InnerChange magazine - Kathryn Lanier
There are three paths to the Spirit: control over the body, control over the mind, and control over the emotions. The practice of magic aims at control of the emotions; its goal is to arrive at a place where one is perfectly content and at ease in the now moment…. ~ Bob Makransky
I love this little book! It is what I refer to as a "carry" book - a book you keep in your car, purse or briefcase to pick up and read when you have a few minutes. Many years ago I received some sage advice to always have something to read with me so that I could focus on something positive while waiting in line or in traffic. Bob Makransky’s 123 page Magical Living fits the bill perfectly! Makransky’s collection of essays on how to return to our innate ability to live magically in this wonderful world and how to rid ourselves of the subconscious agendas developed in response to our society’s paradigms is written with a beautiful, straightforward simplicity. "The point is that what we are attempting to do with magic is to pick that one of the infinite probable realities which branch off from the present moment which will lead to a future in which we realize our desires." (p. 76) Makransky talks to us about connecting with the Spirit, connecting with the spirits of the earth and the water, and acting with the Spirit. However, he also teaches us how to take this connection and understand on the most fundamental level that we are the authors of our own lives. He teaches us how to go beyond our thought forms, how to dig deep to reach our true emotions. Magical Living is written so well that you feel as though Bob Makransky is sitting in your living room passionately wanting you to understand how to live in the moment with your true ability to create your own destiny, how to create love in your life, and how to prepare for the effective prayers that will ensure your abundant living. My favorite essay title is On Not Letting the S.O.B.’s Get You Down. At first glance, you may think that this is simply an essay on how to ruthlessly turn the other cheek. However, Makransky tells us that "We can’t get the guy in front of us to get off our foot until we get off the foot of the guy in back of us." Without getting sappy or cosmic, Makransky reminds us that we must be extremely aware of our negative feelings about the S.O.B.’s because those feelings cannot arise unless we are invading another’s space just as ours is being invaded. According to Makransky, the only way to beat the S.O.B.’s is to continue to present them with a reflection of joy rather than validate their own self-hatred! From photograph gazing to gardening to the preparation for effective prayer, Makransky positively, passionately, and pointedly shows us how to connect with our emotions and live from that place rather than from our random thought forms. Each essay offers us a fresh perspective and ends with the joyful possibilities of our future probable realities. The appendices of the book include the Hour Rulers By Day of the Week and the Tables of Planetary Hours. Makransky does not just tell us how to achieve joyful, abundant living, he also offers us the tools to maximize these potentials. Carry this book with you, read and reread the essays, and connect with joy and gratitude!
Diamond Fire magazine - Joseph Polansky
Bob Makransky takes us on a magical mystery tour of the Lunar Mysteries as only he can do it. This whole book is about feelings, how to contact them, come from them, understand them, and use them in everyday life. Through the feelings we can communicate with the nature spirits, with plants, streams, rocks and the earth. Through right feeling we can improve our nutrition, pray more effectively, contact our spirit guides, improve our relationships, and de-condition ourselves from the manipulations of society at large.
There are not many books better than Magical Living for understanding the Lunar Mysteries. He writes beautifully, clearly, elegantly. You can feel that this is someone who is not just prattling intellectually or spouting new age jargon, but who has actually lived the things he writes about. Genius that he is, he is incapable of an unoriginal thought. This is not someone you can just ignore.
There is also great healing value to be gained by learning how to cook right (with right attitude and intent), eat right, raise your kids properly, learning how to get in contact with nature, and discovering the secret healing properties of nature. Whether or not you agree with Makransky, you are always sure of two things: you will learn something new and you will have a good and enjoyable read. I personally always enjoy entering his world and look forward to his future works.
Highly recommendable.
Dell Horoscope Magazine - Chris Lorenz
Want to know how to channel spirit guides? Perhaps you’d like to attract luck into your life, banish demons, or create a loving relationship. Subtitled “Essays for the New Age,” Bob Makransky’s Magical Living is a collection of “How To … “ essays based on a worldview far different from what most people commonly experience. By putting his book in the New Age genre, the author invokes a term reviled by religious fundamentalists, but often deployed as a unifying principle for astrologers, alternative health practitioners, and spiritual seekers looking to discover the hidden truths about the nature of reality.
From Makransky’s perspective, these hidden truths are best grouped around Carlos Castaneda’s worldview as explained in his books A Separate Reality, Teachings of Don Juan, and Tales of Power. Uppermost in the Castaneda doctrine, and therefore in Makransky’s book, is that we live in a multidimensional reality. We can’t see the extra dimensions because of our cultural beliefs, which are continually updated by thinking - incessant, uncontrolled thinking. Getting a handle on the brain’s thinking patterns is what magic is all about. Once one’s thought forms are recognized as external spiritual forces, enhanced awareness sets in, and magic begins. Magical Living approaches life’s problems as resolvable, if one adopts a magician’s attitude and awareness. In this brief book, you can learn how to talk with plants, how to channel spirit guides, how to commune with water spirits, how to manage feelings of hurt, how to act in concert with spirit, how to raise kids, and how to see a person’s hidden motives by looking at his photo. The last fifty pages are devoted to “Planetary Tables” that enable the user to find the right moment to pray or conduct other magical rituals.
One of the more intriguing essays is on “Spirit Possession.” Makransky offers a radically expanded view of spirit possession, one that says we are all possessed to some extent. Society possesses us by forcing us to repress our own feelings and, through advertising, politics, and other vehicles, dictates what we should feel about the world around us. In the more immediate sense, being possessed by other people is when we allow them to impose their feelings on us, as when we feel another person’s mood. Then, demon possession is a common, more dangerous form of possession. Those who are habitually and obsessively angry, repressed, depressed, irritable, self-destructive, chronically ill, or neurotic are all demon-possessed. According to the author, “Only people who are completely at peace in their own hearts are not supplying fodder to the demons who co-inhabit our sphere and live off the seething emotions generated by the despair which living in an unjust society (such as ours) produces.”
