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This article was written by Graham Nicholls

The writing of Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience has reconnected me with many of the people who were around me as a young teenager when I first started my journey with the out-of-body experience (OBE) and astral projection. Just a few weeks ago I was contacted by my old friend Kirsty, who, about eighteen years ago, was also one of first people with whom I had shared my ideas. She had found me again online and was very happy to see that I was now working with a wider public in much the same way I had worked with her. She could recall the times that we had talked about the book I was going to write and how I envisioned it stepping into new territory. When she saw that Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience would be published she knew I had achieved something I’d held in my heart for a long time.

After so many years it was interesting to hear how we had gone in different directions in our lives, yet we had arrived at similar understandings. I had explored my creativity through art and writing, and she had been drawn to science. Yet now she wanted to look back into the experiences she’d had all those years before. I, on the other hand, had become increasingly scientific in my journey to understand not just what an OBE is, but how I can most successfully teach others to have them. In the end we both view the world with scientific eyes, but can see that there are things that do not fit within the framework of the materialist ideologies that dominate the science establishment.

Apparitions of the Living and the Dead
For many sceptics, out-of-body experiences have been explained away and can simply be ignored. Yet, does the evidence from recorded accounts, controlled experiments, and research into near death experiences (NDEs) support this conclusion? Over the years I have had many out-of-body experiences that were objective and could not be easily dismissed; there wasn't just the sense that I visited a place and saw what was happening there, but others would also be aware that I was there in some ethereal form. Some of the most powerful of these have been when my partner would sense my presence. These ghosts of the living are fairly common in OBE as well as NDE accounts, especially among lovers or long-term partners, and is an area of OBE evidence that is often overlooked, but one that I find increasingly fascinating.

Read more: Navigating the out of body experience

This article was written by Barbara Moore

The Beginning

Fairly early on in my journey with tarot, I had a private reading with Rachel Pollack, the author of some of the best-loved books on tarot (like Tarot Wisdom). She is something of a legend in most tarot circles, and is one of the people who modernized tarot. She was, and still is, a hero to me. I approached this first opportunity to meet with her with stars in my eyes. We sat down and she told me to talk about the situation that I wanted the reading about. Not, "What is your question?" but, "Talk about the situation." As I talked, she jotted notes on a scrap of paper. When I stopped talking, she continued making curious marks on that scrap of paper. After she was satisfied, she showed me the paper saying, "This is the spread I’m going to use for your reading." Rachel proceeded to explain the spread and asked me if it seemed fine to me.

I don’t think she knew that while my voice calmly and quietly said, "Sure, that looks great," that my mind was exploding in three different ways. " "Hey, she can’t just make up a spread!" "Hey, she made up a special spread just for me!" "Holy crap! I’m getting a reading from Rachel Pollack!" And as quick as three thoughts, my world changed. Without knowing it, Rachel opened a door to a world that I never knew existed—the universe where spreads are created. My heart pounded as promises of freedom, structure, creativity, patterns, and possibilities ran through my soul like blood through my veins. "Yep," I thought. "This is where I belong."

Read more: A Few Thoughts on Tarot Spreads