Review of The Everyday Psychic

Review copyright 2013() Freeman Presson, all rights reserved

Cover of The Everyday Psychic

This new Weiser title is a well-made paperback in the familiar 6″x9″ 240-page format. Adrian Morgan is credited with the nice front cover design: a lovely shade of astral blue at the top is faded to dark blue at the bottom. Now, I think the fortune cookie motif at the bottom might be just a tad corny, but I can see how it was hard to resist. The fortune text, “Be the keeper of your gifts,” strikes a reasonably dignified note, unlike the sound-bites of a lot of self-help titles. Apparently Weiser is developing a self-help line with “Everyday” in the titles. Fortunately, the matter of this book, exercises and attitudes for developing one’s psychic insight, is not as fluffy as most self-help topics: it is essentially the same as the exercises for developing magic in general.

Harrison is the author of The Herbal Alchemist’s Handbook, already reviewed quite favorably here. She has put in twenty or more years on the arcane arts, and is clearly someone deserving of our attention.

This book aims at a wider audience than one with a more specifically magical bent. It compares favorably with other books in this genre, of which my favorite has been You Are Psychic!: The Free Soul Method, by Pete A. Sanders, Jr. Ophiel also wrote The Art and Practice of Clairvoyance, which I should definitely have a look at someday. Harrison’s book is vastly easier reading than the “Swami Panchadasi” opus I reviewed two years ago; that one has its own charms, as noted.

The exercises in the present book are practical and relatively simple. They are not as detailed (and dare I say pedantic) as Bardon’s in Initiation into Hermetics, but then, we need only one of Bardon, thank you! They range from simple meditations and pathworkings to a reprise of the old AMORC dark-mirror scrying exercise.

There is a nice division of types of psychic functioning, very well-done, matching and extending the terms I use.

We’re going to have to forgive the author’s scientifically-naïve attempts in the beginning of the book to ground psychic functioning in the realm of electromagnetic phenomena; the Maxwellian EM field does not exhibit the necessary characteristics of memory or non-locality to explain Ψ. I go into more detail on some topics related to this in my recent essay, The Reënchantment Project. There is an interface between Ψ and the EM field, but no one has nailed down exactly how it works yet.

In short, this is a very competent work on this important topic, and it will be especially useful to anyone who is wanting to start their esoteric work by turning up their Ψ receptors.

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The Everyday Psychic: A Practical Guide to Activating Your Psychic Gifts
Karen Harrison
ISBN: 9781578635290
Book (Paperback)
Weiser Books
$16.95
6 x 9
240 pages
January 1, 2013

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[Complimentary review copy from the publisher gratefully acknowledged, opinions my own, your mileage may vary, etc.]

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