100 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.

I loved the echoes of culture I experienced with this novel, which has a Chinese American protagonist. The cultural expectations and even tidbits of language made me feel represented.

I also admired that Vanessa could tell fortunes through examining the dregs of a teacup; as a tea lover, I wholeheartedly endorsed the notion. I was already familiar with Lim’s storytelling and knew I’d be in for a treat of a read, especially one filled with vivid details of Paris and its excellent culinary ambiance.

This is a marvellous little book that delves into Spare’s engagement with fortune-telling by cards, particularly the story of his 1930s ‘Surrealist Racing Forecast Cards,’ which he sold through a small ad in the Exchange and Mart magazine.

They are quintessentially Spare, perhaps more than the recently discovered Spare tarot (juvenilia, in comparison, from before he went beyond conventional occultism). Along with previously unseen photos and Spare’s own essay "Mind to Mind and How" (“By a Sorcerer”), the heart of the book is Gavin’s "A Few Leaves from the Devil’s Picture Book." 

This was a milestone in Spare research, back when what little was known about him was unreliable, and it is also a beautiful piece of writing–I borrowed a line from it to close my own book on him. 

The title of this book says it all. It is about effective, practical magic with an emphasis on manifestation. Six ways an incantation that is as simple as it is powerful. The book goes into detail about different styles of magic that are available for readers who want to learn more about sorcery, witchcraft, chaos magic, and spirit work. I like this book because it takes one deep into the inner world of magic that exists within the recesses of the mind, opening up the practitioner to spiritual possibilities that have the goal of improving the self. Techniques such as meditation, trance, spiritual cleansing, and dreams are dealt with in an easy and straightforward way.

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.   

Jessa Crispin’s Creative Tarot suggests ways to connect to one’s muse through tarot. Crispin’s chapters match each tarot card’s essence to artists, thinkers, philosophers, and writers, looking at challenges and gifts each personality encountered over the course of their lifetime (and how they manifested in detriment or bloom). One of my favorite lines makes tarot card exploration forever relevant: Crispin writes, “It is about retelling the present.” And it is about how to ground tarot energy in specifics: what does it mean to be a King of Cups? Who has lived such an incarnation? Her “living examples” make tarot tangible for my students; I love her specific suggestions for how to explore the energy of each tarot card through music, film, paintings, art, and literature.