Steve Pavlina, the blogosphere’s foremost authority on personal development, has written a fantastic book on astrology and the Tarot.  The odd thing is that he doesn’t know it.

In fact, as far as I know, Steve is completely ignorant of astrology and the Tarot.  He is something of a mystic — by his own account, he has contacted dead people, entered the astral realm, and channeled spirits — but this isn’t his main focus.  Instead, his passion is personal development — the pursuit of individual growth.

Personal development is a wide area of interest, and covers everything from time management to strength building to better business practice to exploring psychic powers.  Steve has touched on every one of these topics on his blog over the past four years.  Partly in order to bring all of these diverse interests into one framework, and partly because he’s a nerdy guy who likes challenging puzzles, he has written a book called Personal Development for Smart People, in which he boils his mission of growth down into three basic principles (and four derived principles) which can be used by anyone as a guide to self-betterment.  The seven principles are Truth, Love, Power, Oneness, Courage, Authority, and Intelligence.

What Steve doesn’t realize is that these seven principles are already an integral part of astrology and the Tarot.  In fact, the mapping is incredibly straightforward, as you’ll see.  But that doesn’t mean Steve’s work is redundant.  On the contrary, he brings a fresh perspective and insight into these ancient symbols, and lays out a framework to put them to work in your life immediately.  In this series of articles, I’ll review his book, show how his system maps to astrology and the Tarot, and tie the systems together to produce a rich tapestry of direction and possibility. Read the rest of this entry »

This week I have a few simple updates and pointers.

First, a few days ago Erik at executivepagan graciously asked me to help him out by writing a guest post while he was on vacation.  I accepted his invitation with delight and then, due to one thing and another, completely failed to post while he was away.  However, he stretched the rules and allowed me to post after he got back.  Thanks, Erik!  The post is called The Powers of Darkness, and concerns the mythologies developed by (or revealed to) homeless children, the nature of evil, how powerful evil spirits are, and why we’re so fascinated by this danger.  Fun little things like that.  Go on over, and while you’re there, definitely check out Erik’s awesome stuff.

Second, I finally got my act together and created a physical version of my collection of short stories.  I added a general introduction, as well as a postscript for each story with some notes about how they were written.  The book is available as a hardcover for $24.55 and a paperback for $12.83.  (I wish I could offer these for donations, like my other offerings, but lulu.com doesn’t work that way.)  The book is titled Wild Enough and Free, a reference to the final story in the book.  Personally I love physical versions of books — they seem so much more intimate.  I hope you enjoy these!

A few weeks ago I gave some examples of my recent successes with magic (or “intention manifestation”).  The method I was using had three basic steps:

1. Make sure you really want it.
2. Believe it can realistically happen.
3. Feel the gratitude for it.

A simple method, and some good results can be achieved with it.  I gave four examples in my previous post, in which I generated some quick cash, repelled mosquitoes, improved my performance at pool (and caused my opponent’s performance to suffer), and located my lost beard trimmer.  In this post I’ll share some other recent successes, and discuss in some detail the question of what it means to really want something, which extends into the areas of the collective subconscious, dueling wizards, free will, and — what the heck! — the role of the Twin in mythology. Read the rest of this entry »