The success of books such as Elaine Pagels's Gnostic Gospels and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code proves beyond a doubt that there is a tremendous thirst today for finding the hidden truths of Christianity - truths that may have been lost or buried by institutional religion over the last two millennia.

In Forbidden Faith, Richard Smoley narrates a popular history of one such truth, the ancient esoteric religion of gnosticism, which flourished between the first and fourth centuries A.D., but whose legacy remains even today, having survived secretly throughout the ages.

Life can seem to be a serious business. We could also look at it as a game--or a series of games. They include survival, love, power, pleasure, courage, creativity, and the Master Game!

The culmination is the Master Game. Richard explores prac-tices from the great spiritual traditions to show how to reach this mastery. If you play this game, you will reach new heights of wisdom, courage, kindness, and performance.

Richard, the author of thirteen books including G&D's Intro-duction to the Occult interweaves ideas from great thinkers and traditions with his own dry and irreverent wisdom, gleaned from forty years of study and practice, to show how to play the most important game of all.

There is only one question: what are we to make of this life? Most books that aim to help with that central question fail, because they amount to lists: eat this, pray to that, think about the other thing, follow one truth, carry this thingamabob. Richard Smoley offers something better. It is like a conversation with a wise friend who trusts you, talking about this reality so you're better able to relate to the ones beyond. - Quentin Hardy, Head of Editorial, Google Cloud

What is the difference between prophecy and prediction, and how has it led to a misuse of the ideas of Nostradamus, as well as those of other post-biblical prognosticators? What is the nature of the oracular tradition in the West-stretching back to the oracle at Delphi-and how can Nostradamus be understood from this perspective? In The Essential Nostradamus, the highly regarded spiritual thinker and writer Richard Smoley provides a true sourcebook in the life and messages of one of history's most peculiar figures.

This volume offers a host of advantages beyond other collections of Nostradamus's work. Many commentators on Nostradamus take liberties in their translations, further confusing the matter of what the prophetic quatrains actually said. In The Essential Nostradamus, Smoley presents a fresh, scholarly, and literal translation of Nostradamus's Middle French, allowing readers to make their own determination as to the passages' historical references and accuracy.

Smoley also supplies detailed commentary on Nostradamus's key quatrains, with a sharp eye toward the political and social events of the writer's era-elements that many commentators overlook or fail to grasp. An authoritative biographical essay-highlighting Nostradamus's separate roles as physician, astrologer, and prognosticator-rounds out the volume to create a truly essential exposition of the work of one of Western culture's most mysterious men.

This guide to mystical and esoteric Christianity speaks from a nonsectarian point of view, unearthing insights from the whole of the Christian tradition, orthodox and heretical, famous and obscure. The esoteric tradition has traditionally searched for meanings that would yield a deeper inner knowledge of the divine. While traditional Christianity draws a timeline from Adam's Fall to the Day of Judgment, the esoteric often sees time as folding in on itself, bringing every point to the here and now. While the Church fought bitterly over dogma, the esoteric borrowed freely from other traditions--Kabbalah, astrology, and alchemy--in their search for metaphors of inner truth.

Rather than basing his book around exponents of esoteric doctrine, scholar Richard Smoley concentrates on the questions that are of interest to every searching Christian. How can one attain direct spiritual experience? What does the Fall really tell us about coming to terms with the world we live in? Can we find salvation in everyday life? How can we ascend, spiritually, through the various levels of existence? What was Christ's true message to humankind? From the Gospel of Thomas to A Course in Miracles, from the Jesus Prayer to alchemy and Tarot, from Origen to Dante to Jung, Richard Smoley sheds the light of an alternative Christianity on these issues and more.

In this book, Richard Smoley, an expert on the occult, delves into the world of mind power, magic, suggestion, and the realms of the unseen. He speaks simply and clearly, in common-sense terms, about these mysterious forces, how they can work for you, and what you need to avoid. This trip through unseen worlds could be most exciting adventure of your life, and possibly the most important, as you learn about:

• Meditation
• The Colors of Magic
• The Life Force
• The Astral Light
• Thought Power
• Prophecy
• Psychic Powers
• Astrology
• The Tarot
• Ghosts, Angels, and Spirits
• Life after Death
• Evil
• Witchcraft and Satanism
• Atlantis and Lost Civilizations
• The Last Judgment
• The Kingdom of God
• Healing
• Reincarnation
• The Brotherhood
• Psychedelics and Spirituality

Richard Smoley is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society and former editor of Gnosis: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions. He has published eleven books, including Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism; Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Traditions; and Supernatural: Writings on an Unknown History. He has spent over 40 years studying the world's mystical traditions

- Shares key, inspiring teachings from A Course in Miracles as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, and the Sefer Yetzirah, the oldest known Kabbalistic text

- Cites philosophical wisdom from Kant, Blake, Jung, and Gurdjieff, alongside cognitive science, to reveal how the world is not difficult and flawed, but our fear-based mind-sets lead us to see it that way

- Offers a path to help you regenerate from the fallen state and experience God as infinite love and light

In the West, theology has almost always meant Christian theology--a hodgepodge of beliefs that are hard to make sense of. Why, for example, should an all-loving, merciful God have gotten mad at the human race because someone ate a piece of fruit six thousand years ago? And why would he send part of himself down to earth to be tortured to death? These beliefs, stated baldly, are nonsensical. Millions of people are realizing this and losing their faith. The time has come to reenvision Christian theology without contradictory teachings laced with fear. It is time for a theology of love and miracles.

Richard Smoley reframes Christian theology using logical, consistent, and easy-to-understand teachings of unconditional love and forgiveness. He draws inspiration not only from the Bible, but also from Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, and from esoteric and mystical teachings, such as A Course in Miracles and the Sefer Yetzirah, the oldest known Kabbalistic text. He explains how the fallen state of the human condition, not one of sin but of oblivion, leads us to experience the world as flawed and problematic--not wholly evil, but not wholly good.

Citing philosophical wisdom from Kant, Blake, Jung, and Gurdjieff, alongside cognitive science, Smoley reveals how it is not the world that is flawed, but the way we see the world. Sharing key teachings from A Course in Miracles, he shows that our fear-based mind-sets--often filled with anxiety, suffering, and shame--lead us to feel separated from God when, in fact, we are all extensions of a God of infinite love and light.

Offering a path to help you regenerate from the fallen state and see the real spiritual world and loving God that lies behind it, the author provides ways for each of us to craft our own self-consistent theology. He also lays out a vision for the future of spirituality, a path for present-day religion to transform into something higher and more universal.

Nostradamus...channeling...Atlantis...divination. Most serious people consider such topics nonsense. But look again. Writing with intellectual verve and a deeply critical mind, religious thinker Richard Smoley explores and reconsiders the supernatural in history and today.

We are often conditioned to think of the Judeo-Christian tradition as the only valid, historically accurate, and rational spiritual philosophy. Occultism, magic, and the esoteric are, by contrast, considered illegitimate, delusional, and lacking in intrinsic worth. Supernatural challenges this prejudice, revealing that Western occult traditions are richer and more historically impactful than most of us imagine. The book reveals hidden diamonds and neglected ideas that characterize the magical tradition in the West.

For any reader, at any level of experience, who has ever been curious about an arcane subject - from psychical powers to secret societies - here is a book that gives a complete yet precise, critical, yet serious, and always respectful account of topics from the unseen world. Supernatural is a brilliant primer to the occult and magical traditions of the West.

Praise for RICHARD SMOLEY

I have a standing rule: I read anything Richard Smoley writes. --Larry Dossey, M.D.

Smoley . . . is adept at unknotting the paradoxes of spiritual traditions and making new connections across centuries and languages. --Library Journal

He is one of the liveliest, most intrepid, and most gifted explorers of the spiritual landscape writing today.

--Ptolemy Tompkins, author of Paradise Fever