CJ Stone's columns and articles for Kindred Spirit magazine

Kindred Spirit magazine was founded in 1987 by Richard Beaumont and Patricia Yates. According to the magazine's website, this was inspired by the 'The Harmonic Convergence' of that year in which thousands of spiritual seekers gathered at sacred sites throughout the world. So many different people, so many different spiritual paths, with a shared sense of respect for natural wisdom and a yearning for higher truth. Kindred Spirit was founded to offer a platform for the wide variety of groups, disciplines and spiritual organisations that were represented at these gatherings and which go under the general name of "Mind, Body, Spirit".

The first issue was published in November 1987, and since then it has gone on to feature a wide range of stories, from complementary healthcare to articles on angels and the latest explanation of the workings of Stonehenge.

The magazine appears bi-monthly and is considered to be the UK's leading guide to Mind, Body and Spirit.

I was first commissioned to write for Kindred Spirit late in 2008, by the new editor at the time, Tania Ahsan. Previously I had written for Prediction magazine, for which I had run a column for nearly five years, from 2003 to 2008. It was Tania who had commissioned me for that too, but she had since left the magazine and gone freelance. Meanwhile, the market had changed, and Prediction had turned itself from a serious astrology magazine - with a lot of in-depth articles about a wide variety of arcane and interesting subjects - to a sort of teenie fashion mag with vague occult leanings: sort of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Jackie magazine, or "the latest swimwear fashions to wear while communing with dolphins."

I wasn’t very comfortable in there any more, and we parted company by mutual consent.

You can read a significant number of my Prediction articles on these pages. I will always be grateful to the magazine for keeping me working through those lean years, for keeping my pen sharpened, even if my wit occasionally failed to live up to its promise.

Meanwhile Tania had just become the new editor at Kindred Spirit, and she asked me to write a regular column for the magazine.

What I proposed was series of columns under the general title Tales of Ordinary Magic.

The title is a reference to a Charles Bukowski book called Tales of Ordinary Madness (also known as Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness). The purpose was to reflect the spirituality of everyday life. It was meant as a light hearted antidote to the rest of the magazine. Or, as the editor put it “a humorous sign off as a back page column”. Unfortunately the readers didn’t quite see the point of the articles and it was discontinued after the third one. I actually wrote four, so that one is included in here too. They are, as follows:

This one was the taster. It leads you into the theme, which was basically life through my window in Somerset Meadows. The story is about Mrs Rivers, who went to Stonehenge once in 1964 and who still remembers it to this day. How our human lives are enhanced by their intersection with the cosmic, or why a sunrise is not so mundane after all.

About my nearly blind next door neighbour Daphne and her relationship with trees. About her dignity in life, and her prescience in death.

This one is an old standby for me: about my good friend Steve Andrews, known on HubPages as The Bard of Ely. This was originally written as a story for the Big Issue, but developed for Kindred Spirit, it takes on the idea of Steve being an alien being on this planet (an oft repeated theme in both Steve's and my work). It was the last Tales of Ordinary Magic story to be published in Kindred Spirit.

This one was never published, unfortunately. It's based on a real life incident in the Co-operative one day. For those of you who aren't British, the Co-operative (also known as the Co-op) is a unique British institution, a shop that is owned by its customers. It is the ultimate in down-to-earth shopping. Imagine my consternation, then, when I found this going on:

I've also written a number of other articles for the magazine. I hope very much that I will be able to contribute more in the future.

The articles are as follows:-

Along The Pilgrim's Way: From Winchester to Canterbury.

This is a travel story about a walk along the Pilgrim's Way between Sussex and Kent. This is my most successful story, in terms of sales, ever, in that it has been sold three times now to various magazines. I'm very proud of this story, not only because it has been fairly lucrative for me, but also because it is deeply atmospheric and quite meditative and it reflects the mood of a quiet walk in the countryside very well. It is also full of useful information, and might serve as a model for people practicing the art of travel writing.

This one is part travel column, part therapy review. I was actually commissioned to write this when Tania, who had been scheduled to undertake the therapy herself, found she was double booked. This was a great job, and I wish I had more of these. It was an all expenses paid trip to be pampered for a weekend. Unfortunately, though the therapist was a very nice man, the therapy itself did little more than send me to sleep. Stiil I got to see Bewdley, to eat ice cream, and to listen to the haunting wail of the steam train that passes along the Severn Valley ridge nearby.

This is a pure therapy review, and was undertaken by myself voluntarily. In this case, it was me who suggested the story, and I was pleased to write it as this particular therapy has had a deep effect on my life. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a way out of their habitual patterns of behaviour. Unlike SHEN it doesn't send you to sleep. The opposite. It makes you jump half way to the ceiling.

See, this is why I like writing for Kindred Spirit so much. Where else would you expect to find a story like this? John Lilly, the man who invented the isolation tank, a forgotten figure in the New Age movement, but highly influential in his day. Paid by the US government to undertake LSD studies, they thought he was giving it to his dolphins as part of his interpecies communication research. Instead he was taking it himself and slipping off into his isolation tank to park his body and go wandering around the cosmos. Far out, man. About as far out as you can possibly go and still manage to get back again.

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"Reading this magazine is like turning a light on in a dark room - brilliantly illuminating."
-- Robert Anton Wilson - Anarchist & Philosopher

"We are all on a wonderful and interesting journey. There are so many facets to it and we are learning old ones, new ones, all the time. For many of us Kindred Spirit has been an important companion and comforting friend - a true 'kindred spirit' - for this last decade. May you continue to inspire, educate and entertain us. We need vision, hope and a compassionate sense of responsibility. You supply all these. Thank you!"
-- William Bloom - Visionary

"Over the years Kindred Spirit has become an important and established part of the Human Potential movement, providing a platform that has highlighted the work of many unconventional and original thinkers."
-- Paul McKenna - TV Presenter/Hypnotist