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"9½ Mystics: The Kabbalah Today" by Herbert Weiner. In a traditional reminiscent of Carlos Castaneda's documentary style, Weiner goes beyond a step-by-step Tree of Life tutorial to put us in touch with the authentic Judaic Kabbalists of his day. More than just a book "about" the Kabbalah, the insights Weiner records have a real impact on personal approaches to Kabbalah, making it useful as well as mystical.

"Memories, Dreams, Reflections" C.G. Jung's autobiography, as recorded by Aniela Jaffé. This 1961 self-accounting of Jung's gestalt takes us deeper than the academic, and by now classical psychological model of cultural analysis to give us the reasons [I]why [/I]such a model came into being at all. It is not only pleasant and interesting reading, but we come to question whether art can be separated from artist.

"The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels. Prof. Pagels is one of my favorite authors on the subject of Gnosticism, not just in Nag Hammadi exegesis, but also her bold tackling of Gnostic patterns in the Pauline letters, the ontogeny of Satan, and the Gospel of Thomas. In this book, though, Pagels accounts for the earliest church, the proto-Church, and how Gnosticism came to be regarded as heresies by the church fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian and their modern descendants.