Join author Jean-Louis de Biasi as he explores how the profound tactile experience of using prayer beads can be used to deepen spiritual work in Qabala, Wicca, Druidry, and Hermetic traditions. With tips and techniques for choosing prayer beads as well as cleansing and consecrating them for spiritual use, The Magical Use of Prayer Beads is an ideal guide for beginners and adepts alike. Includes rituals that can be performed alone, with two people, or with a group—extending the useful applications and power beyond the more traditional approaches. This book explores unique practices for some of the most prominent Western mystery traditions, creating new paths on the journey of spirituality and magic.

Religions from around the world--Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Islam, and many more, including the Pagan earth religions--use prayer beads as useful guides to remembering prayers and principles. Pagan Prayer Beads by John Michael Greer and Clare Vaughn is a unique and practical introduction to the design, creation, and use of Pagan rosaries, teaching the reader to design and make personal prayer beads for use in myriad spiritual practices. Co-written by a beading expert (Clare Vaughn) and one of the leading lights in modern Paganism (John Michael Greer), this book will garner an eager audience--from beginners to elders--looking for new inspiration in their personal spiritual practice. Beautifully written, instructive, and straightforward, Pagan Prayer Beads is user-friendly and easy to understand. Lovely black-and-white photographs accompany the text to further illustrate the art and craft of Pagan prayer beads. The how-to sections were "tested" by novices to both crafting and "the craft," who found the directions clear and easy to follow. Throughout the book, Greer and Vaughn have included fascinating history and lore as well as crystal properties, Pagan symbology, and deeply meaningful prayers and rituals to use with the rosaries. * 30 lovely black-and-white photos accompany the beading instructions.

Eleanor Wiley and Maggie Oman Shannon have taken an ancient practice and made it new. A String and a Prayer recounts the history and symbolism of prayer beads, teaches basic techniques for stringing beads and a host of other objects into prayer beads, and offers a variety of prayers and rituals to use those beads on a daily basis. Beads have appeared throughout history. Prayer beads are used in the spiritual practices of cultures as diverse as the African Masai, Native Americans, Greek and Russian Orthodoxy, as well as the religious rituals of Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism. But prayer is highly personal. By infusing prayer beads with personal associations, we can keep our spirituality fresh. The beads are a device to help build and rebuild meaningful ritual in our lives. With myriad ideas about what makes objects sacred and where to find sacred objects -- from the personal, perhaps beads from a grandmother's broken rosary, to the unusual, maybe seashells from far away found in a thrift store -- A String and a Prayer offers many suggestions for different ways that beads can be made and used, exploring the creative roles they can play in our relationships, ceremonies, and rituals. "You are the expert, trust yourself. Let the instructions be a guide to your own creativity," write the authors.

Discover the stories and meanings behind 20 types of beads, and learn how to instill your own beads with significance, protection, and promise as you string them. Discover the stories and meanings behind 20 types of beads, and learn how to instill your own beads with significance, protection, and promise as you string them. Strings of beads are universal to all peoples and beliefs. They’re given many names—mala, rosary, misbahah, komboloi, prayer beads—but no matter the culture or context, they’re a tangible symbol of connection. Beads can tell a story, celebrate someone or something we love, or help us work through a difficulty. They can be made from a huge variety of materials, but it’s not so much what beads you string but why and how you string them that is important. In Mindful Beads, Alice Peck reveals the meanings behind 20 different types of beads, from traditional Tibetan malas to healing crystals, and Greek worry beads to Christian rosaries. For each one, she strings her own bracelet, mala, rosary, or necklace, giving it a significance personal to her, and then explains how you can do so for your own beads, suggesting ways to meditate with and become connected to them. Some beads are handmade and step-by-step artworks are provided to explain how to make them, while a resources section offers advice on sourcing store-bought beads.

The first and only Druidic book of spells, rituals, and practice. The Druid Magic Handbook is the first manual of magical practice in Druidry, one of the fastest growing branches of the Pagan movement. The book breaks new ground, teaching Druids how to practice ritual magic for practical and spiritual goals within their own tradition. What sets The Druid Magic Handbook apart is that it does not require the reader to use a particular pantheon or set of symbols. Although it presents one drawn from Welsh Druid tradition, it also shows the reader how to adapt rites and other practices to fit the deities and symbols most meaningful to them. This cutting edge system of ritual magic can be used by Druids, Pagans, Christians, and Thelemites alike! This is the first manual of Druidic magical practice ever, replete with spell work and rituals.

What happens when a former Zen Buddhist monk and his feminist wife experience an apparition of the Virgin Mary? “This book could not have come at a more auspicious time, and the message is mystical perfection, not to mention a courageous one. I adore this book.”—Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit Before a vision of a mysterious “Lady” invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary’s prayers and mysteries—secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn: The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear? Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path—available to everyone, religious or not—that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world.

As our world has become increasingly dependent on technology, and our Western societies have become woefully “Crackberried”— to use the title of a recent documentary on the emotional and social pitfalls of our too-wired ways—an intriguing phenomenon is occurring: There is an increasing amount of interest in returning to some of the simpler arts that were neglected or left behind with the onslaught of technology. Artisans and everyday crafters are finding a renewed satisfaction in making something with their own hands; some are even communicating about the inherent physical- and mental-health benefits found in handwork—and, even more than that, they are framing their handwork as meditation or spiritual practice. In today’s sophisticated and pluralistic society, people are more aware than ever that spiritual practice can be defined more expansively—and the popularity of books focusing on alternative spiritual practices demonstrate that readers are hungry for new (or ancient) ways of enhancing their inner lives. In Crafting Calm the author will explore these new forms of creative spiritual practice and the benefits they provide. The format of With Shannon's book will itself be creative, a rich “potpourri approach” that weaves together interviews, historical facts, projects for readers to do themselves, quotations, and suggested resources. Crafting Calm will serve as an inspirational resource guide to a broad assortment of spiritual practices gathered from the global arts-and-crafts communities, as well as from people who don’t consider themselves artists but who have adopted creatively expressive forms of spiritual practice. While there have been a few books published focusing on a particular form of creative spiritual practice (Skylight Paths, for example, has published books on beading as a spiritual practice; painting as a spiritual practice; and using clay as a spiritual practice), no one has yet explored the breadth of possibilities for creative spiritual practices contained in Crafting Calm.