Collection: Spirituality & Religion

What is it like to discover that something you've believed all your life might be wrong?

Sally Gary knew since her early adulthood that she was attracted to women. But as a devoted Christian, she felt there was no way to fully embrace this aspect of her identity while remaining faithful. Now, as she prepares to marry the love of her life, she's ready to speak out about why--and how--her perspective changed.

In this deeply personal memoir, Sally traces the experiences, conversations, and scriptural reading that culminated in her seeing her sexuality as something that made sense within the context of her faith--not outside of it or in opposition to it. Along the way, she addresses specific aspects of her journey that will resonate with many other gay Christians: the loneliness and isolation of her previously celibate life, the futile attempts she made to resist or even "change" her sexual orientation, and the fear of intimacy that followed a lifetime of believing same-sex relationships were sinful.

Sally's story--one of heritage, learning, courage, and love--is written especially for the generations of LGBTQ Christians after her who are questioning whether they can stay part of the church they call home. It's a resounding reminder that, just like Sally's own heart, things can change, and sometimes, when we earnestly search for the truth, we find it in the most unexpected places.

Part true crime story, part religious and literary history, an
investigation into the nature of evil and the figure of the Devil by acclaimed
journalist Randall SullivanHow we explain the evils of the world - and the darkest parts of ourselves - has preoccupied humans throughout history. A sweeping and comprehensive search for the origins of belief in a Satanic figure across the centuries, The Devil's Best Trick is a keen investigation into the inescapable reality of evil and the myriad ways we attempt to understand it. Instructive, riveting, and unnerving, this is a profound rumination on crime, violence, and the darkness in all of us.
In The Devil's Best Trick, Randall Sullivan travels to Catemaco, Mexico, to participate in the "Hour of the Witches" -- an annual ceremony in which hundreds of people congregate in the jungle south of Vera Cruz to negotiate terms with El Diablo. He takes us through the most famous and best-documented exorcism in American history, which lasted four months. And, woven throughout, he delivers original reporting on the shocking story of a small town in Texas that, one summer in 1988, unraveled into paranoia and panic after a seventeen-year-old boy was found hanging from the branch of a horse apple tree and rumors about Satanic worship and cults spread throughout the wider community. Sullivan also brilliantly melds historical, religious, and cultural conceptions of evil: from the Book of Job to the New Testament to the witch hunts in Europe in the 15th through 17th centuries to the history of the devil-worshipping "Black Mass" ceremony and its depictions in 19th-century French literature. He brings us through to the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s and the story of one brutal serial killer, pondering the psychology of evil. He weaves in writings by John Milton, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and many more, among them Charles Baudelaire, from whose work Sullivan took the title of the book.Nimble
and expertly researched, The Devil's Best Trick brilliantly melds cultural
and historical commentary and a suspenseful true-crime narrative. Randall
Sullivan, whose reportage and narrative skill has been called "extraordinary"
and "enthralling" by Rolling Stone, takes on a bold task in
this book that is both biography of the Devil and a look at how evil manifests
in the world.

Discover tantalizing recipes, spine-tingling stories, and historic photos from the most notoriously haunted locations across America in this fun and fascinating cookbook. Paranormal investigator and Kindred Spirits co-host Amy Bruni leads you through eerie hotels, haunted homes, hellish hospitals, and spooky ghost towns, giving you stories and a recipe from each place.

Whether you're in the mood for Lizzie Borden's meatloaf or want to serve up spooky prison stories along with sugar cookies from Alcatraz, Food to Die For is your guide to ghoulish gastronomy.

One of America's favorite ghost hunters, Amy Bruni takes you to mysterious hotels, eerie ghost towns, and possessed pubs in this delightfully sinister collection of stories and recipes. Each of the nearly 60 locations in Food to Die For includes:

• Vintage photographs and charmingly creepy stories rooted in history
• A noteworthy recipe associated with the people or place
• Full-color, captivating, and hauntingly styled food photos to inspire a killer kitchen experience

This terrifyingly tasty cookbook will bewitch anyone who:

• Has a taste for the paranormal and a hunger to try new foods
• Loves history, travel, and culinary curiosities
• Enjoys entertaining guests in unique and memorable ways
• Would get goosebumps making a recipe written 300 years ago

History buffs, thrill-seekers, and foodies will all get shivers seeing the past come to life with every enchanted recipe and delicious tale from Food to Die For.

What would it mean to queer contemplation? To disentangle contemplative spirituality from heteronormativity, patriarchy, and Eurocentricity, and instead engage with openness, curiosity, and a little weirdness?

The world of contemplative Christianity has yielded to the same voices for far too long, many of whom are from centuries before our time, with lives unlike our own, and often from experiences disconnected from marginalization, oppression, and what it feels like to be an outsider.

Cassidy Hall, an LGBTQIA+ Christian contemplative scholar and podcast host, takes us on a journey to queer the contemplative tradition.For Hall, queering is not solely about identifying as queer or applying queer theory; it is about what is gained by seeing things differently. "Queer," she says, "is the way I tilt my head to look at the world."

As queerness reawakened her own contemplative life, Hall discovered that queering and questioning the tradition allowed her to listen more closely to voices that are queer, marginalized, and oppressed--voices that have long existed but have often been overlooked or silenced. For Hall, that also meant moving differently into contemplation, into silence, into liminality and ritual. In showing us the way, she helps us envision what contemplative faith can look like, what spiritual spaces we can reclaim for welcome--and how queering contemplation, and lifting up queer contemplative voices, frees us to seek the infinite possibility of our own identity and engage our spiritual lives with open hearts and open hands.

Whether you're queer or want to queer your own perspectives, or whether you want to uncover the queerness and queer voices in the contemplative tradition--Hall throws open the doors of contemplative spirituality for all, bringing us to contemplation in very new, sometimes old, but always queer ways.

Your Ultimate Acacia-to-Zinnia Guide 550+ Magical Plants for Rituals, Spellcraft, Divination & More

An indispensable resource for magical practitioners, this illustrated encyclopedia offers detailed profiles of all the herbs, houseplants, fruits, vegetables, trees, and flowers you could ever need.

This comprehensive reference guide is packed with familiar favorites, like apple and lemongrass, alongside lesser-known options, like moonwort and pignut. With hundreds of plants to choose from, you are sure to find the best botanical partners for raising healing energy, communing with your ancestors, increasing psychic abilities, manifesting your dreams, and more.

Reflecting herbal traditions from around the world, the meticulously researched profiles include:

Botanical, common, and folk names - Description and attributes
History and lore - Inspiration for spells and rituals
Correspondences - Appropriate cautions

With the option to look up entries by name, magical use, zodiac sign, planetary association, or element, this book makes it easy to find the right plant for the job. The Witches' Encyclopedia of Magical Plants will support all your botanical needs along your unique spiritual path, making it an essential addition to your home library.

In the early 20th century, Marc Edmund Jones and a clairvoyant friend formulated the Sabian symbols in an attempt to produce a series of symbols for the degrees of the zodiac that would be relevant to contemporary students of astrology. Dane Rudhyar then expanded on the symbols, reinterpreting them to emphasize their character as a cyclic series. Rudhyar's model formalizes and reveals the archetypal meaning of 360 basic phases of human experience in a greater holistic context.

Since the book was first published in 1973, it has become a staple in many professional astrologers' toolkits. The images cultivated by Rudhyar are used for further contemplation of every degree of the zodiac. The images for each degree can be used to add insight to the meaning of the planets, the lunar nodes, or any significant point in the horoscope. Many astrologers now consult the Sabian symbols when interpreting progressions in order to reflect on the degree of progressed New Moon.

These symbols help expand astrological interpretation beyond the concrete and literal into the creative and imaginal realm, where meaning arises through image and story, opening us to the experience of conscious engagement with the creative unfolding of life.

Part reference book, part instructional manual on a symbolic underpinning of the entire zodiac, this book will serve any astrology lover in unlocking more of its great mysteries.

A full-color guide to fortune-telling with the Lenormand oracle

- Explores the meanings of the 36 Lenormand cards and their playing card insets to help build a resourceful, interpretative vocabulary

- Provides instructions for many spreads, starting with 3 or 5 cards and building to the Grand Tableau spread, which uses all 36 cards

- 416 pages and full-color throughout

- Reveals the origins of the Lenormand oracle from both coffee-ground symbols and playing card cartomancy

More than 200 years old, the 36 Lenormand cards are an oracle combining standard playing cards with images from the everyday world, such as key, book, animals, and flowers. Their simple, predictive, and non-esoteric nature opens the realm of fortune-telling to all, offering a traditional cartomantic divination where card combinations fuse together to give clear answers.

In this complete guide to Lenormand card reading, Caitlín Matthews explains the multiple meanings for each card, providing keywords so the reader can quickly build an interpretive vocabulary for Lenormand fortune-telling. She details how to lay spreads, starting with 3 or 5 cards and building to the Grand Tableau spread, which uses all 36 cards. She explores the significance of the playing card pips and suits on each card and how cards combine to create a variety of meanings. Matthews enables readers to learn the Lenormand card keywords so they can both read for themselves and express their interpretations to clients. Providing real case histories for readers to interpret, she also includes self-tests and practice exercises with answers to check at the end of the book.

In addition to her comprehensive practical introduction to the Lenormand oracle, Matthews delves deeply into the history of cartomancy to reveal the mythic blueprint that underlies this simple deck, the key to which lies not in their imagery but in their connection to playing cards.

This collectible box set combines the second book in Maia Toll's Wild Wisdom series, The Illustrated Bestiary, with a freestanding deck of 36 large, gilt-edged oracle cards and a cloth carrying bag for keeping animal wisdom close at hand. Together, the book and the cards explore the ancient, mystical connection between humans and other members of the animal kingdom, and guide readers in channeling animal energy through ritual and meditation. For fans of Maia Toll's insightful writing and Kate O'Hara's beautiful art, as well as animal lovers and devotees of tarot, witchcraft, and mysticism, this special edition makes a truly distinctive gift.

Designed to be used with any deck, Red Tarot is a radical praxis and decolonized oracle that moves beyond self-help and divination to reclaim tarot for liberation, self-determination, and collective healing.

For readers of Postcolonial Astrology and Tarot for Change

Red Tarot speaks to anyone othered for their identity or ways of being or thinking--LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC folks in particular--presenting the tarot as a radical epistemology that shifts the authority of knowing into the hands of the people themselves.

Author Christopher Marmolejo frames literacy as key to liberation, and explores an understanding of tarot as critical literacy. They show how the cards can be read to subvert the dynamics of white supremacist-capitalist-imperialist-patriarchy, weaving historical context and spiritual practice into a comprehensive overview of tarot.

Situating tarot imagery within cosmologies outside the Hellenistic frame--Death as interpreted through the lens of Hindu goddess Chhinnamasta, the High Priestess through Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui--Marmolejo's Red Tarot is a profound act of native reclamation and liberation. Each card's interpretation is further bolstered by the teachings of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, José Esteban Muñoz, and others, in an offering that integrates intersectional wisdom with the author's divination practice--and reveals tarot as an essential language for liberation.

Susan and Jacob Browder wrote their book, "The Bull Didn'tWin," from their perspectives. You will get to know the mom, Susan, as she lets you see her son's injury and recovery through her eyes. You will learn so much about Jacob, the young man who suffered a traumatic brain injury at a bull riding school, as he takes you on the toughest ride of his life. This mom and son will leave you with an inspiring story that will motivate you to get through the hardest times. Susan only tells Parts of the book as Jacob is in a coma fighting for his life.

The Awakened Way combines deep spiritual wisdom and practical tools for living a consciously connected and divinely guided life, helping readers go from an emptiness that can't be filled to a fullness that can't be contained.

The Awakened Way is the soul's answer to your earthly challenges.

This book invites you to live the awakened way, a path that embraces ancient wisdom and integrates it with the latest scientific discoveries about the nature of consciousness and the underlying reality.

Many self-help books focus on our human nature. They miss the point that we are both human and a soul. They fail to teach us to shift our focus and access the Source of solutions that is always available and will never steer us wrong.

The Awakened Way is a higher-self book that reorients your belief system and shows you how to approach life from the soul's perspec­tive, where the highest answers lie.

"A practical resource for many who are seeking a richer connection with lost loved ones and the spiritual realm in general."
-- Eben Alexander, M.D., former Harvard neurosurgeon and author of Proof of Heaven, The Map of Heaven, and Living in a Mindful Universe

- Explores how to prepare the mind and body for 5D, create a unified Heart Field, manifest with the Merkaba, protect yourself from psychic attacks, reprogram yourself for abundance

- Provides a Star Magic Qi Gong sequence to clear, connect, and energize the body, allowing it to recalibrate and self-heal

- Explains how to activate the pineal gland through the Merkaba Matrix, uniting star frequencies from Sirius with Earth's energy from the planetary grids, which leads to activation of your 5D Light Body

Would you like to wake up every day with joy as your natural default state, bouncing around Earth loving every moment? In Activate Your Super-Human Potential, Jerry Sargeant presents a specific set of protocols that enable you to step fully into your power, kickstarting a new way of operating in this human reality. Combining qigong, breathwork, meditation, exercise, pineal gland activation techniques, nutrition, mindset, healing, light codes, high-frequency energies, and more, Jerry has blended a unique recipe that offers you the opportunity to create a life of sovereignty and freedom.

In addition to raising our vibration, for one to truly ascend we must activate our DNA, our original 12-strand template, and be able to run enough frequency through our body that we can move through the Planetary and Galactic Star Gate systems. This is real ascension. In this guide you find the tools to realign your inner geometry, upgrade your levels of consciousness, and prepare your body to hold the necessary frequency. You will activate courage and confidence, connect to Source, and feel love in your heart always, generating waves of enthusiasm that flow from every cell in your body, catalyzing your own radical uniqueness with new codes never seen before, merging the divine feminine and divine masculine energies into wholeness. Every moment on this planet is a gift and by using this Super-Human toolkit, you will seize every moment, feeling happy, living in wonder, using the manifestation tools to create a life of abundance and establish new ways of unifying our human family here on Earth. You are about to embark on a life-changing journey. Are you ready?

"Today it hit me when he hit me, blood shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn't a savior coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me."

Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles--a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, "keepers of the home."

Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be "in the world, not of it." So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme choice: stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.

Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.

Tales of hauntings, strange happenings and other local lore throughout the Centennial state!

There is enough for everyone. That's the vision woven into the warp and weft of the Bible, through the principles of Sabbath Economics.

This is God's vision of human living, where the world is an abundant gift. It is a vision where we live with gratitude and accept our limits; where forgiveness is not just a spiritual matter but a practical reality for the systems of debt and ownership. It is a vision of good news for the poor.

In this concise and powerful collection of essays, Ched Myers grasps the nettle of Biblical stories and parables we prefer not to take literally, revealing an ancient standard of social justice waiting to be revived.

"Sabbath Economics it is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the subversive, radical, and life-giving aspects of what it means to practice Sabbath and its principles."

-Dr Jayme Reaves, author Safeguarding the Stranger

"In a world of obscene inequality, Ched Myers' words are a timeless challenge to us to live out the red letters of Jesus' teaching and call others to work for Jesus and justice."-Dr Sally & Dave Mann, Red Letter Christians UK"A radical reimagining of our economic life."-Dr Selina Stone, Sunday School for Misfits Podcast"Sabbath Economics grabs the reader by the hand hurtling forward through the many terrains of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament."-Azariah France-Williams, author Ghost Ship: Institutional Racism and the Church of England