated and hard to make sense of. The authors of The Tolt...

(2009, Baltimore: Publish America, www.publishamerica.com) by Joey Madia The subtitle of Michaela Sefler’s most recent collection (she is the author of almost a dozen books of poems) is “Metaphysical Poetry,” a genre which has long held interest for me. The poems read as though they were channeled by the author in a somewhat altered state—certainly a place of openness and peace—derived either through meditation or deep breathing, allowing the words to flow like a calm, tranquil river. There are no politically or socially jarring works here. Everything is Prayer. They have titles such as “Yellow Jasper,” “The Magician,” and “Equinox.” The poems are all set center-spaced, marking a landscape wherein the author takes us on numerous journeys as we follow several nameless questers on their paths of enlightenment. Referred to only as “he” and “she” or “him” and “her,” these individuals operate on the level of the warrior seeking sartori, bushido, or the knighthood. The tales of the Grail Qu...