Old ideas about mind and spirit, read with fresh eyes.
Hermeticism, New Thought and the research on consciousness, explained plainly. The classic texts, where the ideas came from, and how far the evidence reaches.
Latest articles
- Practice
Breathwork: What the Research Shows and Where It Stops
Pranayama, slow breathing, box breathing, Wim Hof and holotropic breathwork: what controlled studies show, where evidence runs out, and the safety risks.
- Hermeticism
The Corpus Hermeticum: Origins, Ficino and the Poimandres
What the Corpus Hermeticum is, how Ficino's Latin version shaped the Renaissance, why Casaubon redated it in 1614, and how it differs from The Kybalion.
- New Thought
Phineas Quimby: The Clockmaker Behind New Thought
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby went from mesmerism to mental healing. His patients, the Eddy dispute, and how much New Thought really owes him, with the evidence.
- Mind and Research
The Placebo Effect: What It Shows About Mind Over Body, and What It Does Not
What the placebo effect really shows: Beecher's 1955 claim, open-label placebos, nocebo, the Cochrane reviews, and why expectation eases pain but not disease.
- Foundations
Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy: Where the Term Spiritual Science Came From
Who Rudolf Steiner was, how he coined spiritual science, and what the evidence says about Waldorf schools, biodynamic farming and anthroposophic medicine.
- Mind and Research
William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Psychologist Studies the Sacred
How William James studied religious experience in his Gifford Lectures: healthy minds and sick souls, the four marks of mysticism, mind-cure and psychical research.
Sections
Foundations
Where to start: what spiritual science means, where its big ideas came from, and how to tell a meaningful pattern from a coincidence.
Hermeticism
The Hermetic tradition and its most popular modern text, The Kybalion: what the principles say, who wrote them, and how to read them today.
New Thought
The American movement that taught that thought shapes life, from Quimby and Atkinson to the law of attraction, with its claims and its critics.
Mind and Research
What scientists have actually found about consciousness, near-death experiences and reincarnation claims, including where the evidence runs out.
- The Placebo Effect: What It Shows About Mind Over Body, and What It Does Not
- William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Psychologist Studies the Sacred
- Reincarnation Research: The Ian Stevenson Case Studies and Their Critics
- Near-Death Experiences: What Researchers Have Actually Found
- Consciousness and the Brain: What We Know and What We Don't
Practice
Concentration and meditation methods, old and new, with what the research says about what they can and cannot do.