BOOKS by John Lash

1991: The Seeker's Handbook (Crown/Random House) hardcover
Quality Paperback Book Club, Book of the Month Club

A unique book that upon its publication in 1991 defined the need it serves, The Seeker's Handbook is Everyone's compass for charting and navigating the many and twisting paths of alternative spirituality.

From alchemy to Zen, John Lash describes the ins and outs of esoteric and mystical practices and teachings, both old and new. The book consists of three parts: the essential library of fifty classics of Eastern and Western spirituality, 28 ten-minute essays and two long essays explaining the emergence of the modern spiritual movement, and a Lexicon of over 1000 entries.

This is not a New Age book, it is a book for everyone who is either for or against the New Age. It provides orientation to many facets of alternative spirituality, without approving of the teachings and practices it encompasses. The Seeker's Handbook presents definite guidelines and criteria for evaluating spiritual paths, but it plays no favorites.

As the author says, "Wisdom belongs to no one in particular. So let's be generous in passing it around."

Jean Houston: "The Seeker's Handbook provides a remarkable cartography into the mazeways of the spiritual journey. It is at once intellectually exciting and a lot of fun to read."

Jacob Needleman: A remarkably coherent and helpful perspective on the contemporary spiritual ferment."

Rick Fields: "A wise and witty guide to the overstocked labyrinthine aisles of the spiritual supermarket."

1993: Twins and the Double (Thames & Hudson), Art and Imagination Series
Twins confront us with a mystery at once elusive and unavoidable. Facing the Other in the guise of twin or double, we sense a threat to our idea of personal identity, yet we are teased by the odd prospect of becoming "otherwise." Twins arouse our sense of awe, as they have in many societies around the world. Jacob and Esau, Horus and Set Jekyll and Hyde - all these and many more are recurrent pairs who lure us into the world found through the looking-glass. This book brings together genetics, psychology, mythology and art to elucidate their fascinating lore and reveal the enigma of the dyadic principle common to modern and archaic intiution alike.

1995: The Hero - Manhood and Power (Thames & Hudson) Art and Imagination Series
All all traditions, the hero a a protector, a man of exceptional power. The greatest names in the history and mythology of all races are those of heroes - Herakles, Samson, Gilgamesh, the Lone Ranger. Originally, they fought monsters to rescue the eternal Woman, the princess, the anima, but some men used their power against women. John Lash explains how the true hero remained dedicated to the Goddess. And the nature of the monsters who challenged him changed over time. In the Middle Ages, the quest turned inward, taking love, intimacy and moral improvement for its aim. Eventually, it turned outward again, shifting toward the far horizons of territorial expansion and intellectual invention. This book brings the values of epic and myth to bear upon the cult of the hero, which, rightly used, has led to the highest that a culture can conceive. Misused, it has led to tyranny, violence, desecration and destruction.

1999: Quest for the Zodiac (Starhenge Books)

Totally unsuspected to the world at large, astrologers use a model that ignores the stars. This means there is a lost, star-based Zodiac behind the well-known circle of twelve Sun Signs. Astrology is not wrong on its own terms, but it is wrongly defined as "the language of the stars."

Quest for the Zodiac corrects this bias and recovers the real-sky environment observed by the Ancients. The mythic images of the Constellations, not the Signs, reveal a new perspective on human destiny, linking genetics to the far-distant patterns of the stars. Here is the breakthrough that initiates a cosmic language for the 21st century.

"The aim of this book is not to convert anyone to astrology. The aim is to convert astrology itself."

Quest for the Zodiac breaks the 2000-year-old monopoly on our view of the cosmos as a mirror of the psyche. It introdeuces the concept of phylogenetic transfer, registered in the "endowment" of the birth moment. John Lash, a specialist in sidereal mythology, totally revolutionizes the genre of astrology. The Starchild Cycle provides a method for detecting the genius in each of us, our inheritence from humanity as a whole, rather than from familial, blood-linked ancestors. Quest for the Zodiac combines poetry, genetics, astronomy, mythology and transpersonal insight into a daring vision of how we each have a share in the fate of the human species itself.

November 2006: Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief

Amazon.com

Not in His Image was published in November 2006. It virtually retells a critical chapter in the history of Europoe from the viewpoint of the losers, the defeated, i.e., the indigenous peoples. It presents a unique exposé of the suppression of the Pagan Mysteries, including the entheogenic rites at Eleusis and elsewhere, and proposes the Sophianic vision of the Gnostics as a framework for “a story to guide the species,” compatible with Gaia theory, the new science of emergence, and telestic (non-recreational) shamanism.

John Lash's Not In His Image presents a fascinating view of meanings in a sacred history long—and wrongly—suppressed. It demands profound correction of what Western civilization has been taught to call religion. It is a book that should be read by everyone.
—Barbara G. Walker, author of The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Feminist Fairy Tales, and others

John Lamb Lash's Not in His Image is a rare achievement, combining impeccable scholarship with remarkable visionary insight. In a breathtaking tour de force, the author provides a profound analysis of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their connections to the patriarchal system. He identifies the deep roots of the intrinsic problems of these three religions-- perpetrator-victim emphasis and salvationist ideology--and points out their relationship to the alienation and agony of modern humanity. This book is a must for everybody who is trying to understand the psychospiritual currents underlying the present global crisis.
—Stanislav Grof, M.D., author of Psychology of the Future and The Cosmic Game

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