Imaginal Reality: Journey to the Voids

(Paperback)

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Description

This book is for everyone. We all yearn for (and do) magic. We just don't let ourselves see it.Our world is a far wilder, weirder and more mysterious place than we ever admit, yet the magic we perform every day hides beneath the countless explanations we foist onto life. In the face of these convincing yet empty explanations, we displace our hunger for a sense of the magical onto other goals, addictions, and distractions. Left at odds with the very sublimity that animates our every moment, we have turned magic into an exception, a collection of superstitions, a historical backwater, and a cinematic spectacle, rather than the very fabric of life as lived. This book is about recovering the imagination of magic and the magic of imagination.This, the first of two volumes, introduces the landscape of the imaginal and the existential voids. Through illustrative stories and self-assessment exercises, this book brings the often-obscure language of existentialism, esotericism, and imaginal psychology to life.

Reviews

"[A] full cerebral download."--Peter J. Carroll, author of Liber Null and Psychonaut
"The finest book on contemporary existential magic I've ever read."--George Holochwost, Magus (1 ), Illuminates of Thanateros"
"[A] full cerebral download."
"I have taken my time to review this book because it has given me so much to think about. Jaded habitue of the magical scene that I am, I am seldom impressed by anything I read these days, but this did it....Daniels has gone beyond the basic chaos magical model of magic as what we can call 'psychic powers'. So this book could be described as the most iconoclastic magical book ever. This is not the first time I've come across the notion that every action is magical, but it's the first time I've seen it outside of silly newage or ill thought-through hippie drivel....In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone engaged in magic or mysticism and who wants to really think about what they are doing."

Author Bio

Aaron B. Daniels teaches psychology in Boston, Massachusetts. He holds degrees from: Baldwin Wallace College (BA); Duquesne University (MA), where he studied existential phenomenology; and Pacifica Graduate Institute (PhD), where his degree emphasized the depth tradition. After working for a decade in private and public practice, he transitioned into academia. His previous two works, 'Imaginal Reality, Volume One: Journey to the Voids' and 'Imaginal Reality, Volume Two: Voidcraft' were both published in 2011. Written with Laura M. Daniels, they are syntheses of imaginal psychology with existential principles.