Cyan Banister Recommended Books

Leaves of Grass is the awesome collection of the poetry of Walt Whitman. Featuring "Song of Myself" and different examples of conventional American poetry, this series is essential analyzing for college students and fanatics of the written phrase.

A landmark exploration of the human condition with the goal of bringing self-awareness in one's daily lifeWith Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson , G. I. Gurdjieff intended to "destroy, mercilessly . . . the beliefs and views about everything existing in the world." This novel beautifully brings to life the visions of humanity for which Gurdjieff has become esteemed. Beelzebub, a man of worldly (and other-worldly) wisdom, shares with his grandson the anecdotes, personal philosophies, and lessons learned from his own life.The reader is given a detailed discussion of all matters physical, natural, and spiritual, from the creation of the cosmos to man's teleological purpose in the universe. This edition of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson --the first single-volume paperback to appear in English--restores the original, authoritative translation.

2012 Reprint of 1947 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin" is a novel by P. D. Ouspensky. It follows the unsuccessful struggle of Ivan Osokin to correct his mistakes when given a chance to relive his past. The conclusion fully anticipates the Fourth Way Philosophy which typified Ouspensky's later works, in particular the final chapter's description of the shocking realization of the mechanical nature of existence, its consequences, and the need to work in an esoteric school.

A punch in the face of the puritanism & conservatism he raged against, My Life & Loves is the highly-charged, erotic autobiography of Frank Harris (1856-1931), an Irish writer & editor who founded "Pearson's Magazine" in the USA (1914-18). When 1st published, the book elicited hostile criticism because of its blunt & frank detail of his sexual exploits, beginning in childhood. A biographer of Oscar Wilde & Shakespeare, Harris fought the US government & postal service over the content of his publications--battles included herein along with his blunt, colorful depictions of his sexual exploits with willing Victorian Age debutantes. My Life & Loves remains a landmark in erotic literature, as relevant & provocative today as it was when 1st privately printed in Paris.

Two ebullient young men search for Truth the Zen way: from marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, and "yabyum" in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude in the high Sierras and a vigil atop Desolation Peak in Washington State. Published just a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for life.

Understand Ritual and Ceremonial Magick in the Modern Era "MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." -Aleister Crowley, from the Introduction Magick in Theory and Practice is Part 3 of Aleister Crowley's four-part masterwork Liber ABA, Book Four, a foundational resource of modern magick, occultism, and hermeticism. Crowley's unparalleled knowledge of magick (which is defined as the effort, in Wicca and certain other belief systems, undertaken to affect personal transformation or external change), acquired as both scholar and practitioner, made him one of the world's leading experts on the subject. He was a British occult mystic who even created his own esoteric, magick-based spiritual philosophy called Thelema, for which he wrote the sacred texts. In Crowley's broad view, magick represents the act of affecting the world through thoughts and actions. Often known for his sensational teachings and self-created diabolical image (he was infamously known, in his own words, as "the Wickedest Man in the World!"), Crowley here provides an accessible and comprehensive entry into the world of magick for all readers. Synthesizing the most salient elements of his many other writings on the subject, this insightful and instructive volume focuses specifically on how to understand and perform ceremonial magick. Part 1 thoroughly explores definition, theory, formulas, methods, and philosophy of magick, along with the importance of self-discipline. In the second half, Crowley illuminates and provides instructions for several of the most significant magical rituals, including the Star Ruby banishing. Replete with useful advice and copious footnotes, Magick in Theory and Practice includes helpful instructions for creating conducive mindsets and appropriate physical settings for practicing magick. It is a must-read for any aspiring magus, mage, practitioner of magic, or student of the occult, and a belongs in every magician's library. This book is also available from Echo Point Books as a hardcover (ISBN 1648370861).

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brillant characters - his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.

International Bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction “Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , acclaimed author Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. This magnificent novel, now available in a beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition with French flaps and deckle edged paper, is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

From Penn Jillette of the legendary magic duo Penn & Teller: a rollicking crime caper that will bend your mind like a spoon.Two weeks before his twenty-first birthday, Las Vegas native Bobby Ingersoll finds out he’s inherited a crushing gambling debt from his scumbag father. The debt is owed to an even scummier bag named Fraser Ruphart who oversees his bottom-rung criminal empire from the classy-adjacent Trump International Hotel. Bobby’s prospects of paying off the note, which comes due the day he turns twenty-one, are about as dim as the sign on the hotel’s facade.The two weeks pass in the blink of a (snake) eye, but before Bobby’s luck runs out, he stumbles upon enough cash to pay off Ruphart and change his family’s fortune. More importantly, he finds himself with a new, for lack of a better word, faith.Bobby does not consign his big break to a “higher power”—what Penn Jillette hero ever could? Instead, he devises and devotes himself to Random, a philosophy where his life choices are based entirely on the roll of his “lucky” dice. What follows is a rollicking exploration into not so much what defines us as what divines us when we give over every decision—from what to eat to whom to marry to how or when to die—to the random fall of two numbered cubes.Random combines the intellectual curiosity of Richard Dawkins with the humor and grit of an Elmore Leonard antihero. Jillette’s up-on-his-luck Ingersoll is the character we need to help us navigate the chaos of the post-truth era.Well, unless his roll runs cold.