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The Goddess and the Shaman: The Art & Science of Magical Healing
Explore the resurgence of magical and shamanic healing in the world today. Recovering from disease, pain, and mental illness often means addressing otherworldly causes such as soul loss, soul fragmentation, or invasive spirits. Interviewing modern shamanic practitioners and sharing her own experiences as a psychotherapist and healer, author J. A. Kent, PhD, shows how ritual practice and mystical experience can be used as tools to foster profound spiritual and psychological growth. Through exploration of otherworldly phenomena, the Western mystery traditions, and the author’s psychotherapy case studies, this book shows how the Goddess represents the numinous reality of the universe while the Shaman represents the archetypal figure that can access the other side to bring forth knowledge and healing.
384 pages, Paperback
First published March 8, 2016
34 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
About the author
J.A. Kent
2 books6 followersI live in the City of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. This is a World Heritage environment and the lungs of the sprawling urban areas to the East. There are distinct seasons here that are experiential and observable so that understanding the European roots of Wicca and Magic are easier. My family and I had previously lived in the sub tropics, near Byron Bay on the Far North coast of New South Wales where the seasons are not so clearly defined or understood.
However, I feel fortunate to have always lived in beautiful and interesting parts of the country and for much of my life to have lived in close proximity to the natural world. I find that the natural world supports and nourishes me. It is fundamental to my spirituality to be connected to it.
I am probably a strange mixture of an academic, a natural psychic and magical practitioner. This exotic combination of identities has allowed me to understand reality in a rather different and unique way. It is my hope and intention that my work is helpful to others and can aid those who are searching for a rational understanding of how the world works and how it can work better if certain spiritual and magical principles are understood.
In many ways I fit the profile of the shaman but in a modern context. I have been a teacher for much of my life and have been privileged to have taught from kindergarten to adults at university. I have also trained and worked as a psychotherapist/counselor/group leader. I have also trained and worked as a medical herbalist, homeopathic physician, naturopath and nutritionist. On the more mystical side of things I have studied and taught both Wicca and High Magic.
I think that the ability to work as a healer by combining the exoteric and the esoteric forms of healing has both broadened and enhanced my practice as the case studies in the book will indicate.
However, I feel fortunate to have always lived in beautiful and interesting parts of the country and for much of my life to have lived in close proximity to the natural world. I find that the natural world supports and nourishes me. It is fundamental to my spirituality to be connected to it.
I am probably a strange mixture of an academic, a natural psychic and magical practitioner. This exotic combination of identities has allowed me to understand reality in a rather different and unique way. It is my hope and intention that my work is helpful to others and can aid those who are searching for a rational understanding of how the world works and how it can work better if certain spiritual and magical principles are understood.
In many ways I fit the profile of the shaman but in a modern context. I have been a teacher for much of my life and have been privileged to have taught from kindergarten to adults at university. I have also trained and worked as a psychotherapist/counselor/group leader. I have also trained and worked as a medical herbalist, homeopathic physician, naturopath and nutritionist. On the more mystical side of things I have studied and taught both Wicca and High Magic.
I think that the ability to work as a healer by combining the exoteric and the esoteric forms of healing has both broadened and enhanced my practice as the case studies in the book will indicate.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 24, 2016
As in the pure style of the Goddess world where all is interconnected and nothing is separate, this book came when I needed it most. It came just as I was painfully surrendering to what I perceived as a call from the Goddess and preparing to quit my corporate job.
I read this book in that magical period in between eclipses where time as we perceive it does not follow “normal” rules and the incursions from the Elphame (the name given by the author to the Other World) are stronger and more frequent…if we are paying attention.
So this book was a bit like a manual that had an uncanny way to unfold just as I was reading about it in the book.
It was reassuring, comforting and encouraging to read the author’s telling of her life in discovering the Goddess and then the ability to cross over in the Elphame. So was her description of the “ontological shock” that is “the mind’s struggle to reconcile and to integrate two diametrically opposed models of reality”. I recognised many such episodes in my life…and I was currently passing through one.
It was a pleasure reading her description of the “Western Magical Tradition” and her referring to it as the “lost shaman tradition of the West”. It felt like it was a reclaiming of our roots and our own land and occult traditions without always needing to go to the other side of the world to obtain a platform on which to allow ourselves to work in and with.
What I feel it is the gift of this book to the modern reader and Seeker, is the author’s weaving in together and blending once again the Western Magical Tradition and The Great Goddess. I have always a hard time explaining to others how, since I was a child, I felt that everything was interconnected and alive. Nothing was really dead or inanimate for me, not even a stone or a computer. It was amazing to read it in a book because it felt it gave me the permission to finally fully acknowledge this innate knowledge and not perceive it as something strange or “heretical” or “insane”.
And as Kent describes in this book, coming into personal contact with the Goddess changes radically one’s life. There is a shifting of values and life purpose and the alignment of the personal will with the Divine will, which is lived in the inner sanctity of oneself without trying to convince any one of anything. That all life’s events have a spiritual purpose, a sentient being “aware and embodied small part of a greater spiritual Truth.”
I also feel that this book has contributed a very important understanding of “mental health” which I have always felt it was “truer” to me than the concept exposed by conventional medicine. That is looking at what “caused the shattering of the self in the first place” not just popping a pill in the patient’s mouth and that is the end of the story.
Kent brings case studies to support this theory. Case studies I loved reading, not only for the clinical details and sometimes “rawness” of the episodes but because of what emerged from her case studies. According to Kent, “psychotic", “schizophrenic” or commonly known as “mad” persons, who are condemned to live on pills that take their identity away, are actually people who have a heightened sense of the Other World and periodic incursions of the Elphame in their world and do not know how to deal with it.
In other cases the malady has its origins in the “Other World” and pieces of the soul has been lost. Through the tools of “magical psychology” Kent was able to help these persons to, not only start living a “normal” life, but also live more happily.
I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to have been given a free copy to review. It is a book I will cherish and re-read with earnest.
A book I highly recommend to those who are on the Goddess path, healing practitioners or simply those who are just curious to hear a different bell about the reality we think we live in.
I read this book in that magical period in between eclipses where time as we perceive it does not follow “normal” rules and the incursions from the Elphame (the name given by the author to the Other World) are stronger and more frequent…if we are paying attention.
So this book was a bit like a manual that had an uncanny way to unfold just as I was reading about it in the book.
It was reassuring, comforting and encouraging to read the author’s telling of her life in discovering the Goddess and then the ability to cross over in the Elphame. So was her description of the “ontological shock” that is “the mind’s struggle to reconcile and to integrate two diametrically opposed models of reality”. I recognised many such episodes in my life…and I was currently passing through one.
It was a pleasure reading her description of the “Western Magical Tradition” and her referring to it as the “lost shaman tradition of the West”. It felt like it was a reclaiming of our roots and our own land and occult traditions without always needing to go to the other side of the world to obtain a platform on which to allow ourselves to work in and with.
What I feel it is the gift of this book to the modern reader and Seeker, is the author’s weaving in together and blending once again the Western Magical Tradition and The Great Goddess. I have always a hard time explaining to others how, since I was a child, I felt that everything was interconnected and alive. Nothing was really dead or inanimate for me, not even a stone or a computer. It was amazing to read it in a book because it felt it gave me the permission to finally fully acknowledge this innate knowledge and not perceive it as something strange or “heretical” or “insane”.
And as Kent describes in this book, coming into personal contact with the Goddess changes radically one’s life. There is a shifting of values and life purpose and the alignment of the personal will with the Divine will, which is lived in the inner sanctity of oneself without trying to convince any one of anything. That all life’s events have a spiritual purpose, a sentient being “aware and embodied small part of a greater spiritual Truth.”
I also feel that this book has contributed a very important understanding of “mental health” which I have always felt it was “truer” to me than the concept exposed by conventional medicine. That is looking at what “caused the shattering of the self in the first place” not just popping a pill in the patient’s mouth and that is the end of the story.
Kent brings case studies to support this theory. Case studies I loved reading, not only for the clinical details and sometimes “rawness” of the episodes but because of what emerged from her case studies. According to Kent, “psychotic", “schizophrenic” or commonly known as “mad” persons, who are condemned to live on pills that take their identity away, are actually people who have a heightened sense of the Other World and periodic incursions of the Elphame in their world and do not know how to deal with it.
In other cases the malady has its origins in the “Other World” and pieces of the soul has been lost. Through the tools of “magical psychology” Kent was able to help these persons to, not only start living a “normal” life, but also live more happily.
I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to have been given a free copy to review. It is a book I will cherish and re-read with earnest.
A book I highly recommend to those who are on the Goddess path, healing practitioners or simply those who are just curious to hear a different bell about the reality we think we live in.
December 30, 2019
I've enjoyed reading this book as someone who had been experiencing otherworldly encounters but wasn't sure what to make of it. The author created a thorough and well researched glimpse into the visible and invisible worlds, our mental and intuitive abilities, and the ways in which plants, herbs, and other elements are all connected to us. Additionally, her examples of client treatments and experiences is fruitful in showing how conventional and alternative medicine and modalities can assist in wholistic treatment options. Would recommend.
April 18, 2025
"I discovered the presence of a mystical and magical tradition that was largely concealed within our culture that had its roots in ancient pre-Christian Paganism, alchemy, Hermetic philosophy, the holy Qabalah, and elements of Greek, Egyptian, and Gnostic mysticism. It is generally referred to as the Western magical tradition. I tend to see it as the lost shaman tradition of the West." Preface
J.A. Kent, PhD, examines various occult and healing practices from a variety of traditions by interviewing practitioners as well as providing case studies of her own patients in order to present, what I can only call, her doctoral thesis of her personal magical paradigm. Her paradigm is the title of her book, The Goddess and the Shaman.
"There are strong social and medical pressures in Western-style thinking that regard those who have psychic experiences to be either fraudulent or psychotic." pg 16
Let me briefly explain this paradigm, though I highly recommend reading the book to get it in Kent's own words.
"The Goddess" is another name for what Kent calls the "Elphame," essentially the other non-physical worlds that exist either alongside or on top of (depending upon who you speak to) our normal every day world. "The shaman" are the lightworkers and healers who explore these realms for various reasons including healing others of sicknesses both of the body and spirit.
I think it took a great deal of bravery to write a book like this, especially with the prevailing worldviews at work today. Well done, J.A. Kent!
The world is an enchanted, mysterious, and magical place that will reveal its many secret powers and energies to those who have the persistence and determination to unlock them." pg 64
The trouble with spiritual healing or any type of work in the Elphame, Goddess, or whatever you want to call it, is that the practitioner exits the consensual reality of the every day world and enters non-consensual reality- the abode of the dreamers, lovers, poets, musicians, mad, etc. I have come to believe that the Western world, Western medicine especially, is not kind to those who venture outside the bounds of the normal.
Kent discusses this in depth in multiple places of this book. Suffers who could find no mundane explanation for their troubles turn to her in order to find some relief. And, encouragingly, many found healing.
"Ultimately they rejected the reductionist psychiatric explanation and embarked on their own magical journey of healing." pg 159
Recommended for therapists and spiritual healers who are looking for more ideas about how to assist those who come to them seeking help. I enjoyed this book very much.
J.A. Kent, PhD, examines various occult and healing practices from a variety of traditions by interviewing practitioners as well as providing case studies of her own patients in order to present, what I can only call, her doctoral thesis of her personal magical paradigm. Her paradigm is the title of her book, The Goddess and the Shaman.
"There are strong social and medical pressures in Western-style thinking that regard those who have psychic experiences to be either fraudulent or psychotic." pg 16
Let me briefly explain this paradigm, though I highly recommend reading the book to get it in Kent's own words.
"The Goddess" is another name for what Kent calls the "Elphame," essentially the other non-physical worlds that exist either alongside or on top of (depending upon who you speak to) our normal every day world. "The shaman" are the lightworkers and healers who explore these realms for various reasons including healing others of sicknesses both of the body and spirit.
I think it took a great deal of bravery to write a book like this, especially with the prevailing worldviews at work today. Well done, J.A. Kent!
The world is an enchanted, mysterious, and magical place that will reveal its many secret powers and energies to those who have the persistence and determination to unlock them." pg 64
The trouble with spiritual healing or any type of work in the Elphame, Goddess, or whatever you want to call it, is that the practitioner exits the consensual reality of the every day world and enters non-consensual reality- the abode of the dreamers, lovers, poets, musicians, mad, etc. I have come to believe that the Western world, Western medicine especially, is not kind to those who venture outside the bounds of the normal.
Kent discusses this in depth in multiple places of this book. Suffers who could find no mundane explanation for their troubles turn to her in order to find some relief. And, encouragingly, many found healing.
"Ultimately they rejected the reductionist psychiatric explanation and embarked on their own magical journey of healing." pg 159
Recommended for therapists and spiritual healers who are looking for more ideas about how to assist those who come to them seeking help. I enjoyed this book very much.
December 3, 2018
Really loved parts of this book, mostly at the beginning and end. The middle felt like a drinking game- everytime she said ontological shock I considered taking a shot. It felt a bit like she was trying to convince me of ontological shock and repeated herself so much that I found myself skipping through. What this book did do for me was ease that part of my mind that's always questioning and doubting magic and the spirit world. I no longer want to waste anymore of my energy questioning this, but rather energise developing my own skills and abilities. Very huge for me so thank you to Kent for this! I appreciated hearing the real accounts of how healers came to be. I would have liked to hear more of this, more about the goddess and the shaman!
March 25, 2023
This was one that taught me a lot. It’s very interesting reading about metaphysical healing from the eyes of a psychologist. Someone who tries all the normal remedies that anyone would try essentially, and then reverting to her Elohim healing if nothing is helping the patient.
It is a sloooow read tho. A lot to take in. It’s worth finishing, I will say.
I loved following her personal journey. Failures, trial and error, backlash from the universe. Success and healing multiple patients. I’ll recommend this to someone who is genuinely interested in mytics, because if not…gooood luck. <3
It is a sloooow read tho. A lot to take in. It’s worth finishing, I will say.
I loved following her personal journey. Failures, trial and error, backlash from the universe. Success and healing multiple patients. I’ll recommend this to someone who is genuinely interested in mytics, because if not…gooood luck. <3
April 6, 2016
The author had claimed to take a sceptical and nuanced look at magical healing, but it was anything but. I got through about 10% of the book before I had to put it down.
*I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*
*I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*
February 18, 2023
“The Goddess is found only through love: love of trees, of stones, of sky, of clouds, of scented blossoms and thundering waves; of all that runs and flies and swims and crawls on her face—each of us our own star, her child, her lover, her beloved, her self. “
-Chapter 2, pg 61
-Chapter 2, pg 61
December 19, 2023
When I read the introduction the author could have been describing me and my experiences. Although not a councilor by trade but rather a researcher, I can attest to the difficulty of aligning different views of reality. If one has not had these kinds of experiences it may be hard to grasp the truth held in this book. I commend her bravery in writing it and the validation to the rest of us that her account provides. I hope it opens the minds of others as to what is possible. I think this is in incredibly important book to have out there.
It seems like any bad review was from a person who was given a free book to review and was not open to any challenge to the accepted status quo, because this book is AWESOME!
It seems like any bad review was from a person who was given a free book to review and was not open to any challenge to the accepted status quo, because this book is AWESOME!
July 8, 2020
Keep an open mind.
February 14, 2024
This book started strong and had me hooked, once I got to two thirds it was hard to finish with interest. First half was great.
November 28, 2025
I liked it. Very well written—technical mixed with stories and personal history.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews