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The two thrillers that I liked best last year were The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn and The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian. I’d give a slight edge to The Woman in the Window, because I thought the psychology and motivation of the main character was more gripping. Note: All books mentioned in this email are links, so you can check out their descriptions in Amazon. (I wish I could say that they are affiliate links, so that if you bought any of the books I’d get a few cents, but I can’t, because I haven’t figured out how to set that up yet. Maybe in next year’s list of favorite books 😃.)

Here are some of the other books I read last year. To not over confuse the email with links, I’ve only included the Amazon links, because most people are familiar with where to find their descriptions and how to use the “Look Inside” feature. I’m sure most of the books would also be available in Apple, Kobo, Nook, etc.

Don Quixote, Miguel Cervantes.

How to Take Smart Notes, Sönke Ahrens

How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method, Randy Ingermanson

Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age, Sanjay Gupt

The Master Mind of the Self-Actualizing Person, Neil Vega

Washington Square, Henry James

A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber

The Neverending Story, Michael Ende

Man and his Symbols, Carl Jung

Chiron and the Healing Journey, Melanie Reinhart

My favorite book of the year? It’s a toss up between Don Quixote, Washington Square, The Neverending Story, A Brief History of Everything and Carl Jung’s Man and his Symbols.

Here are some observations on each:

How the drama of a James novel can turn on the simplest of acts. For instance, naïve and innocent Catherine standing up to her self-important father for the first time:

“‘Oh, nothing particular!'” Catherine answered, dissembling for the first time in her life.

Jung’s writing seems to pull you into a state of almost dreaming while awake. We see everything as having hidden depths and meaning. He sort of explains the process writers go through as they write. One quote resonated with me:

“There are cases in which people have dreamt the same dream from childhood into the later years of adult life. A dream . . . is usually an attempt to compensate for a particular defect in the dreamer’s attitude to life; or it may date from a traumatic moment that has left behind some specific prejudice. It may also sometimes anticipate a future event of importance.”

I’ve had such a recurring dream, and in some future post I’ll talk about it.

So, what book/books impacted you last year? What entertained you the most? To which do you thoughts keep returning.
Remember, we’re all different, which is what will make the comments fun.

What does work mean?

Does it mean telling someone they’ll be rich or marry well? Many people wanted me to read their cards to learn just that. I always disappointed that group.

Or does “work” mean that the Tarot offers another means of self-discovery?

There are a couple of scenes in my novel Defiled: The Consecration of Jacob Jordaens, where the characters consult the Tarot.

I thought I’d use this email to tell you what the Tarot means to me.

In following my Builders of the Adytum Curriculum (the relevant two posts are: What happened riding the Red Line from Harvard Square? and The Red Line Pamphlet: What was inside? , I became interested in Tarot. I did many hundred readings, even engaging in psychic-fair marathons.

I accepted I had a certain sensitivity about people’s character. Not that I thought that there were mysterious forces pulling cards out of the deck that would allow me to be a medium to reveal the person-sitting-across-from-me’s future.

No, it was more that the layout allowed me to build a connection with the other person, and to organize my thoughts into coherent statements that I thought might be helpful.

I don’t think Tarot can read the future, except in the sense that character is destiny.

If a layout shows a warning about a particular weakness manifesting, like uncontrolled anger, it’s not that unlikely that uncontrolled anger will cause problems for that person in the future.

The Tarot gave warnings rather than statements of what will happen.

One of my readings could take as long as two hours to complete. During that time, I sensed how someone was reacting to what I was telling them. Sometimes they’d be excited, as if the insight was brand new. Sometimes they’d become nervous, as if they didn’t want to hear what they knew was true. Finally, sometimes they’d resist and reject everything I was saying.

Forceful resistance or rejection was often a clue that I had hit a nerve. I’d back off and return later with another example from another area of their life, hoping to connect.

At times my hunch would be wrong. I’d admit the misinterpretation, and a deeper dialogue usually followed.

I made it clear that a reading was not about proving I had superordinary ability. I had studied human psychology, both formally and on my own, had a certain interest and desire to help others understand themselves better, and seemed to have an intuitive sense about character. This intuitive sense is probably why my fiction is so character- rather than plot-oriented.

Finally, this article, from Quora, best summarizes how I think the Tarot can be a potent tool for self-reflection and discovery.

Quora: Do tarot cards actually work]

So, do Tarot cards actually work? I have to ask again, what do you mean by work? For me, it was a an interesting way to link conscious intellectual thinking with what lay beneath in the subterranean recesses of the mind. It had nothing to do with fortune telling.
Until next time.

I promised to tell you in my last email—which if you haven’t read or don’t remember, here’s a link: What Happened Riding the Red Line from Harvard Square?—what was inside that booklet.

I picked it up. Its title was something like An Introduction to B.O.T.A. I opened it and discovered that it was an offer—to a few only—to enlist in a ten-year curriculum in the esoteric arts. There was no catch. This was free. My heart was beating faster. This looked like salvation.

I went home, and over the next several days, read the booklet over and over. I finally went to its website and posted a request for the entrance exam.

Receiving the exam a week later in the mail, I saw why it was an invitation to a few only. It involved writing several essays on my relationship to the supernatural, or to the subtler planes. Writing the exams was revelatory for me, and I sent the school a twenty-five page single-spaced printed essay.

The Builders of the Adytum accepted me, and for the next ten years I took courses in Tarot, Astrology, Alchemy, Mental Polarity, among other esoteric disciplines. This curriculum formed the knowledge upon which I base my thrillers.

I finished with that “school” fifteen or twenty years ago, rarely think of them, yet I know their influence persists.

Now was finding the booklet coincidence or synchronicity? There seemed no way out of my depression, given the way I had been viewing the world. Then suddenly this pamphlet appeared and a whole new perspective became available.

In the quarter century since finding the pamphlet, I have never seen it again, except for the one copy I keep in my file cabinet.

Was this evidence of factors beyond our everyday perceptions influencing the course of my life? Or was I suffering from delusion?

Whether I am looking at Jake Jordaen’s trying to distinguish between being psychically talented or hallucinating in Defiled (The Consecration of Jacob Jordaens), or Clark Ransom trying to decide whether he’s crazy or the visiting Toltec god is real, that not-knowing is the thematic core of my writing.

It’s been so ever ever since that pamphlet with its tinker-toy construction cover slid beneath my foot on Red Line years ago.

I often ask myself, why do I enjoy Anne Rice or Stephen King? Why do I explore supernatural elements in the thrillers I write?

I guess, because I’ve lived through amazing (amazing as in Amazing Stories) and inexplicable events. I’ve wondered if such events were coincidental. Or was Jung’s synchronicity principle at play?

What’s synchronicity? Let’s say, there’s a void somewhere and simultaneously something appears to fill that void. That’s synchronicity.

I want to share one such event that sent me down a different path for more than a decade.

I was on the subway in Boston. I lived in Providence, forty-five minutes away, and would often go to Boston to Harvard Square bookstores.

An approaching bout of depression prompted the trip. I was trying to finish my first novel, while working sixty- to eighty-hour weeks at a software company. I went up to Boston to browse through bookstores, hoping there was some who understood my dilemma and could solve it.

I found nothing and felt the gloom and weight of depression moving closer.

Then, riding the Red Line from Cambridge back to the Boston Amtrak station, my foot slid on something.

I looked down. There was a booklet, its cover a slick black with ten colored globes, looking sort of like a tinker toy construction (for those of you old enough to remember tinker toys).

This pamphlet’s title? An Introduction to B.O.T.A. I thought, ‘What in the hell is B.O.T.A.?’ I opened to the first page and read…

In two weeks, I’ll let you know what I found.

The Mesoamerican civilizations: Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, and the lesser known Toltecs centered their understanding of the universe around the building of pyramids.

The hero of my trilogy, Stanford archaeologist Clark Ransom, explores these pyramids looking for a secret that could well change the world for the better.

In the first novel, The Toltec Conspiracy, his quest focuses on the pyramid outside of San Miguel de Allende, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico: Cañada de la Virgen.

Since my fictional interpretation of that pyramid centers much of the action of The Toltec Conspiracy, I thought I’d introduce you.

I think you’ll find these YouTube videos interesting.

For a short introduction:

Mexico’s Best Kept Secret Pyramid

And for those of you with a deeper interest, here is a two part documentary, narrated by the fantastic Albert Coffee:

Cañada de la Virgen, Part 1

Cañada de la Virgen, Part 2

As a final note, remember that I’m writing novels—works of the imagination—and have bent the facts about the pyramid and the Toltecs as they have suited the story.