Books

It’s come to my attention that things are being written about myself and my book that are inflammatory, untrue, and outright libelous. It appears to be one individual who has written reviews and blog posts seeking to discredit me and my research based on a very cursory reading of my book (they even admit to skipping whole sections of it) and some superficial googling they did online.

In any event, normally I wouldn’t give it any mind, except that folks seem to be citing this person’s blog post as if it’s true. Here then is the correct information about myself and my book.

1. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (HOGD) is not a “known anti-semetic group.” This reviewer seems to be confusing the HOGD with the Greek political organization, the Golden Dawn, which the HOGD has publicly disavowed. https://osogd.org/not-our-golden-dawn/

2. In my book I discuss individuation of the self and how the spirits/deities/etc. perhaps might assist us in that endeavor. I also discuss how one of the gifts of spirit marriage might be in helping us to become more conscious, or awakened, as individuals and thus as a collective. These are psycho-spiritual concepts. Nowhere in the material do I suggest the idea of eugenics, nor do I support this practice/concept.

3. The California Institute of Integral Studies, where I did my PhD, has held institutional accreditation since 1981, and has remained in good standing that entire time. The Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) program in Clinical Psychology (which is NOT the program I hold a degree in) lost its accreditation with the APA in 2011. However, this had no bearing on my valid and fully accredited degree in the East-West Psychology program.

4. My master’s degree thesis, done at the Graduate Theological Union in the field of Religion and Society, was written about Pentecostal Women and Feminism not about Mary Magdalen.

5. I studied Hermetic Kabbalah alongside my Jewish (now ex) husband.

6. My framework, my lens, through which I approached my research, and really everything in life is post-Christian. I clearly state at the beginning of the work, as all good scholars are encouraged to do, that I am approaching this material from the perspective of someone who left Christianity and converted to Paganism. We all have a history and a lens through which we see and interpret phenomena in our lives. Not naming that lens and acknowledging its potential impact on your worldview and thus how you interpret data is sloppy scholarship. For more on this see the recent interview I did with Brandy Williams about the Spirit Marriage Research Process and Methodology. https://youtu.be/mh12LUJbx0Y

7. To the critique that I’m talking about traditions that are not my own, and therefore I am culturally appropriating, I would remind my readers that this book was rooted in sociological and psychological academic research. I am a religious studies scholar who was looking at an experience across various traditions. My interviews were conducted within a phenomenological qualitative research framework where I obtained written permission from each of my coresearchers who were then invited to read and edit their stories before they were published. This was done under the supervision of a Human Research Review Committee. (For more on this, I would again point you to the Research Process interview I did with Brandy Williams https://youtu.be/mh12LUJbx0Y )

8. Nowhere in my work do I mention extraterrestrials. Although I am personally not averse to the idea of intelligence existing beyond the finite scope of Earth, it was far beyond the purview of this book to develop that inquiry.

9. ESP, or our psychic development as individuals, is not a conspiracy theory. (see Dr. Dean Radin’s excellent research on this subject)

10. The Burning Times are elaborated upon in a footnote on page 275, and I define ceremonial magick in the glossary.

11. My only mention of Lilith in the book is a poem I include on page 307 extolling her role as Dark Goddess. I clearly state on page 254 that Isis was my focal deity at the time, and that a triumvirate of Isis-Sophia-Magdalen became the primary deity focus for this work. (However, in my opinion, the gods/goddesses call whomever they call, and then we have to figure out how best to work with them.)

12. As for the remainder of the critiques: That I’m saying the spirits can heal us physically and psychologically (which is what one of my coresearchers did claim), or that the fact that many of my coresearchers reported that their lives got rearranged, sometimes completely remodeled, to accommodate the spirit marriage and this equates to toxic relationship dynamics (if you read the various comparative stories, you will see that there are many different experiences that folks have had with this practice throughout history. Some more easeful than others. Depending on the type and nature of the spirit, some marriages are easier to manage and negotiate than others. This is why it’s so important to have support and guidance in how to manage spirit contact in the first place.), or that I’m not actually writing about spirit marriage but about an alchemical concept of marriage (marriage has looked like many different things across time and history, and we are, after all, talking about relationships with a mostly disincarnate beings, so how else might it look?)—I state at the end of my book that the sacred or alchemical approach to spirit marriage is my interpretation of the material I collected, as are the conclusions that I drew from the overarching research. I am not trying to be the final word on spirit marriage, nor claim that I have the only interpretation. I clearly state on pages 324-325 that folks are free to draw their own conclusions and I hope that they so do! And then enter into a thoughtful and well-researched scholarly debate on the subject.

I hope that this clears up some of the mis-information that has been spread about my work. If you have read my book and enjoyed it, I would greatly appreciate a positive review on Amazon and/or Goodreads, and if you do come across someone perpetuating this misinformation I hope you’ll point them to this page to set the record straight. Deep gratitude!