Magical Oils by Moonlight or Her Last Death

Magical Oils by Moonlight

Author: Maya Heath

Magical Oils by Moonlight is a unique work that explores the craft of blending and using oils for both pleasure and power, laid out across the monthly cycle of the Moon's phases. This is a complete guide to all aspects of wish magic and spiritual attunement, with an extensive essential oil reference section.Drawn from the lifetime study of a traditional practitioner, Magical Oils by Moonlight brings all of these elements together in one beautifully illustrated volume. From the basics of aromatherapy to complete recipes for magical oils, incenses, bath products and candles, this is treat for the eye as well as a rich reference for anyone seeking to explore the realm of magic and personal spiritual awareness. It is a must-have reference work for anyone interested in magical oils, from the novice to the experienced practitioner.

Table of Contents:

	Preface	7
	Introduction: The Act of Creating Reality	9
Chapter 1	The Tools of Change--The Power of Essential Oils	17
Chapter 2	Working With the Waning Moon	27
Chapter 3	Working at the Dark of the Moon	45
Chapter 4	Working With the Waxing Moon	61
Chapter 5	Working With the Full Moon	73
Chapter 6	Power of the Eclipse--Crucible of Change	85
Chapter 7	The Power of the Planets	93
Chapter 8	The Elements of Magic	115
Chapter 9	The Wish Spell and the Ritual	157
Chapter 10	Invoking the Divine	165
Appendix A	List of Oils by Property	185
Appendix B	Oil Properties Master List	203
	Index	219
	About the Author	223

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Her Last Death: A Memoir

Author: Susanna Sonnenberg

Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why.

Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother.

Sonnenberg mines tender and startling memories as she writes of her fierce resolve to forge her independence, to become a woman capable of trust and to be a good mother to her own children. Her Last Death is riveting, disarming and searingly beautiful.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

"Her Last Death recounts "the true calamity of being daughter to this mother," and the wonder of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and found a way of turning her memories into a fiercely observed, fluently written book that captures the chaos and confusions of her youth, the daughter of an unpredictable pill-and-coke addicted mother and a brilliant, self-absorbed father, neither of whom had the faintest idea of how to be a parent."

The New York Times

"Her Last Death recounts 'the true calamity of being daughter to this mother,' and the wonder of this memoir is that the author survived her traumatic childhood and found a way of turning her memories into a fiercely observed, fluently written book...Writing in sharp, crystalline prose, Ms. Sonnenberg... plung(es) readers into a sort of perpetual present tense in which we are made to experience, almost firsthand, the inexplicable and perverse behavior of an impossible woman from the point of view of her aghast, bedazzled -- and immensely gifted -- daughter."

Elizabeth Brinkley - Library Journal

This is one of the best memoirs to come on the scene since Jeanette Walls's The Glass Castle, though the world of Sonnenberg's childhood is as privileged as Walls's was marked by scarcity and want. With her two daughters, Sonnenberg's single mother, Daphne, managed to remain a part of this rarefied environment by the skin of her teeth, thanks to benevolent grandparents and the occasional contributions of a distant father. But while Daphne appeared electrifying and glamorous to the young Susanna, no amount of good fortune could keep her from descending, lie by lie, addiction by addiction, into as disappointing a figure as the father in The Glass Castle. Susanna's progressive disenchantment with her often abusive mother-Daphne introduced her daughter to cocaine and punched her in the stomach repeatedly for seemingly expressing interest in a new boyfriend-is charted with precise, unsparing, and luminous prose. A heartbreaking yet wickedly entertaining portrait of a magically seductive, immensely flawed mother who fails dramatically as a parent and of a daughter who learns to trust and love others despite an orphanlike upbringing marked by disillusion. Highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ9/1/07.]

Kirkus Reviews

A deeply personal account of the author's thorny relationship with her mother. One morning, while "leading an unremarkable life" with her husband and young sons in Montana, Sonnenberg received a phone call with the news that her mother had been severely, probably fatally injured in a car accident. She set about making arrangements to fly to Barbados, where her mother lived, then changed her mind. They were already estranged, but this decision put a definitive end to the single most important and dependent relationship of the author's life. It also led to a breach with her sister, who was outraged that she wouldn't come to an apparently dying woman's bedside, then was stuck with the caretaking responsibilities when their mother recovered. The author's remembrances are designed to justify her decision not to go. She depicts her mother as a stunning and seductive pathological liar with a long history of cocaine and painkiller abuse, as well as unscrupulous sexual behavior. The author spent many years entangled in her mother's capricious demands, often unable to discern truth from lies. The shocking details Sonnenberg provides about her upbringing certainly show her mother behaving recklessly. The lack of maternal nurturing prompted a hunger in her for fulfillment elsewhere, first in romantic relationships and then as a mother herself. Yet they were close for decades, albeit often in an unhealthy way. Readers may not entirely understand the author's extreme choice to end contact altogether, or entirely credit her assertion that the distance between them now serves as a comfort. The permanent rift with her sister serves as a reminder of the cost of Sonnenberg's choice, with which she grapplesto live. Tragic but arresting-a worthy companion to Simone de Beauvoir's and Vivian Gornick's explorations of the complicated mother-daughter dynamic.