Wisdom Traditions

Through his extensive research into the interconnected wisdom of the ancients, Scranton shows that the forgotten instructional tradition at the source of this knowledge was deliberately encoded to survive for countless generations. By piecing it back together, we can discover the ancient plan for guiding humanity forward toward greater enlightenment.

The co-editors of Gnosis magazine explore the many esoteric traditions that Western culture has to offer. While terms from Eastern spiritual practices such as Zen, mantra, and karma have become part of our daily lexicon, the traditions of Western spirituality have been largely unexplored by people searching for non-mainstream routes to spiritual experience. But for those who identify with Western culture, Western religious traditions have their own wisdom teachings that are more suitable to their needs and expectations.

Presenting a deep dive into the world of psychedelic initiation and ancestral wisdom, Tricia Eastman demonstrates the power of plant medicine and psychedelic journeys for cultivating new beliefs, healing trauma, and accessing latent gifts within us—an inner alchemical process she calls “seeding consciousness.” Drawing on her studies with Indigenous elders, including two decades of iboga initiations with the Bwiti of Gabon, Africa, and training with the Kogi Kággaba of Colombia, Eastman provides a blueprint to transform pain and trauma into profound connections.

As Julia Gordon-Bramer reveals in profound detail, the miracle of tarot is how the right cards show up, time and time again, to provide guidance or symbolically illustrate your story—whether you believe in the tarot or not. In these real-life tales of tarot wisdom, Gordon-Bramer explores the modern applications and the living wisdom of the tarot, based on her more than 40 years’ experience as a professional tarot reader.

In modern Taoist practice, the emphasis is often on “going with the flow” (wu-wei) and not following any fixed rules of any kind. This may work well for an already enlightened Taoist Sage, but for the rest of us, following a spiritual path involves ethical, moral, and practical guidelines. As author and translator Gregory Ripley (Li Guan, 理觀) explains, the little-known 6th-century Taoist text called the Bai Yao Lu (Statutes of the Hundred Remedies) was created as a practical guide to what enlightened or sagely behavior looks like.

One of the much-loved books of Eileen Caddy (1917-2006), cofounder of the Findhorn Community in Scotland, Opening Doors Within is a perennial meditation diary offering down-to-earth inspirational messages of spiritual guidance for every day of the year. For more than 35 years, people have used these practical teachings that offer advice on achieving stillness, faith, and fulfillment. Specific suggestions for your daily spiritual growth and development enhance the impact of the supportive words.

Taking us through his more than 50 years of immersion in psychedelic shamanism, Tom Soloway Pinkson shares profound Indigenous teachings, plant teacher wisdom, and his own transformative experiences on the psychedelic Wisdom Warrior path. Pinkson shares his journey of awakening through childhood trauma to a revelatory connection with nature. He describes his mentorship with Indigenous medicine peoples around the world, including an eleven-year initiatory apprenticeship with Guadalupe de la Cruz, a renowned Huichol shaman.

Walk down the streets of Chinatown in any American or western European city and look around. She is there. Walk through the downtown streets, look in a shop window. She is there. Go to any city in China and open your eyes. She is there, too. Kuan Yin is the most ubiquitous Chinese deity - and the most loved. She is the living expression of compassion whose gentle face and elegant figure form the center of devotion in most Chinese homes and workplaces. Until relatively recently, she was barely known in the West, and few studies had been made of her.

Invoking Mnemosyne—Greek goddess of memory and eloquence, daughter of Heaven and Earth, mother of the Muses, and archetypal deity of the Asklepion dream temple tradition—this book initiates you into full dream consciousness, offering a lucid-dreaming ritual experience in the spirit of the Mystery Schools of antiquity. Sharing her more than a decade of research on Sleep Temples and Mystery Schools of the Esoteric Tradition, lucid-dreaming instructor Sarah Janes explores the evolution of imagination, memory, and consciousness throughout the ages.

In this audio edition of her book Wisdom Walk, Sage Bennet beautifully outlines the central rituals and teachings from nine of the world's great spiritual traditions, making them accessible without diminishing them, while exploring the essential beliefs of each tradition. Wisdom Walk provides a simple, easy-to-follow guide for bringing the world’s spiritual traditions into your own life through practical, powerful rituals.

A concise, easy-to-listen introduction to Theosophical thought and the esoteric principles shared by the brilliant mystic H. P. Blavatsky.

In Herbal Remedies for Health and Healing For Beginners, there are over 70 herbs detailed that can help over 20 common conditions and most have some scientific basis and research-backing of their benefits. The approach is both allopathic and holistic herbalism.

Every day we have an inner battle going on between two parts of ourselves: our ego and our soul. When we view the world through our ego lens, life can seem tragic, random, meaningless, and painful. When viewed from our soul’s perspective, we find divine order and soul agreements in every event of our lives. In this guide to aligning with your soul and seeing life through a divine lens, Sue Frederick presents mindful practices and spiritual tools to shift your perspective and step into your power.

Offering an insider’s experiential account of ancient Maya spiritual wisdom and practices, initiated Maya shaman-priestess Gabriela Jurosz-Landa opens up the mysterious world of the Maya, dispelling the rampant misinformation about their beliefs and traditions, sharing the transcendent beauty of their ceremonies, and explaining the Maya understanding of time, foundational to their spiritual worldview and cosmology.

You are invited into the magical world of four loving, feisty old witches, one for each season, who share earth-honoring wisdom, rituals, and spells to help you embrace your journey through the sacred latter half of life. Offering practical and enjoyable ways to make aging an empowering, magical, and transformative adventure, this book of spiritual guidance will help you love yourself through the aging process.

Drawing on her more than 20 years’ experience working with present-day Mesoamerican curanderos/as and the ancient shamanic healing traditions of the Mexica and Maya, Erika Buenaflor, MA, JD, provides a step-by-step guide for the curanderismo practice of soul retrieval. She explains how the soul is a form of sacred energy that can escape when someone experiences trauma or is threatened by challenging and stressful situations. Its absence can be responsible for a host of negative conditions including physical ailments, depression, insomnia, and dysfunctional behavior patterns.

For our ancestors, collective intelligence was a normal part of life. We see it today as the mysterious force that enables flocks of birds, swarms of bees, and schools of fish to function together in perfect synchrony, communicating and cooperating at some undetectable level. At its most subtle, it’s an instantaneous knowing, shared by members of a group, of the wisest course of action that will benefit all.

It goes unappreciated by modern Egyptologists, but it is embraced by those who savor the concept of a “hidden history” of humanity, and those who approach all human knowledge from the perspective of the esoteric. Gerard Massey’s massive Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World–first published in 1907 and the crowning achievement of the self-taught scholar–redefines the roots of Christianity via Egypt, proposing that Egyptian mythology was the basis for Jewish and Christian beliefs.

Here, Cosimo proudly presents Book 7 of Ancient Egypt, in which Massey explains how Egyptian wisdom–which greatly concerns itself with matters of the womb and birth, water, and the offspring of gods–was appropriated by the Hebrew holy books, and explains how the Hebrew account of creation is a clear repetition of Egyptian mythology.

For centuries, Filipino lifeways were presented to outsiders through the distorted lens of colonization—and the oppression, exploitation, and denigration suffered by Filipino ancestors are well-documented. Here, Carl Lorenz Cervantez draws from Filipino folklore, language, and culture to reorient toward an Indigenous worldview: one that rejects being seen as a passive object in history. That reclaims Filipino identity, storytelling, and liberation on Filipino terms.