“Self-help” may be one of the most popular book genres today, with bookstore shelves overloaded with myriad volumes of advice for fixing everything that worries, angers, or frustrates us. But here is a new approach to the age-old desire to solve our personal problems. Instead of taking advice from a stranger, from an author who doesn’t know us, here, in The Self-Inquiry Process: Using Powerful Questions to Awaken Awareness, by integral psychotherapist and energy healer Linda Brierty, new from Cosimo, we learn how to get to know ourselves — and so help ourselves — better than we ever have before.

The Self-Inquiry Process is experiential in nature. With its guidance, you will embark on a process of introspection that will increase your self-awareness and bring your unconscious into consciousness. While other “self-help” books claim to have the answers, this ones asks the questions. It introduces a unique framework with which to understand yourself, and goes on to ask direct questions, some quite challenging, some provocative, others simple and to the point. The questions reveal the sources of suffering that can hinder our everyday experience. Other questions point the way to fulfillment and joy. Each question in the book can take you deeper into relationship with your own Self, and closer to the Self-love that makes so many things possible, including loving others and the world.

The Self-Inquiry Process is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Self Inquiry Process, Linda Brierty, self-help, self-analysis)

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Dreams can inspire inventions and inspire our waking lives. They worry us and scare us. Some people seek to intensify their dreams, while other discover — inadvertantly — that intense dreams can be prompted by the most unlikely of situations. We all wonder about our dreams and how to interpret them in a way that’s meaningful to us.

And now there’s an indispensable new guide to learning how to pay attention to our dreams and really hear what they are telling us: A Dream Come True: Simple Techniques for Dream Interpretation and Precognitive Dream Recognition, by David L. Kahn, brand new from Cosimo.

Every night when you fall sleep, you have the opportunity to gain new insights into your life, your work, and your relationships through your dreams. Here, in this friendly, down-to-earth guide to interpreting and even guiding your nighttime reveries, discover:

• how emotions are the building blocks of your dreams
• the strength to embrace the fears your dreams reveal
• training your dream habits to mimic your waking habits
• the particular power of lucid dreams
• important differences between long and short dreams
• appreciating color, music, and visual metaphors in dreams
• tapping into your extrasensory perception via dreams
• interpreting precognitive dreams
• and much more.

A sample of Kahn’s friendly style:

If you find yourself having dreams about being chased or fighting something, make a conscious decision next time to stop running and stop fighting. Turn around and face whatever “it” is. This sounds hard to do. How can you love some hideous-looking creature that you perceive is trying to hurt you? You must remember that this is merely a physical representation of your fears and anxieties. Do not fear these dreams. They are opportunities to heal yourself, and to rid yourself of harmful habits. Show your monster love.

Eschewing the hard-and-fast deterministic approach of traditional “dream dictionaries,” while never denying the power of cultural symbols that influence us all, professional dreamer David L. Kahn shows you how to listen to your subconscious and gives you the tools you need to determine what your unique dreams mean to you.

Royalties from the sale of this book benefit The Aid for Traumatized Children Project.

A Dream Come True is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Dream Come True, David L Kahn, dream analysis, dream interpretation)

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If you’ve already finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and are desperately seeking a new magic fix, why not read up on the historical roots of the mythology of magic?

Start with Aradia: Gospel of the Witches, by Charles Godfrey Leland, the 1899 classic that has become a foundational document of modern Wicca and neopaganism. Leland, an American journalist, claimed that a “witch informant,” a fortune-teller named Maddalena, supplied him with the secret writings that he translated and combined with his research on Italian pagan tradition to create a gospel of pagan belief and practice. Here, in the story of the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to champion oppressed peasants in their fight against their feudal overlords and the Catholic Church, are the chants, prayers, spells, and rituals that have become the centerpieces of contemporary pagan faiths.

Also from Leland is Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, in which he explores the origins of witchcraft, vindictive and mischievous magic, charms and conjurations, love potions, fortune telling, gypsy amulets, and much more. Cosimo’s edition is a replica of the original 1891 book, complete with Leland’s beautifully evocative drawings and diagrams.

Modern wizards will want to add the 1911 book The Book of Ceremonial Magic, by Arthur Edward Waite, to their magical libraries. Culled from the rare and often inaccessible actual manuscripts of magical grimoires from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, this classic work on magic and its secrets reveals all you need to know in order to begin communing with the supernatural and appropriating its power. Waite, a preeminent 19th-century expert in esoterica and a cocreator of the famous 1910 Rider-Waite Tarot deck, discusses the difference between white and black magic, the rituals of transcendental magic, the rituals of black magic, the names and offices of evil spirits, the mysteries of “infernal evocation,” and much more. But be warned: Dabbling in the paranormal arts is an adventure undertaken at your own risk.

What happened to medieval magicians caught casting spells? Fifteen-century Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger reveal all in The Malleus Maleficarum, also known as “The Witch Hammer.” A handbook for hunting and punishing witches, this is mostly a compilation of superstition and folklore, but it was taken very seriously at the time it was written and became a kind of spiritual law book used by judges to determine the guilt of the accused. Cosimo’s is a replica edition of the 1928 translation by Montague Summers.

Did you know that Albus Dumbledore’s old pal Nicholas Flamel was a real alchemist of historical lore? Learn about Flamel — and more than fifty other alchemists — in Alchemists Through the Ages, another work by Arthur Edward Waite. The word alchemy conjures up images of charlatans mixing potions and concocting remedies during the Middle Ages in a futile quest to transform lead into gold, but the roots of alchemy can be traced back more than 2,500 years to locales as disparate as Egypt, India, and China, and it was considered serious science until as recently as the 16th century. In this highly regarded volume first published in 1888, Waite examines the lives and works of alchemists from the year 850 through the end of the 18th century. Was alchemy the true precursor to modern chemistry or a pseudo-science populated by quacks? Decide for yourself.

For more on alchemy, check out Alchemy Rediscovered and Restored, by Archibald Cockren. According to practitioners and students of alchemy, the body’s Vital Energy, or Quintessence, is best obtained from minerals and metals. Using everyday language and an accessible style, Cockren — considered the greatest British alchemist of the 20th century — explores the different uses and manifestations of this ancient science, from the physical to the medicinal and even the spiritual. Along the way, he provides engaging sketches of alchemy’s early pioneers, including St. Germain, Basil Valentine, and the legendary Paracelsus, providing a solid foundation to his belief that within the world’s metals “can be found elements to cure all discords in the human body.”

(Technorati tags: Harry Potter, magic, alchemy)

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New Age warrior and America’s first corporate shaman Jim Channon of Arcturus.org checks in with a review of the new Cosimo title The Power of Yin, by modern philosophers Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, and edited by Barbara DeLaney. Say Channon:

Want to discover the female archetypes that match the most famous male leaders of recent history? Better yet do you want to sneak inside a pivotal moment in their allegiance to their grander roles in space and time? Would you like to get a take on the feminine version on almost every major issue of our time? This is not just about how “women” think because we see here three very different women with different styles but a uniquely interesting collaborative way about them. They are historically astute, politically savvy, philosophically grounded, strategically practical, heart fully engaging, broadly aware, and beautiful women. I can think of many important current male leaders who have absolutely none of these qualities. I am choosing to take this documentary journal of a female summit meeting as a six month course … reading some every other day. There is a major gestalt every several pages. Savor it. PS. While building the 100 year vision for planet earth with the World Business Academy these three bright stars and a half dozen of their peers accounted for more than half of the finally selected goals for our future.

The Power of Yin is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

(Technorati tags: Power of Yin, Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jim Channon)

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We’ve learned that there were some printing problems with the first print runs of two Cosimo Classics titles:

• The Law, by Frederic Bastiat (ISBN: 1596059648)
• My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, by Nikola Tesla (ISBN: 9781602060579)

We have resolved these problems immediately. However, if you purchased either of the these titles before June 15, 2007, your book could contain errors. If so, please send an email to info@cosimobooks.com with “1st Print Run” in the subject line, and we will let you know how to get a replacement copy.

Thank you for your understanding.

(Technorati tags: The Law by Frederic Bastiat, My Inventions by Tesla)

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Cosimo is delighted to announce the publication of The Power of Yin by renowned modern philosophers Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, and edited by Barbara DeLaney.

This is the first project I’ve shepherded from manuscript to finished book since I started working with Cosimo, and I’m very excited about it. There seems to be something in the zeitgeist lately about the interconnectedness between spirituality, feminism, and eco-awareness — it’s not merely a resurgence of the early essence of Earth Day in the 1970s but a new awareness that feminine attitudes, expression, and approaches to interacting with the world are going to need to be brought to bear if humanity is to make it through the next century.

And Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard were talking about this thirty years ago. Here’s the description from the back of the book. Yeah, it’s a little “marketing-y,” but I wrote this, and I honestly believe it:

What are the best tactics to take to head off global environmental disaster? Is industrial society in decline, and if so, how should we manage its dismantling? How can humanity better integrate itself into the continuum of evolving technologies that surround us? Three of the most influential feminist philosophers of the 1970s met over two weekends in 1977 and 1978 to discuss the challenges facing society in the late 20th century… and their revelatory, inspiring conversation, reproduced here for the first time, is startlingly fresh and relevant for us today, as we rise to meet the challenges of the new millennium.

With an uplifting spiritual perspective on the human experience and a uniquely feminine approach to interacting with the universe, Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, and Barbara Marx Hubbard — with an able assist from editor Barbara DeLaney — here offer a magnificently feminist, grandly humanist, rousingly hopeful approach to the myriad challenges facing planet Earth and her people today.

The Power of Yin is more than a brilliant conversation. It is an invitation to women and men everywhere to express their own genius and empower their highest values and goals, to seek out others who attract them in this quest for personal development, to form ever deeper friendships, and to join together in spirit and in action to help evolve the human community on planet Earth.

Who are the authors? Hazel Henderson is a world-renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, and consultant on sustainable development. Jean Houston is advisor to UNICEF in human and cultural development, and a principal founder of the Human Potential Movement. Barbara Marx Hubbard is president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution and a cofounder of Washington D.C.’s Committee for the Future.

I know I kinda have to say things like this, but The Power of Yin is a really fascinating book, and an important one, too. So check it out.

(Technorati tags: Power of Yin, Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard)

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Sunday, July 8, marks the 60th anniversary of the “UFO crash” at Roswell, New Mexico; there’s been renewed interest lately thanks to supposed deathbed confessions of some of the people involved. The real news is that little desert town is marking the occasion with a big bash, the Amazing Roswell UFO Festival, which runs from Thursday July 5th through Sunday the 8th. Naturally, with the interest that Cosimo — and our publishing partner, Paraview — have in the paranormal, our authors will be represented at the conference in a big way. Appearing in person will be:

• Nick Redfern, author of Paraview titles Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story, A Covert Agenda: The British Government’s UFO Top Secrets Exposed, and Strange Secrets: Real Government Files on the Unknown (written with Andy Roberts). Nick is a major name in the field of exposing government secrets and conspiracies we in the general public aren’t supposed to know about, and if we’re ever going to learn the truth — whatever the truth may be — behind the epidemic of UFO sightings in the post-World War II era, it will be because of the diligent efforts of guys like him.

• Peter Robbins, author of the Cosimo book Left at East Gate: A First-hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest Ufo Incident, Its Cover-up, and Investigation, (written with Larry Warren), an in-depth look at an infamous UFO incident in the U.K. that is commonly referred to by UFO buffs as “the British Roswell.”

• Adam Gorightly, gonzo chronicler of the modern conspiracy culture and author of the Paraview title The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture.

• Greg Bishop, author of the Paraview title Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth. The scoop on Bennewitz is here; basically, he was instrumental in shaping contemporary UFO/government-coverup conspiracy theory.

If you can’t make the conference — and man, it sounds like fun — then you can at least read about state of UFO “research.” And check out the Cosimo book The Flying Saucers Are Real. Published just a few years after the Roswell event in 1947, it is a clear-headed and straightforward look at the UFO phenomnon as it was understood at the time.

(Technorati tags: Roswell crash, UFO, Nick Redfern, Peter Robbins, Adam Gorightly, Greg Bishop)

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