When she accidentally opens the wrong letter, it changes her life. Decades later, her son Amit finds that letter and thinks he has discovered his mother's secret. But secrets have their own secrets sometimes.Amit does not know that Avinash, his dependable and devoted father, has been timidly visiting gay chat rooms, driven by the lifelong desires he never allowed himself to indulge. Avinash, for his part, doesn't understand what his dutiful wife gave up in marrying him -- the memories of romance she keeps tucked away.Growing up in Calcutta, in a house bustling with feisty grandmothers, Amit has been shielded from his parents' secrets. Now he's a successful computer engineer, settled in San Franscisco yet torn between his new life and his duties to the one he left behind.Moving from adolescent rooftop games to adult encounters in gay bars, from hair salons in Calcutta to McDonald's drive-thrus in California, Don't Let Him Know is an unforgettable story about family and the sacrifices we make for those we love. Tender, funny, and beautifully told, it marks the arrival of a resonant new voice.

    Pale

    

    It might not be as flashy as the movies make it seem, but real Witches work magick every day-the magick of the natural world, the magick of the Craft, and especially the magick of the heart and mind.

    In this beautifully illustrated and far-reaching history. Elinor Gadon vividly weaves words and images to demonstrate the powerful connections between ancient and contemporary art, between the Goddess of the Ice Age and the Goddess of today.This panoramic view of Goddess imagery extends from the prehistoric Goddess representations of Catal Huyuk, Malta, Avebury, and Crete, tot he more patriarchal images of the Sumerians, Greeks, and Christians, to the wide range of contemporary artists inspired by the Goddess, including Frida Kahlo, Mayumi Oda, and Judy Chicago.

    Harvard-trained theologian Meggan Watterson leads us verse by verse through Mary's gospel to illuminate the powerful teachings it contains.A gospel, as ancient and authentic as any of the gospels that the Christian bible contains, was buried deep in the Egyptian desert after an edict was sent out in the 4th century to have all copies of it destroyed. Fortunately, some rebel monks were wise enough to refuse-and thanks to their disobedience and spiritual bravery, we have several manuscripts of the only gospel that was written in the name of a woman: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.Mary's gospel reveals a radical love that sits at the heart of the Christian story. Her gospel says that we are not sinful; we are not to feel ashamed or unworthy for being human. In fact, our purpose is to be fully human, to be a "true human being"- that is, a person who has remembered that, yes, we are a messy, limited ego, and we are also a limitless soul.And all we need to do is to turn inward (again and again); to meditate, like Mary Magdalene, in the way her gospel directs us, so that we can see past the ego of our own little lives to what's more real, and lasting, and infinite, and already here, within.With searing clarity, Watterson explains how and why Mary Magdalene came to be portrayed as the penitent prostitute and relates a more historically and theologically accurate depiction of who Mary was within the early Christ movement. And she shares how this discovery of Mary's gospel has allowed her to practice, and to experience, a love that never ends, a love that transforms everything.

    Two Jungian psychologists discuss the influence the classic Greek goddesses have on a woman's psyche and how women can bring the different goddess energies into harmony for greater strength and new insights into their lives.

    His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics.While Campbell’s work reached wide and deep as he covered the world’s great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs.In this provocative volume, editor Safron Rossi—a goddess studies scholar, professor of mythology, and curator of collections at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell archival manuscript collection and personal library—collects these lectures for the first time. In them, Campbell traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. He sheds new light on classical motifs and reveals how the feminine divine symbolizes the archetypal energies of transformation, initiation, and inspiration.

    . . . You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. --Mother Teresa Lifelong educator Mary Poplin, after experiencing a newfound awakening to faith, sent a letter to Calcutta asking if she could visit Mother Teresa and volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity. She received a response saying, You are welcome to share in our works of love for the poorest of the poor. So in the spring of 1996, Poplin spent two months in Calcutta as a volunteer. There she observed Mother Teresa's life of work and service to the poor, participating in the community's commitments to simplicity and mercy. Mother Teresa's unabashedly religious work stands in countercultural contrast to the limitations of our secular age. Poplin's journey gives us an inside glimpse into one of the most influential lives of the twentieth century and the lessons Mother Teresa continues to offer. Upon Poplin's return, she soon discovered that God was calling her to serve the university world with the same kind of holistic service with which Mother Teresa served Calcutta. Not everyone can go to Calcutta. But all of us can find our own meaningful work and service. Come and answer the call to find your Calcutta!

    In this book Tara Sanchez draws together her knowledge of ancient practices and literature merging it with her personal experiences and ideas. Thoroughly modern, but steeped in history, this is a book of rituals, meditations, divinations and other techniques through which the reader is invited to explore the magick of this ancient goddess of the crossroads, sorcery and witchcraft. The reader is introduced to essential practices such as keeping a magickal journal, setting up the altar, ritual purification, sacred space, preparing incenses and making a ritual robe; as well as more advanced practices such as ritual gestures, sacred vowels and dream incubation. Other techniques covered include knot magick and phylacteries, psychic development and the use of banishing rituals. The exercises in this book present the beginner with everything they need, and the experienced practitioner with a new and fresh perspective. Divination is a very popular area of study amongst those interested in modern witchcraft and magic, and this book presents a unique Hekatean approach to using and interpreting the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Through drawing together ideas from ancient literature and applying it to modern works, the author has created the Oracle of Her Sacred Fires. This oracle is a system of divination by dice and draws on the writings of dozens of modern priests, priestesses and mystics who contributed to the anthology Hekate Her Sacred Fires (d'Este, 2010) - a wonderful blend of old and new! The comprehensive appendixes provide additional reference material which can be used to enhance workings with the Goddess Hekate. They include material on Hekate and the other Gods, herbs, plant and animal correspondences, other spiritual beings such as daemons, the winds and the four elements - as well as techniques for reduction sigils and planetary hours. Filled with a blend of ancient and modern wisdom, ritual, technique and theory - this book is essential reading for complete beginners, intermediate students and experienced hands who are looking for relevant 21st century insights and ideas, which also honour the past - and in the process it opens up entirely new ways through which to explore the magick of the Goddess Hekate today.

    In Goddess, authors David Leeming and Jake Page gather some 75 of the most potent and meaningful of these tales in an extraordinarily rich and readable introduction to this divine figure as she has emerged from prehistory to the present. Told as a biography, we follow Goddess from her first Ice Age appearances as the all-encompassing, all-giving, and all-taking Earth, to her re-emergence as a powerful force in the myths of modern religion, psychology, and science. In tales of the Changing Woman of the Navajos and of Hera, Pandora, Eve, and Lilith, we see her traduced and sublimated by rising, and then, dominant, patriarchal cultures and civilizations, but never totally suppressed. In familiar and unfamiliar myths, Goddess comes alive, pulsing with her own energy, irrepressible behind her many cultural masks. She can be the Universe itself, the source of all being, the holy Virgin, the Earth-Mother nurturer, the madly hysterical destroyer, the femme fatale, or the consort or mother of God. She is presented here not as myth, but as a true archetype, a potential being who exists in all of us, a force who long preceded her male counterpart as an appropriate metaphor for the Great Mystery of existence. As compelling as any novel, Goddess is also a journey into the human heart. Observing Goddess over the centuries--worshiped, belittled, denied, rediscovered--we gain new insight into the changing role of women, our continuing development as a species, and our deepest concerns about ourselves, our world, and the human destiny.

    Based on the stories of ordinary American women, beautifully written, and irresistibly engaging, it shows the immensely important role sexuality plays in shaping our spiritual journey. Aphrodite’s Daughters OverviewReflecting upon love and lust, sex and marriage, wounding and healing, women on the spiritual path share their most intimate erotic secrets with honesty, courage, and passion in a series of true stories. Aphrodite’s Daughters sends a strong, persuasive message: It is time to honor sex as a sacred, soul-making force. Aphrodite’s Daughters OverviewWomen from all walks of life have found that this book transforms the way they feel about their sexual journeys. It is a must-read for every man and woman on the spiritual path.“A brave, beautiful, erotic, and wise book in a society where sexuality, like so much of our humanity, is cut off from the sacred. Jalaja Bonheim’s honesty marries body to ecstasy, heart to spirit.”—Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart“Aphrodite’s Daughters is a scorcher of a book, one that I’m tempted to start reading all over again after I’ve just finished it.”—Gnosis MagazineA Simon & Schuster eBook

    Author Christopher Penczak (Gates of Witchcraft and others) presents a modern grimoire for the Morrighan, introducing readers to this fierce Celtic goddess in her many forms and guises, and providing lore, guided meditations, magickal workings, and formularies for your own work with the Morrighan.

    It seems that a demon daughter of the legendary Lilith had made her home in the mirror and would soon completely possess the unsuspecting girl. Such tales of terror and the supernatural occupy an honored position in the Jewish folkloric tradition. Howard Schwartz has superbly translated and retold fifty of the best of these folktales, now collected into one volume for the first time. Gathered from countless sources ranging from the ancient Middle East to twelfth-century Germany and later Eastern European oral tradition, these captivating stories include Jewish variants of the Pandora and Persephone myths and of such famous folktales as The Fisherman and His Wife, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Bluebeard, as well as several tales from the Middle Ages that have never before been published. Focusing on crucial turning points in life--birth, marriage, and death--the tales feature wandering spirits, marriage with demons, werewolves, speaking heads, possession by dybbuks (souls of the dead who enter the bodies of the living), and every other kind of supernatural adversary. Readers will encounter a carpenter who is haunted when he makes a violin from the wood of a coffin; a wife who saves herself from the demoness her husband has inadvertently married by agreeing to share him for an hour each day; and the age-old tale of Lilith, Adam's first wife, who refused to submit to him and instead banished herself from the Garden of Eden to give birth to the demons of the world. Drawn from Rabbinic sources, medieval Jewish folklore, Hasidic texts, and oral tradition, these stories will equally entrance readers of Jewish literature and those with an affection for fantasy and the supernatural.

    DISCOVER HOW THE GODDESS IS GUIDING YOUR LIFE“The Goddesses have returned to awaken ancient memories buried within your soul.Your life is destined to evolve, and it’s time for you to grow into your spiritual feminine power.”You know ‘the Goddess’ as a divine feminine figure of myth, art and faith – but are you aware that in truth, the Goddess is a life force that lives in you? Did you know that your multi-faceted experiences of life as a woman are influenced by Goddess consciousness? Do you sense that you have a hidden feminine energy that longs to be seen, accepted, valued – and used for a healing purpose? In this highly engaging and stirring book, leading intuitive Sophie Bashford takes you on a journey to meet nine Goddesses who help you to:• Understand the many ups-and-downs, emotions and cycles of your life through the ‘eyes of the Goddess’ • Discover how the Goddesses can ignite your spiritual growth and uncover your feminine healing gifts• Learn how to work with each Goddess for self-healing, positive inner change and empowerment • Get in touch with a divine feminine support & healing system comprising nine archetypes - including Kali, Mary Magdalene, Aphrodite and Isis • Feel connected to Goddess energy in ways that enhance many areas of your life, such as relationships & intimacy, creativity & work, health & wellbeingSharing intuitively channelled messages, beautiful guided meditations and moving personal experiences, Sophie leads you into safe territories where your darkest fears can be healed, your deepest dreams awakened, and your entire life transformed.