Literature

My spiritual journey began when I was a small child. I would sit at my grandmother’s knee as she read the tea leaves for her eager customers in the East End of London. It all seemed so colourful and exciting. At that young age I heard all sort of things a child shouldn’t hear, but that just made me even keener to develop a skill of my own. I decided by the time I was...

Although I can look back now and see all the spiritual and paranormal events of my childhood, including out of body experiences, astral travel, channelled writing and seeing spirit; my conscious spiritual journey didn’t really begin until I was 21. I had a bad case of sciatica, which I was complaining about to my mum over the phone, while browsing in a second-hand bookshop in West Wales. The owner of the bookshop waited until I...

I follow a path of pagan spirituality, but I was brought up a Catholic, developing a strong connection with Our Lady, whom I now recognise as my first contact with the Goddess. Since the age of thirteen, I earnestly studied all aspects of the esoteric, from reincarnation to astrology. I have always sensed the presence of spirit beings, often hearing their voices, or seeing words written by them in my mind. The material world that...

When I was a young girl, I remember going into my local WHSmith with my mum and looking at the book chart for the week - especially the top shelf. I remember saying ‘Mum one day my book will be up there’ to which we both laughed and went on with our day. I still don’t know why that younger version of myself knew with such conviction she’d be an author, but I’d like to...

I am an artist, art educator and spirit medium. I have been able to draw realistically since around the age of five, which coincided with the realisation that I saw and walked alongside many people who were invisible to others. These visions never frightened or concerned me, indeed I found them comforting and good company. There were many other spiritual events in my youth, including out-of-body travel whilst seeing my physical body comfortably lying on...

Colm Holland is a writer, teacher and therapist, publisher of 'The Alchemist' in 1993 and author of 'The Secret of The Alchemist' in 2020. 2023 is the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of the English language edition of the global bestseller The Alchemist by the Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho. The memory of that event holds a special place in my life because I was probably the first person in Australia to read the manuscript before...

When I was born, in the midst of a wild snowstorm, my grandma took one look at the caul over my face and turned to my mother, saying, “Yes, you have a gifted child here.” Grandma Mac was a seer, the local Wise Woman, and all the local people would come to her for advice; she could talk to spirits and angels but wasn’t allowed to develop her gifts because of the family’s Catholic faith....

My most recent book, Awakening the Lotus of Peace is a spiritual workbook of yoga meditations to experience more peace in your life. This book, like all my previous books, sprang from a revelation: an influx of light, colour, concept and a feeling about what the book would encapsulate as a whole. These revelations arrive in that spiritually-charged moment between sleeping and waking when we are most receptive to spirit before we assume the mantle...

As a child, I never minded being sent to bed! The nights were always full of vivid and intriguing adventures, dreams that stretched my young imagination and sometimes even seemed to foretell the future. When these events actually started happening in the real world later, I realised I was on to something. And since nobody believed me, I taught myself to wake up after a ‘significant’ dream and record it, so I could prove precognition...

The problem with thought A common theme in all mystical and spiritual traditions is the problem of human thought. Particularly our ‘I’ thoughts. As an NHS psychotherapist I have noticed that this is a feature of every patient’s inner world. At the core of people’s mental health difficulties are thoughts like: “I’m a failure, unlovable, a reject”. The rejected child does not just conclude ‘I was rejected but feels this personally in the form of...

When I was happy, I  never really bothered about the fundamental questions – whether our spirits survive, whether there is a God, how and why the universe came into existence.  The questions are profound, and I was intellectually curious, but only within the limits of an orthodox scientific materialism: I was a lawyer, for goodness’ sake, and a land lawyer at that.  It wasn’t so much my professional training, however, as the fact that I...

I was born and grew up in Edinburgh where I spent a happy and secure childhood. Following school, I studied textile design in Scotland, which is where I also met the man who was later to become my dear husband, an engineer. We embarked on a travelling life, setting up homes in camps in the Sultanate of Oman, in the Middle East and the West African countries of Gabon and Nigeria. This life of travel...