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CANDLES have cast light on human progress for centuries, but little is know about their origin. We do know that they were used as early as 3000 BC in Egypt, but it is the Romans who are credited with developing the wick candle to light home and places of worship at night.

For thousands of years candles have been used in burial ceremonies to dispel evil spirits and superstitions about candles abound - from ancient Egyptians using candles to interpret dreams to all of us asking for a wish to be granted when we blow out our birthday cake candles.

It is said that the seventeenth century treaty hunter Captain Kidd believed that carrying lanterns containing consecrated candles would conjure up the ghosts of the dead to help him in his quests. Meditation using candles is a very useful and easily accessible technique.

From an energetic point of view candles are lit and placed near the dead person in order to absorb the etheric energy that remains after death. This is the same process with flowers which are placed near the body in order to absorb energy which would link with those who are close and living - both, in essence, operate as a form of energetic boundary.

LEWIS CARROL 1832-1898 Lewis Carrol [real name Charles Dodgson] best remembered as the author of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' and 'What Alice Found There' was a celebrated poet, mathematician, logician, photographer and paranormal investigator. As one of the original members of the Society for Psychical Research, Carrol was interested in ghostly phenomenon. He was also fascinated by psi abilities such as telepathy and convinced that they would one day become accepted and valued by the scientific community. In a letter dated 4 December 1882, Carrol wrote on this subject to his friend James Langton Clark:

I have just read a small pamphlet, the first report of the Psychical Society on 'thought reading'. The evidence, which seems to have been most carefully taken, excludes the possibility that unconscious guidance by pressure will account for all the phenomena. All seems to point to the existence of a natural force, allied to electricity and nerve-force, by which brain can act on brain. I think we are close on the day when this shall be classed among the known natural forces, and its laws tabulated, and when the scientific skeptics, who always shut their eyes till the last moment to any evidence that seems to point beyond materialism, will have to accept it as a proved fact in nature.

EDGAR CAYCE 1877-1945 A psychic reader and ESP researcher who arguably did the most in the twentieth century to advance psychic knowledge. Born in rural Kentucky, Cayce was close to his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Cayce, who was said to be psychic. One day tragedy struck; Cayce witnessed the horrific death of his grandfather in an accident with a horse. After the accident, and encouraged by his mother and grandmother, the young Cayce claimed to visit his grandfathers spirit in the barns.

Cayce experienced other traumas in his youth. At 15 he was hit from behind by a baseball and began to feel dizzy. His father sent him to bed, and he entered into a hypnotic trance, telling his father exactly what needed to be done to make him better. Cayce recovered within a day, when he was in his early twenties he lost his voice. Helped by traveling hypnotist, Cayce again entered into a trance. While in the trance he was once again able to diagnose a cure. He coughed up some blood and his voice returned.

In 1901, Cayce started to give psychic readings to clients, and over the next 40 years he gave and recorded in writing over 12,000 readings on health, past lives, ancient mysteries and predictions of the future. These readings are still being studied today.

In 1933 Cayce and his supporters formed in Virginia Beach [where it still remains] the Association for Research and Enlightenment for the purpose of studying, researching and providing information about ESP, as well as life after death, dreams and holistic health. Three other programmes or organisations were also established around Cayce's work: a masters degree in transpersonal studies at Atlantic University, Virginia Beach, was set up in 1930: the Edgar Cayce Foundation, also at Virginia Beach, was set up in 1948 to provide custodial ownership of the Cayce readings and documents; and a diploma in preventive health care based on Cayce's readings was set up in 1986 at the Harold Reilly School of massotherapy.

Cayce was a remarkably gifted psychic with an incredible intellect. It is said that he could sleep on any book, paper or document and remember its contents when he awoke. He was able to use his psychic abilities in four ways: precognition, retrocognition, clairvoyance and telepathy. That is, he could see into the future and predict events to come; he could look into a persons past to find the origins of an existing health problem; he could se insides the human body and see through objects; and he was able to enter another persons mind to discover what they were thinking.

Called the 'Sleeping Prophet'. Cayce practised absent healing for several years, helping to cure people all over the world, even though he had no formal education and never went to medical school. Receiving a name and address, Cayce would enter a trance state and then read the persons condition and prescribe cures and treatments, which were, reportedly, 90 per cent accurate. His success was so great that thousands sought his help. Cayce's ability to diagnose accurately and name body parts astonished some medical experts, although others dismissed his readings on account of his lack of formal training.

In August 1944, with three to four years backlog of mail, Cayce collapsed with exhaustion. He was aware that doing more than two readings a day was too much for his body and mind, but over the years he had been so moved by the suffering of others that he was doing far in excess of this number. He retired to the mountains re recuperates, returning home in November 1944. On 1 January he told his friends he would find healing on the 5th, and they prepared for the worst. On 5 January, Cayce died peacefully at the age of 67.

Cayce spent much of his life trying to understand what he did when he entered a trance. He spoke about unknown civilizations where the soul could travel without the restriction of gravity and communicate through thought. He attributed poor health to harmful deeds in a past life, and many of his readings concerned karma and reincarnation. The chief difference between Cayce's suggested treatment and conventional medicine was that Cayce sought to heal the whole body by treating the causes rather than the symptoms of a patient's problem. The patient, however, needed to have faith and hope in the reading for it to work. Mind is the builder, Cayce would always say, and he firmly believed that the body responded to commands from the mind.

Cayce maintained that we all have psychic ability and that experiences such as dreams and intuition are proof of that. He also believed that if a person had good intentions and love in their heart they would have a steady supply of psychic power to tap into.

CAROLINE MYSS (pronounced mace) is an American medical intuitive and mystic as well as the author of numerous books and audio tapes, including four New York Times Best Sellers: Anatomy of the Spirit (1996), Why People Don't Heal and How They Can (1998), Sacred Contracts (2002), and Entering The Castle (2007).
She has also been on the The Oprah Winfrey Show, several times, since her first appearance in 2002, and in 2001 she hosted a TV series, titled, "The Journey With Caroline Myss", at Oxygen (TV network), co-owned by Oprah Winfrey, exploring the spiritual and psychological roadblocks of life in an intimate workshop setting, apart from that she has also done TV Specials, "Three Levels of Power & How to Use Them" and "Why People Don't Heal & How They Can," based on her work.

She started giving medical intuitive readings in 1982 and co-founded a small New Age publishing company, Stillpoint Publishing in Walpole, New Hampshire, where she also worked as an editor in 1983, next she began consulting with holistic doctors, which in 1984, led to her extensive collaboration with Dr. Norman Shealy, an M.D. schooled at Harvard, and the founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, with whom she later co-authored, "Aids: Passageway to Transformation," in 1987, followed by "The Creation of Health: The Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Responses that Promote Health and Healing," in 1988. Deriving from her practice as a medical intuitive, she started writing books, in the field of energy medicine, and healing, all of which became New York Times Best Sellers. Starting with Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing (1996), which overlapped seven Christian sacraments with seven Hindu chakras and the Kabbalah's Tree of Life to create a map of the human "energy anatomy"; this was followed by Why People Don't Heal and How They Can (1998), which explored the reasons people do not heal through her concept of "woundology." Her next book, Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (2002) dealt with the issue of finding "Life Purpose," while describing Sacred Contracts as "a set of assignments that our soul had formed around before incarnation". She has since appeared on the The Oprah Winfrey Show numerous times.
By 2000, she discontinued doing private medical intuitive readings, and instead started teaching it, through her workshops, seminars, radio shows and guided tours. She tours internationally as a speaker on spirituality and mysticism, and lives in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago. In 2003, she started the Caroline Myss Educational Institute, with Wisdom University in San Francisco.
Her 2007 book, "Entering the Castle" draws upon the writings of Saint Teresa of Ávila, a 16th century Carmelite nun, who wrote her most important work, The Interior Castle, towards the end of her life. Officiall Website www.myss.com

CHAKRAS Chakra is Sanskrit for 'wheel' and in Hindu and Buddhist yogic literature the charkas are through to be energy vortices, shaped like petals or spoked wheels that whirl at various speeds. They penetrate the body and the body's aura, and it is through that through them various energies, including the universal life force, are received and distributed throughout the person. You cannot see charkas physically, only psychically.

There are seven major charkas, which are most directly concerned with physical health, and hundreds of minor ones. The universal life force is thought to enter the aura through the chakra at the top of the head and filter down along the spinal column to other charkas. The higher the position on the spinal column the more complex the chakra.

Each chakra has its own colour and speed of rotation, and each is associated with a major endocrine gland, a major nerve system, a major physiological function and a psychic function. The charkas are connected to each other through thousands of channels of energy called nadis. Three of the most important nadis include the shushuma, which processes energy coming in, and the ida and ingala, which are concerned with the outflow of energy.

There isn't any accepted scientific and medical evidence that charkas exist, but recently they have begun to acknowledge in the West in alternative medicine. Clairvoyants say that they can diagnose the health of charkas by energy scans with the hands and that health problems often show up in charkas months or even years before they manifest in the body. When the charkas are balanced and healthy, their colours are clear and their rotation smooth, but in poor health they become cloudy and irregular in rotation. Blocked charkas are though to cause health problems, and in alternative healing therapies there are various techniques for clearing chakra blockages, including visualisation, colour therapy, acupuncture and energy healing.

CHANNELLING The process by which a medium communicates information from spirits and other non physical energy beings by entering a state of trance or some other altered state of consciousness. In primitive cultures communication with disincarnate beings by priests, shamans or medicine people is well documented. The ancient Egyptians and Romans as well as the early Chinese, Babylonians, Tibetans, Assyrians and Celts, all channelled spirits and entities and holy men and women of Judaism,, Christianity and Islam received divine guidance.

Divination and healing are forms of chanelling, and different mediums have different forms of chanelling. Sometimes it happens when the channeller falls into a sudden trance like state, or it can be induced. Methods to induce chanelling include meditation, prayer, hypnosis, fasting, chanting, dancing, breath exercises, sleep deprivation and taking hallucinogenic drugs.

Many psychics believe that channelling is a skill anyone can learn and that it shouldn't just be the preserve of professional mediums. It is important to remember that everyone will have a different experience of channelling and insights received may come in any number of different forms and it is up to the individual to translate and interpret in a balanced way.

CHANTING The frequent repetition of a word, phase or mantra as a part of meditation or a religious or magical rite. Some people believe that chanting is a way to achieve an altered state of consciousness so that psychic power or energy can be raised for the purpose of healing or energy ritual. Others believe helps them commune with the divine.

Chanting can be done alone or in a group. It can be accompanied by hand clapping, drumbeats, musical instruments or dancing. Sometimes chanting is a melodious; sometimes it is monotone.

In all major religions the most powerful chants are the names of God. In primitive tribal societies chanting was used to raise psychic energy and appease supernatural powers and bring blessings. It is thought that rhythmic chanting sends out waves of energy that help the priest or person who is coordinating this energy.

CHAOS THEORY A principle from quantum physics that suggests that chaos or lack of order does in fact obey particular laws or rules and only appears to be random. The theory was first brought to public attention with the butterfly effect discovered by Edward Lorenz in 1961 [a theory whereby the flapping of a butterfly's wings might, through a series of events involving climate and location, cause a storm on the other side of the globe]. The idea contradicts the traditional Newtonian principles of physics, which states that unseen effects can be predicted through precise measurements, as according to chaos theory even tiny errors can result in enormous unpredictability, far out of proportion to what would be expected mathematically. In a nutshell, what chaos theory means is that anything is capable of affecting anything else - a principal belief of new age and holistic thinking.

CHILDREN It is general through that psychic ability, often referred to as intuition or gut feeling, is natural in childhood, but as children get older they tend to lose that instinct and are taught to record psychic experiences as imagination and superstition. Children's minds can easily accept the existence of the nonphysical, but don't yet have boundaries of space and time and other models of perception that develop when they become adults. Their imagination is a reality to them, and they can see and comprehend things that adults no longer can do. They can cross the line into fantasy world that adults have long since forgotten and exist in altered state of reality that Edgar Cayce called unmanifest reality.

Anyone wanting to develop their psychic ability must start by returning to that childlike, dreamy state of mind where imaginary friends, gut instinct, make believe, fantasy, aware of the amazing world we live in and the endless possibilities of our inner world are natural and real to us.

There are those who believe children are our real teachers and that their first task on earth is to teach adults about aspects of life they are neglecting. It may be something as simple as unconditional love or as complicated as resolving complex situations from the past. Unfortunately, many adults ignore the demands and idle chatter of children and don't grasp this opportunity to get back in tune with themselves, missing a fabulous opportunity to lean and grow up again.

CIA STAR GATE PROGRAMME In 1972 the CIA, concerned by reports that the Soviet Union was dedicating substantial resources to what it called psychotronics - research into potential military applications of psychic and fringe science phenomena - began Project STAR GATE, a programme of psychic spying, or remove viewing. The project cost $20 million [£12 million] and last 23 years until the US military shut it down in September 1995.

The aim of the programme was to close the Cold War 'psychic warfare gap' and discover how serious a threat there was from Soviet psychotronics. Parapsychologists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ of the Stanford Research Institute were asked to look for repeatable psychic phenomena that might be useful to military intelligence. Working with psychic Ingo Swann, the duo developed what they called 'a perceptual channel across kilometer distances', in other words, the ability to witness objects, people and events at a distance: remote viewing.

Initially called SCANATE, meaning 'scan by coordinate', the project required the viewer to describe what they could see at map grid reference provided by the CIA. Early signs were encouraging, and the programme expanded. Also known as SUN STREAK, GRILL FLAME and, finally, STAR GATE, the programme was used to help many US military and intelligence-gathering operations over its 23 years. There were a few successes, but more than a few failures.

The team is said to have located Soviet weapons and technologies, such as a nuclear submarine in 1979, identified spies, helped find lost SCUD missiles in the first Gulf War and located plutonium in North Korea in 1994. All in all, more than 20 psychics were employed. With lives at stake, many of them found the work traumatic, some ending up in psychiatric hospitals.

The project was closed down in 1995, probably because the Defense Department lost confidence in it, but even today some psychics continue with police and government work; one assisted the FBI - clearly unsuccessfully - during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in late 2001.

CLAIRVOYANCE Parapsychologist consider clairvoyance to be one of the three classes of psychic perception or extrasensory perception [ESP] along with telepathy and precognition, although there is overlap among the three. The word clairvoyance comes from the French, meaning 'clear seeing', and refers to the power to see an event or an image in the past, present or future. This type of sight does not happen with your physical eyes, but with your inner eyes. A person with clairvoyant ability can receive information in the form of visual symbols or images. Some clairvoyants describe it as a bit like having a movie screen in your head with images moving across it. Other clairvoyants may see symbols that they learn to interpret.

Psychic visions typically appear internally, through the minds eye, and this is called subjective clairvoyance, but in rare cases they can also appear externally, in the environment around them as if they were real, and this is called objective clairvoyance. Many people think of the term 'inner eye, as a figure of speech, but the yogic tradition uses the term. According to Eastern tradition, the third eye or sixth chakra is the seat of clairvoyance. Located in the centre of the forehead, it is the screen that receives clairvoyance, whether in the form of visions or imagery. In mediumship, clairvoyance may account for the ability of mediums to provide unknown information at séances.
There are several different types of clairvoyance, including the ability to see auras [auric sight], to see into the past [retrocognition] or into the future [precognition]. Different states of clairvoyance also include the ability to see through objects [X-ray vision], the ability to see health conditions in other people or animals [body scanning], the ability to see things from far away [traveling clairvoyance], the ability to experience visions in dreams [cream clairvoyance], the ability to see things that transcend time and space [spatial clairvoyance], and the ability to see astral, etheric and spiritual or divine planes [astral and spiritual clairvoyance].

Throughout history clairvoyance has been used and cultivated by prophets, fortune-tellers, witches, and seers of all kinds. Some were gifted naturally with clairvoyance while others learned how to develop it through training. In the 1830s the first scientific experiment to study clairvoyance was conducted on psychic Adele Maginot, and impressive results were achieved. Tests for clairvoyance of concealed cards began in the 1870s with French physiologist Charles Richet, and Richets work has taken further in the 1930s by American parapsychologist J B Rhine. Rhine developed a special deck of symbol cards to conduct tests. In the years since considerable evidence has been accumulated to suggest that clairvoyance exists in both humans and animals although sceptics disagree.

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS The collective or universal unconscious was a concept developed by psychiatrist Carl Jun [1875-1961] and later supported by Joseph Campbell in his study of world mythology. It refers to the part of the mind that is 'inborn' or determined by heredity and that shares memories, mental patterns and images with all humans. Prior to Jung, the prevailing view of the unconscious had been that of Sigmund Freud, who believed that it was the product of repressed childhood traumas.

June affirmed that a personal unconscious of repressed or forgotten material existed but that the collective unconscious consisted of patterns of instinctual behaviour, called archetypes. The word archetype comes from the Greek arche, meaning first, and type meaning imprint or pattern. Psychological types are thus patterns that form the basic blueprint for human personality. For June archetypes pre-exist in the collective unconscious of humanity and determine how we both perceive ad behave. These patterns are inborn - part of our inheritance and psychological life as human beings. They are both inside us and outside us. We can meet them by turning inwards to our dreams or imagination, and by turning outwards to our myths, legends, literature and religions.

COLOURS Every colour is believed in addition to the wavelength a vibration to have its own energy at a non physical level and to have specific effects on different individuals. Seven colours in particular - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, the colours of the rainbow - have carried religious, mystical and healing meanings since ancient times.

Red, which has the longest wavelength, typically represents the physical and material, while violet, the shortest wavelength, represents spirituality and enlightment. White, the combination of all colours, is usually associated with divinity and purity, whilst black, the absence of all colours, is usually associated with evil but in reality provides protection and comfort, like the warm darkness of the summer night. Traditionally, the body is associated with red, the mind with yellow and the spirits with blue.

Healing with colour has a long traditional dating back to ancient times. However despite the fact that colour healing has been in use for centuries it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that it began to received attention in the West. In 1878 Edwin Babbit published 'The Principles of Light and Colour' reaffirming the Pythagorean correspondences of music, colour and sound and by so doing drew attention to the potential for colour healing.

Modern science is able to provide evidence for some of the ancient claims about colour. In the 1970's and 1980's it was shown that coloured light triggers biochemical reactions in the body. Later research confirmed that blues and greens have a soothing effect and help lower stress, brain wave activity and blood pressure. Warm colours such as orange and red have been shown to have stimulating effect. Pink has been shown to have a relaxing effect in the short term, although in the long term it can trigger irritability.

CONSCIOUSNESS A function of the mind, generally thought to incorporate qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment.

In popular language the term 'consciousness' denotes being awake and responsive to ones environment; this contrasts with being asleep or being in a coma. The term 'level' of consciousness' denotes how consciousness seems to vary during anesthesia and during various states of mind such as daydreaming; lucid dreaming; imagining, etc. Esoteric techniques such as meditation and path working and shamanic techniques such as chanting, rhythmic drumming or dancing, as well as experimental techniques such as sensory deprivation and narcotics to induce hallucination all involve altered state of consciousness. Non-consciousness exists when consciousness is not present. There is speculation, especially among religious groups as well as occultists, psychics and spiritualists that consciousness may exist after death or before birth.

Consciousness is notoriously difficult to define or locate. Many cultures and religious traditions place the seat of consciousness in soul, separate from the body. Conversely, many scientists and philosophers consider consciousness to be intimately linked to the neural functioning of the brain.

CREATIVE VISUALIZATION is the process by which the creation of a visual image is believed to promote the desired outcome.

Creative visualisation is built on the ancient belief in the power of the mind to create what you want in your life. If you think about what you'd like to achieve in your, you can do just that, as positive images and thoughts attract positive energy. Creative visualisation is widely used in business, sport, art, psychotherapy, psychic development, mystical and occult arts and personal self-development.

Imagination has powerful influence on self-image, and a poor self-image can often mean the difference between success and failure in life. Creative visualisation, which seems to be most effective when practised in a relaxed state, can be used to feed your mind positive images to create a better self-image and improve your personal experiences. For example, if you want to develop your psychic awareness, you need to image being psychic. If you want to pass an exam, you imagine yourself passing it. Those who practise visualisation say it's important to fill in all the details of your experience so that the image is as real to the mind as possible.

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