Chasing the Shaman – Reviewed by Sue Vincent
By Sue Vincent It feels rather odd, being in a book. Not as one half of that semi-fictional pair, ‘Don and Wen’, but as yourself… especially when it is written by someone else. But it does show how much our human stories intertwine, and how, when paths cross, magic can happen. Not just in a symbolic sense, but in a very real way. When Stuart and I started writing out our adventures in The Initiate, we had two things in mind… to record the journey for ourselves and to share it with others, hoping they too would find a way to connect with the land in which they live. One of the first people to read The Initiate was my long-time friend, Gary Vasey. He was excited by our story and emailed me saying
Read More »Book Stats
Last night, for some reason, I spent several hours updating my book sales spreadsheet. I had the last 12 months or so to fill in so it took quite a while. I have several years of sales data now in the spreadsheet. It was an interesting exercise….. here is what I learned. I have sold around 18,000 books excluding my business books. My all time best selling book is Your Haunted Lives which has now sold around 3500 copies. For three to four months, this book was selling over 120 copies a month! Released in January, 2016, it went to #1 on Amazon in multiple categories across the supernatural genre. It is available in ebook, paperback and audio nook formats. These days, it still sells double figure every month but
Read More »Spammers’ Karma
Last week, in my business email account, I started getting a lot of messages coming back saying – undeliverable. Puzzled, I asked our internet guy to take a look. He soon figured out that someone was sending emails and making it look as if they came from my account. Yes – they can do that. They aren’t coming from your account but it looks to the receiver as if they are. What can I do? I asked. Nothing really, was the response. Great! However, I was wanting to know who was being emailed by Notme. Our web guy took some time but soon came back with the scary fact that somehow, the emails being spammed by Notme were the people who had sent us a message at our general email
Read More »Chasing the Shaman – A New Book
Sometimes, things just come together. In the last week, I had an idea for a book. I wanted to write about magic like Sue Vincent and Stuart France or perhaps Alan Richardson does but in my own style. As some of you may know, I have been on the trail of a shaman here in Brno and it struck me that his activity – in my reality – was a piece of a chain of events that were truly magical and worth writing about. I assembled the book from various blog posts, correspondences with Sue Vincent, poems and of course a lot of new content and what emerged surprised even me. Back in late 2005, I got Inner Journeys: Explorations of the Soul published and it told the story of
Read More »Burning Witches
Tonight in the Czech Republic is know as Burning Witches. Pretty brutal name right? So, it’s 30th April and the day before Beltane and right there is a clue perhaps to the origin of Burning Witches. What people do is make an effigy of a woman suing two sticks and whatever else they can find and then they burn the effigy on the bonfire while celebrating with beer, wine and food. Of course, it is a pagan tradition in which the old woman of winter gives way to the maiden of springtime, rebirth and fecundity. What I find interesting is that it is similar to the broader slavic tradition of burning and effigy of Marzanna – the Goddess of winter – usually around the Spring Equinox. In the latter case,
Read More »Common Sense Anyone?
I read today a beautiful poem about Baba Yaga at a website written by a slavic woman living in the USA. Her website had a sub heading – Fighting the Patriarchy at every opportunity….. A quick glance around the site and it was obvious to me at any rate that contrary to fighting the Patriarchy, she was perpetuating it. Her website would have made Joseph Stalin proud and that isn’t Matriarchy – its left wing ideology – a belief system that if approached with a critical and logical viewpoint would immediately identify itself as rabidly patriarchical. None the less – the poem was very good. I watch the world with my peculiar viewpoint. I have remarked on many occasions recently that the way my mind works it puts me at
Read More »Beware Stories of Our Demise …..
Since its Earth day, lets look back at expert predictions from the 1970s… and then reflect on why we still believe these so called experts in Government and media… I’m guessing that No.10 is the only one you could claim happened and doesn’t No7 sound like the climate change alarmists of today pushing their unproven pseudoscientific hypothesis? Just look at No. 11 and consider there is so much oil in 2020 it is priced negatively…. We never learn that humanity is an opportunistic species well adapted to change with the ingenuity to solve almost all problems….. Thats the truth people. Wake up! 1. “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — Harvard biologist George Wald 2. “We are in an
Read More »Words
All it takes is the right piece of music And the words, they come rushing out Spilling roughly onto paper In my head delivered as a shout The beat gives me rhythm The bass is the pounding pulse Somehow the words emerge From some deep subconscious impulse To speak To communicate To tell the world What I feel To give you sight Of my emotion The urge to create My words replicate All it takes is a moment of derision And floods of letters emerge Presorted concepts, nouns and verbs Their meaning once submerged Deep within my being Deep within my vibrant soul Ideas forming and silently screaming To resonate in birth, almost whole To speak To communicate To tell the world What I feel To give you sight Of
Read More »The Quality of Humanity
I saw a post on a musicians forum today – it was a meme pointing out how many likes a female selfie got versus a song someone spent hours working on. Another person commented maybe it was the quality of the music? I was scrolling through instagram last night and I noticed how some twenty something had posted a selfie of herself more or less naked. 22k likes. A photographer had posted a beautiful picture of a church. 2 likes. Sums up the modern world really doesn’t it. Artistry and talent – 0 Pointless nude selfie – 6 I wondered what that meant about quality, people and their values. I went back to the musicians forum and posted my thoughts – What does it say about the music? Nothing. It
Read More »Is there meaning in chaos?
Just recently, it seems like everywhere I look, people are trying to give meaning to current events. ‘It’s a plague on humanity, punishment for some collective crime’, we are told by some. It’s a plague sent by God to punish us for some other collective sin’, say others. Frankly, I grow weary of all of this. Did anyone stop and think that perhaps we live in a chaotic system and this is what chaotic looks like? Does there have to be a reason for these events? Does there have to be a super power or deity behind them? And, if there was a deity or intelligence behind these events – what meaning would that have? Surely, to us, it would be chaotic and unknowable? Why do we even ask these
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