"Spiritual Snake Oil" shows that the same fallacies that plague religious apologetics also infect virtually all "new age" and "spiritual" writing. Author Chris Edwards does this by dissecting the arguments and assertions of the most prominent "new age" icons and "spiritual" writers. They include Robert Pirsig ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"), James Redfield ("The Celestine Prophecy"), Deepak Chopra ("Life After Death"), Dinesh D'Souza ("Life After Death"), Francis Collins's ("The Language of God"), Rhonda Byrne ("The Secret"), and even Michael Crichton (a surprising defender of New Age thinking). As Edwards shows, the same fallacies, the same errors in argument, show up time after time in the writings of these--and virtually all other--"new age" and "spiritual" writers. In addition to explaining these fallacies in the chapters devoted to the individual authors, Edwards devotes a final chapter, "A Compendium of Fallacies," to outlining the tricks and deceptive practices common to illogical arguments.

"In the world of snake oils, you have to see the world a little differently. Where others see poverty, you see riches; where others see weeds, you see flowers; where others see sickness, you see openness." Becca Stevens calls herself a "snake oil seller": She takes natural oils, mixes them with a good story, sells them in an open market and believes they help to heal the world. Becca is the founder of Thistle Farms, one of the most successful examples in the US of a social enterprise whose mission is the work force. She is also the founder of its residential program, Magdalene. The women of Magdalene/Thistle Farms have survived prostitution, trafficking and addiction, and the natural body care products they manufacture-balms, soaps, and lotions-aid in their own healing as well as that of the people who buy them. The book weaves together the beginnings of the enterprise with individual stories from Becca's own journey as well as 20 women in the community. In Snake Oil, Becca tells how the women she began helping fifteen years ago have been the biggest source of her own healing from sexual abuse and her father's death as a child. Wise and reflective, Snake Oil offers an empowering narrative as well as a selection of recipes for healing remedies that readers can make themselves.

Using essential oils to influence your energetic make-up and karmic patterns • Details how to identify which tattvas--the Five Great Elements--are dominant in your energetic make-up • Explores the energetic signatures of the essential oils associated with each tattva and chakra, including their archetypes, sacred geometry, sacred sounds, and colors • Explains how to identify your personal vibrational signature, purify your energy body, impart vibrational properties to jewelry, and work with yantras and mantras The tattvas, the Five Great Elements--earth, water, fire, air/wind, and ether/space--create and sustain not only the universe but also all of its inhabitants. Each of us has a unique combination of these elemental energies behind our personal characteristics--everything from the color of our eyes to our behaviors and emotional temperament. What tattvas are dominant in your make-up can also be influenced by your surroundings and by karma. Essential oils, in addition to working biologically and chemically, also work at the energetic level, making them ideal for working with the tattvas. Teaching you how to use essential oils to affect the very fabric of your being, Candice Covington details how the Tattvas Method of essential oils allow you to access the deepest, most hidden aspects of Self, those beyond the reach of the mind, the very energetic causation patterns that set all behaviors and thoughts into motion. She reveals how the tattvas are the energy that animate each chakra and how we can use their archetypal energy to shape our inner life and align with our greater soul purpose. The author provides energetic profiles of each tattva, chakra, and essential oil, explains their relationships to one another, and details how to identify what tattva or chakra is dominant at any given time. Exploring the energetic signatures of the tattvic essential oils, she details their elemental make-up, animal and deity archetypes, sacred geometry symbols, sacred syllables, and colors. She reveals how to discover the energy patterns responsible for directing unhealthy life patterns and explains how to identify your personal vibrational signature, purify your energy body, and craft your own unique ritual practice with essential oils. Showing how essential oils are powerful vibrational tools for effecting change, the author reveals how they allow each of us to deliberately steer our own destiny, fulfill our personal dharma, and be all that our souls intended us to be.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Feared and worshiped in equal measure, snakes have captured the imagination of poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. From Ice Age cave drawings to Snakes on a Plane, this creature continues to enthrall the public. But what harm has been caused by our mythologizing? While considering the dangers of stigma, Erica Wright moves from art and pop culture to religion, fetish, and ecologic disaster. This book considers how the snake has become more symbol than animal, a metaphor for how we treat whatever scares us the most, whether or not our panic is justified. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.

Promotes awareness of mind/body/spirit connection and provides techniques for healthier living.

This two-volume publication offers an in-depth analysis of ophidian symbolism in Eastern Africa, while setting the topic within its regional and historical context: namely, with regards to the rest of Africa, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Greek world, ancient Palestine, Arabia, India, and medieval and pre-Christian Europe. Through the ages, most of those areas have connected with Eastern Africa in a broad sense, where ophidian symbolism was as “rampant” and far-reaching, if not more so, as anywhere else on the continent, and perhaps in past civilisations. Much as in the wider context, snakes were held to be long-lived, closely related to holes, caverns, trees, and water, life and death, and credited with a liking for milk. Even though ophidian symbolism has always been developed out of the outstanding biological and ethological features of snakes, the process of symbolisation, which plays a crucial role in the elaboration of cultural systems and the shaping of human experience, was inevitably at work. This first volume deals with snakes as a zoological category; snake symbolism as perceived by encyclopaedists and psychologists; and ophidian symbolism as it occurred in ancient civilisations. It explores the traditional African scene in general with a view to set the scene for a more proximate baseline for comparison. The divide between animals and humans was porous, and snakes had a more or less equal footing in both the animal realm and the spiritual world. Key features of snake symbolism in traditional Eastern Africa are then examined in detail, especially phantasmagorical snakes, the rainbow serpent, snake-totems, and snake-related witches and ritual leaders, among others. In Eastern Africa, the meanings attributed to snakes were multifaceted and paradoxical. Overall, the two volumes of this publication show that African snake symbolism broadly echoed the diverse representations of ancient civilisations. The widely acknowledged assimilation of snakes to death and Evil is therefore unrepresentative, both historically and culturally.

New York Times best-selling author Jentezen Franklin is back with a message that will inspire you to break free and reclaim a life of passion, purpose, and praise.