Contributor Bio: Timothy Smith:
Smith is an award-winning Michigan community journalist and father of a micro-preemie daughter.

Book Annotation: In this new book, the third in the trilogy that began with The Magus of Strovolos and Homage to the Sun, Markides continues his fascinating pursuit of the mystical teachings of Daskalos and Kostas, two Greek Cypriot healers and masters of metaphysical knowledge.

Publisher Marketing: In the remarkable trilogy which begins wit The Magus of Strovolos, sociologist Kyriacos C. Markides explores the amazing world of a master healer and spiritual teacher on the Isle of Cyprus.

Contributor Bio: Kyriacos C Markides:
Markides is a professor of sociology at the University of Maine.

Publisher Marketing: The Great Initiates encompasses long centuries of human existence and reflects our great search -- the greatest search of all -- the quest for the spirit. This book describes the motivations behind external history, the growth of religious striving, the rise and fall of cultures, and indicates their importance for us today It reflects the lives and deeds of human beings of extraordinary stature. Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus. In these pages one witnesses spiritual adventure of a depth and intensity rarely experienced by creative human beings, even in their most exalted moments. This excitement of discovery which breathes through The Great Initiates may well explain its continuing popularity after over a century.

You don't need a diploma in arithmancy, the friendship of a hippogriff, or even a Hogwarts Library card to discover amazing and arcane secrets in the labyrinthine world of Harry Potter.

In the book you now hold in your hands (or for more advanced students, the book you have levitated into a suitable position while you feed snacks to your owl), seventeen philosophical scholars unlock some of Hogwarts’ secret panels, displaying fresh insights enlightening both for sorcerers and for the more discerning Muggles.

Among the occult lore here revealed, behold the best recipe for true courage, proof that self-deception does not yield happiness, how ethics can be applied to the branch of technology known as magic, why the Mirror of Erised isn't adequate for real life, whether prophecy rules out free choice, and what dementors and boggarts can teach us about joy, fear, and the soul.

All the pages of this book are acid-free and have been individually bewitched with an anti-befuddlement incantation. Don’t forget to keep your wand primed and read between the lines. Failure to observe these precautions may invite the malign influence of Vol—sorry, He Who Must Not Be Named.

Publisher Marketing: Here is a satisfying vision of spirituality fully grown. Its approach to understanding self and world is necessarily as broad and deep as life itself.

Contributor Bio: Anthony Damiani:
Damiani founded Wisdom's Goldenrod Center for Philosophic Studies in Valois.