Books like I Ching

A long time ago, I used to own part of a Jazz club. There was a jazz guitar player named Sunny Greenwich and he turned me onto this book. It is a compelling story of an English man who was a reincarnated Tibetan lama. This book changed my life and it gave me a vision of who we really are, why we are, and how we are. And, how we are all connected to our spiritual selves. When our bodies die they go back to their spiritual selves, and we are just out here to gain experience. This book sent me to some good places and helped open my eyes so I could see the next book on my path.

Everyone deserves to live an abundant life, and this book is a metaphysical way to attract more abundance in your life.

There is a strategy for everyone. Using these abundance and prosperity principles will inspire you to save more money, and to build more wealth.

This book was born from a Church Minister who wanted to help her congregation not only survive, but thrive during recessions and leaner times. 

The Catherine Ponder book really helped me and I had done what she said. Now I needed more and I put that out in the cosmos - and boy did it deliver. I was walking to the gym after a movie shoot in New York and I felt my entire body turn. The next thing I knew I was in front of a Harper Collins bookstore. Something took me into that store and I just followed it, something took my hand and put it around a biography of Joel Goldsmith. It was freaky and it still gives me chills to think about it. This book has so much and it gave me a deep love for what a miracle life is. When you are ready to read this book, you won’t be disappointed.

I found this to be a classic grassroots approach to spirituality and a very practical approach to life as well as recovery.

Early AAers used this as one of their texts. In the 12 Step based recovery programs, members recommend that you find a Power greater than yourself to rely on. Emmet’s book is inspired by the wisdom of the ages and led me to a simple, strong concept of a Higher Power that has become my Sobriety Super Power.

It reveals the reasons why living by principle, guided by my Super Power, keeps me from picking up that first fix, pill, or drink. I have never looked back.

Over the years, when I taught tarot classes, there were always a few students who were interested in the divination aspect of tarot, but tarot was just not the right oracle for them. For animal lovers, I recommended the simpler and more direct Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals by Jamie Sam's and David Carson because animal totems resonated with them. 

I recall a student who was of Norwegian ancestry who found tarot overwhelming, but the right oracle for him was The Book of Runes by Ralph H. Bloom. Even if tarot is your path, it's interesting to know of the many forms of divination that can be available to everyone.

In this book, Christopher Marmalejo entranced us with a singular take on investigating tarot cards through a queer and Indigenous lens. Exploring cartomancy as a mirror to understand lived experience, Christopher brings to light a practice that is unafraid to confront, listen, critique, and unveil.

We love how Christopher’s personality shines through this thoroughly academic yet approachable description of tarot cards and their uses. Reading it filled us with hope for a future of liberation and ideas of how we can make that happen.

I had never been to The Cloisters here in Manhattan after many decades of living here, but I read Katy Hays's book, and had to visit it afterward. Hays’ book was a great pre-cursor to the trip to the Museum of Medieval and Early Renaissance Art.

I kept in mind the world of the fictional underdog, Anne Sitwell, who worked her way up to know there were secrets in the vault at the Cloisters. A Tarot Deck, possibly from the d’Este family in Italy, sets the stage for skullduggery while secrets and murders mount, leading to a plot twist at the end for our hapless Anne. It was interesting talking to the docent at the museum after I took a garden tour, and to spot a copy of this book for sale in the gift shop there.

I chose this book because it is such a wide-ranging compendium of Russian folk beliefs in general (in English!) as well as of Russian customs involved in trying to ensure the fertility and health of crops, farm animals, and women, all desperately needed for the survival of the community. It is these fascinating and picturesque customs that so often get incorporated into dances. Furthermore, the Dancing Goddesses were often pressed into service for divination of the future, especially by young girls worrying about whom they would marry and how many children they would have, or if they would die first. (I accidentally witnessed one of these ceremonies in Danzig in 1993—they have not died!)

This book is the best I've come across that explores the overlap between games and fortune-telling with detailed examples from cultures around the world.

The suggestion in the book's title that board games originated from attempts to divine the future is perhaps questionable, but there is no doubt that the two have been entwined from the earliest times, which is not surprising because all games try to some extent to create a microcosm of some of life's aspects and people have never been able to resist trying to nudge things in a favorable direction. Or at least get a heads up on what lies around the corner.

Ludomancy, it's called–a lovely word. Personally, I find that playing some form of Patience is a great way of ordering the mind before tackling any piece of work or, in fact, any tricky life decision. The flickering images conjured by the cards help… show more.

I fell immediately in love with the human characters and the setting despite the cat being a minor player in the story. Hana Keller is Hungarian on her mother’s side of the family. She works at the family’s charming tea house. Grandma Juliana reads tea leaves and is steeped in Hungarian mythology—correct that—grandma’s “tales” are often true to life.

I was engaged with the unique ethnic viewpoint and delighted to learn more about Hungarian culture and food. I devoured the series and have moved on to Buckley’s Writer’s Apprentice series.