My picks for August would lean less “cosmic hotline” and more “here’s a map of the weird stuff already inside your skull.” First up, Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson. It’s not occult, but it explains why we keep describing consciousness, divination, and ritual in spatial language. If you’re going to talk about “ascending” or “descending” through states, understand that your brain is basically doing poetry with geometry.

Next, The Inner World of the Tarot by Michael D. Robbins. I’ve been meditating long enough to know I can sit with one thought for forty-five minutes without fixing it, and tarot does the same trick. The cards aren’t magic in the way I want them to be; they’re a structured way to interrupt autopilot. The Moon card, for example, is less “you are cursed” and more “your pattern recognition is currently negotiating with your fear.” That’s a lot like Jung’s idea that symbols can surface material you weren’t ready to look at directly.

If the group wants something more explicitly ritual, I’d put something about moon cycles on the list, but only if we’re honest about it. Moon rituals work for me mostly as scheduled attention: a reminder to pause, notice, and not solve every problem at 2 a.m. The danger is confirmation bias — I remember the full moon when I felt “spiky,” then forget the whole week I was just tired because I work nights.

So my August ask is simple: pick books that make the mystical testable, personal, and a little less shiny. If we end up arguing about whether the Hermit is a mood or a method, I’ll consider that a win.