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Kissing the Limitless: Deep Magic and the Great Work of Transforming Yourself and the World
Kissing the Limitless is a manual for self-liberation through magic. By practicing the Great Work of the ancient alchemists and magicians, readers are guided into self-possession constant communication with their divine selves and connection with the Limitless Divine. Using the tools of energy and breath, shadow and dream work, tarot and meditation, readers will learn to open up "life power" and access breath, will, and desire the key components of effective magic to, quite literally, reshape the world.
256 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 2008
About the author
T. Thorn Coyle
89 books199 followersTT. Thorn Coyle has been arrested at least four times. Buy her a cup of tea or a good whisky and she'll tell you about it.
A salty-tongued, tattooed mystic, Thorn is author of the alt-history urban fantasy series The Panther Chronicles, the novel Like Water, and two short story collections. The Witches of Portland will be out in Spring, 2018. She has also written multiple non-fiction books including Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, Kissing the Limitless, and Evolutionary Witchcraft. Thorn's work appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections.
She has taught magical practice in nine countries, on four continents, and in twenty-five states. Her other occupations have been numerous, and include working four years each on the Pacific Stock Options floor (as a young Anarchist punk with a blue, flat-top Mohawk), in a woman-run peep show, and full time in the San Francisco soup kitchen she ended up volunteering at for twenty years. All of this, along with her activism, informs her fiction.
An interloper to the Pacific Northwest, Thorn joyfully stalks city streets, writes in cafes, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.
Thorn is active on:
Twitter @ThornCoyle
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tthorncoyle
Medium https://medium.com/@ThornCoyle
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ThornCoyle
http://www.thorncoyle.com
A salty-tongued, tattooed mystic, Thorn is author of the alt-history urban fantasy series The Panther Chronicles, the novel Like Water, and two short story collections. The Witches of Portland will be out in Spring, 2018. She has also written multiple non-fiction books including Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, Kissing the Limitless, and Evolutionary Witchcraft. Thorn's work appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections.
She has taught magical practice in nine countries, on four continents, and in twenty-five states. Her other occupations have been numerous, and include working four years each on the Pacific Stock Options floor (as a young Anarchist punk with a blue, flat-top Mohawk), in a woman-run peep show, and full time in the San Francisco soup kitchen she ended up volunteering at for twenty years. All of this, along with her activism, informs her fiction.
An interloper to the Pacific Northwest, Thorn joyfully stalks city streets, writes in cafes, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.
Thorn is active on:
Twitter @ThornCoyle
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tthorncoyle
Medium https://medium.com/@ThornCoyle
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ThornCoyle
http://www.thorncoyle.com
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 10, 2009
This is not a book of magic as spellcasting and it's not Wicca 101. This is a book for people who are serious about the challenging and rewarding path of The Great Work, the transformation of self through communion with the Divine.
T. Thorn Coyle is quite simply one of the most talented and sophisticated of Pagan teachers, and in this book she presents life-tested techniques with an attitude of both seriousness and joy.
This is a book about how to use magical-spiritual practices as the foundation for transforming the personality through meditation, purification, self-examination, facing inner demons and shadows, and cultivating an ever-deeper connection with the Divine. Although her perspective and theology are distinctly Pagan, most of the the techniques can be applied by people of other faiths, especially if one is willing to translate her terms into ones one more comfortable and familiar. Thorn herself frequently mentions practices from a variety of mystical traditions as possible options for approaching specific parts of the work.
Thorn's style is conversational but never condescending. She presents advanced spiritual concepts simply and clearly. In fact, this text helped me achieve several breakthroughs around topics I've studied before but never grasped until now.
T. Thorn Coyle is quite simply one of the most talented and sophisticated of Pagan teachers, and in this book she presents life-tested techniques with an attitude of both seriousness and joy.
This is a book about how to use magical-spiritual practices as the foundation for transforming the personality through meditation, purification, self-examination, facing inner demons and shadows, and cultivating an ever-deeper connection with the Divine. Although her perspective and theology are distinctly Pagan, most of the the techniques can be applied by people of other faiths, especially if one is willing to translate her terms into ones one more comfortable and familiar. Thorn herself frequently mentions practices from a variety of mystical traditions as possible options for approaching specific parts of the work.
Thorn's style is conversational but never condescending. She presents advanced spiritual concepts simply and clearly. In fact, this text helped me achieve several breakthroughs around topics I've studied before but never grasped until now.
June 26, 2013
I found it incredibly boring and bland; I couldn't even push myself to finish it. An attempt at a self help book, it lacks 'shiny' moments to keep me flipping pages. Even amongst all its activities, suggestions and ideas, I found more enlightenment and fulfillment in other books such as A New Earth by Ekhart Tolle.
October 4, 2009
Beautiful, advance spiritual guide for mystics of any flavor.
January 19, 2011
Excellent book! I read through it once and I am now going to do the work outlined in the chapters.
March 26, 2012
Wonderful blend of eclectic witchcraft and practical psychological approaches to manifesting, banishing and seeking. If you are able to do any of her workshops: do it!
August 18, 2026
Kissing the Limitless feels like a book written for the point in a magical life when accumulating more techniques stops being enough. T. Thorn Coyle is interested in what happens when practice begins reshaping the practitioner at the level of character, desire, perception, and choice. The Great Work here isn't some distant mystical achievement reserved for legendary adepts. It's the ongoing labor of becoming more conscious, more integrated, and more capable of participating in the world with intention.
One of the things that struck me most is the way Thorn connects personal liberation with magical effectiveness. We often talk about will as though it's simply the ability to concentrate harder, but our will is constantly competing with fear, habit, old wounds, conflicting desires, and unconscious patterns. If those forces remain unexamined, they shape our magic whether we acknowledge them or not. The work of becoming freer internally therefore isn't separate from becoming a more effective magician. It's part of the same process.
The use of breath throughout the book is especially powerful because it keeps the material anchored in something immediate and embodied. Breath is always available, always changing, and intimately connected to emotion, attention, and energy. Thorn uses it not simply as a relaxation technique but as a way of entering more deliberate relationship with the forces moving through us. That gives even the more mystical material a concrete point of entry.
I also appreciated the relationship between shadow work and power. The book doesn't present the shadow as a pile of undesirable traits to be purified away. The things we've rejected, feared, hidden, or been taught to be ashamed of often contain tremendous amounts of energy. Bringing them into consciousness can release capacities that were bound up in keeping parts of ourselves exiled. That makes integration feel less like self-improvement and more like reclamation.
Dream work, tarot, meditation, and energetic practices expand that exploration in different directions. Rather than treating these as unrelated occult specialties, Thorn uses them as ways of encountering material that ordinary waking consciousness may not easily reveal. A dream, a card, a sensation, or a moment in meditation can become another angle from which to see the same underlying patterns.
The concept of self-possession also stayed with me. There is something deeply magical about becoming increasingly difficult to manipulate through your own unexamined fears, compulsions, and inherited assumptions. Self-possession doesn't mean rigidity or absolute control. It means inhabiting yourself enough to know when you're acting from choice and when you're simply being pulled along by forces you haven't bothered to examine.
That gives the book a strong ethical dimension without turning it into a rulebook. If magic increases our ability to affect ourselves and the world, then greater power should be accompanied by greater awareness of what is actually motivating us. Transformation isn't just about becoming capable of doing more. It's also about becoming someone who can make better choices about what deserves to be done.
Thorn's vision of the divine is equally expansive. The Limitless isn't presented as a distant authority issuing instructions from somewhere outside the practitioner. Contact with the divine becomes something that can permeate ordinary consciousness, the body, relationships, creative work, and engagement with the world. Mysticism doesn't require abandoning life. It asks us to enter it more completely.
That's ultimately what I found most compelling about Kissing the Limitless. It refuses the split between inner work and outer magic. Changing yourself and changing the world aren't presented as competing goals. The person doing the magic is part of the world being changed, and every transformation moves in both directions.
This is a book for practitioners who are ready to ask not only what their magic can accomplish, but what kind of person their magic is helping them become. T. Thorn Coyle makes a convincing case that the deepest sorcery may begin there.
One of the things that struck me most is the way Thorn connects personal liberation with magical effectiveness. We often talk about will as though it's simply the ability to concentrate harder, but our will is constantly competing with fear, habit, old wounds, conflicting desires, and unconscious patterns. If those forces remain unexamined, they shape our magic whether we acknowledge them or not. The work of becoming freer internally therefore isn't separate from becoming a more effective magician. It's part of the same process.
The use of breath throughout the book is especially powerful because it keeps the material anchored in something immediate and embodied. Breath is always available, always changing, and intimately connected to emotion, attention, and energy. Thorn uses it not simply as a relaxation technique but as a way of entering more deliberate relationship with the forces moving through us. That gives even the more mystical material a concrete point of entry.
I also appreciated the relationship between shadow work and power. The book doesn't present the shadow as a pile of undesirable traits to be purified away. The things we've rejected, feared, hidden, or been taught to be ashamed of often contain tremendous amounts of energy. Bringing them into consciousness can release capacities that were bound up in keeping parts of ourselves exiled. That makes integration feel less like self-improvement and more like reclamation.
Dream work, tarot, meditation, and energetic practices expand that exploration in different directions. Rather than treating these as unrelated occult specialties, Thorn uses them as ways of encountering material that ordinary waking consciousness may not easily reveal. A dream, a card, a sensation, or a moment in meditation can become another angle from which to see the same underlying patterns.
The concept of self-possession also stayed with me. There is something deeply magical about becoming increasingly difficult to manipulate through your own unexamined fears, compulsions, and inherited assumptions. Self-possession doesn't mean rigidity or absolute control. It means inhabiting yourself enough to know when you're acting from choice and when you're simply being pulled along by forces you haven't bothered to examine.
That gives the book a strong ethical dimension without turning it into a rulebook. If magic increases our ability to affect ourselves and the world, then greater power should be accompanied by greater awareness of what is actually motivating us. Transformation isn't just about becoming capable of doing more. It's also about becoming someone who can make better choices about what deserves to be done.
Thorn's vision of the divine is equally expansive. The Limitless isn't presented as a distant authority issuing instructions from somewhere outside the practitioner. Contact with the divine becomes something that can permeate ordinary consciousness, the body, relationships, creative work, and engagement with the world. Mysticism doesn't require abandoning life. It asks us to enter it more completely.
That's ultimately what I found most compelling about Kissing the Limitless. It refuses the split between inner work and outer magic. Changing yourself and changing the world aren't presented as competing goals. The person doing the magic is part of the world being changed, and every transformation moves in both directions.
This is a book for practitioners who are ready to ask not only what their magic can accomplish, but what kind of person their magic is helping them become. T. Thorn Coyle makes a convincing case that the deepest sorcery may begin there.
August 17, 2026
Kissing the Limitless is the kind of book that reminds me why T. Thorn Coyle is such an important magical teacher. This isn't a book about accumulating more spells, correspondences, or occult information. It's about becoming more capable of magic by transforming the person doing it. Thorn takes the old occult idea of the Great Work and makes it immediate, embodied, and intensely practical: liberate yourself, deepen your relationship with the divine, cultivate your power, and then use that power to actually affect the world.
What I love about Thorn's work is that self-transformation and magic are never separated. Breath, energy, will, desire, meditation, tarot, dreams, and shadow work aren't presented as unrelated techniques collected into one book. They feed into one another. Breath affects energy. Energy strengthens will. Shadow work reveals the places where your will is divided against itself. Desire tells you where your life is trying to move. Meditation develops the awareness necessary to recognize all of this. Gradually, what looks like a collection of practices reveals itself as an integrated system for becoming more awake and more powerful.
The treatment of desire is especially refreshing. A lot of spiritual systems become suspicious of desire and treat transcendence as a process of wanting less and less until you're somehow purified of yourself. Thorn takes a different approach. Desire can contain information. It can reveal something about who we are, what we value, and what is trying to emerge through us. The work isn't simply indulging every impulse, obviously, but learning to understand desire deeply enough that it can become aligned with will rather than constantly pulling against it.
I also love the phrase “life power” because it captures something central to this book. Magical power isn't presented as some abstract substance that only appears once you've cast a circle and started doing ritual. It's intimately connected to how alive, present, embodied, and engaged you are. Magic becomes part of the process of fully inhabiting yourself. The more conscious your relationship with breath, body, shadow, desire, will, and divinity becomes, the more available that power becomes.
And Thorn doesn't allow the Great Work to become endless spiritual navel-gazing. Transforming yourself is only half of the equation. The title explicitly connects deep magic with transforming yourself and the world, and that outward movement matters. The point of becoming more conscious and more capable isn't to retreat permanently into your own spiritual development. Eventually you bring what you've cultivated back into your relationships, communities, circumstances, and the larger world.
This is also one of those books where you can tell the author has actually lived the practices being described. Thorn writes about serious occult concepts without making them unnecessarily obscure. There is depth here, but it isn't the kind created by piling jargon on top of simple ideas. The depth comes from taking simple things like breathing, paying attention, confronting your shadow, examining desire, and developing your will far more seriously than most of us usually do.
Kissing the Limitless isn't really a book you finish. It's a book you work. You could read it quickly and understand the ideas, but that would almost miss the point. The real book begins when you start doing what Thorn asks and discover how those practices interact with your actual life.
For anyone interested in magic as a genuine path of transformation, this is essential reading. T. Thorn Coyle understands the Great Work not as some distant attainment reserved for legendary magicians, but as something happening through the choices we make, the power we cultivate, the shadows we face, and the lives we build every day. Kissing the Limitless doesn't just ask how much magic you can perform. It asks how much more fully you can become yourself, and what might become possible once you do.
What I love about Thorn's work is that self-transformation and magic are never separated. Breath, energy, will, desire, meditation, tarot, dreams, and shadow work aren't presented as unrelated techniques collected into one book. They feed into one another. Breath affects energy. Energy strengthens will. Shadow work reveals the places where your will is divided against itself. Desire tells you where your life is trying to move. Meditation develops the awareness necessary to recognize all of this. Gradually, what looks like a collection of practices reveals itself as an integrated system for becoming more awake and more powerful.
The treatment of desire is especially refreshing. A lot of spiritual systems become suspicious of desire and treat transcendence as a process of wanting less and less until you're somehow purified of yourself. Thorn takes a different approach. Desire can contain information. It can reveal something about who we are, what we value, and what is trying to emerge through us. The work isn't simply indulging every impulse, obviously, but learning to understand desire deeply enough that it can become aligned with will rather than constantly pulling against it.
I also love the phrase “life power” because it captures something central to this book. Magical power isn't presented as some abstract substance that only appears once you've cast a circle and started doing ritual. It's intimately connected to how alive, present, embodied, and engaged you are. Magic becomes part of the process of fully inhabiting yourself. The more conscious your relationship with breath, body, shadow, desire, will, and divinity becomes, the more available that power becomes.
And Thorn doesn't allow the Great Work to become endless spiritual navel-gazing. Transforming yourself is only half of the equation. The title explicitly connects deep magic with transforming yourself and the world, and that outward movement matters. The point of becoming more conscious and more capable isn't to retreat permanently into your own spiritual development. Eventually you bring what you've cultivated back into your relationships, communities, circumstances, and the larger world.
This is also one of those books where you can tell the author has actually lived the practices being described. Thorn writes about serious occult concepts without making them unnecessarily obscure. There is depth here, but it isn't the kind created by piling jargon on top of simple ideas. The depth comes from taking simple things like breathing, paying attention, confronting your shadow, examining desire, and developing your will far more seriously than most of us usually do.
Kissing the Limitless isn't really a book you finish. It's a book you work. You could read it quickly and understand the ideas, but that would almost miss the point. The real book begins when you start doing what Thorn asks and discover how those practices interact with your actual life.
For anyone interested in magic as a genuine path of transformation, this is essential reading. T. Thorn Coyle understands the Great Work not as some distant attainment reserved for legendary magicians, but as something happening through the choices we make, the power we cultivate, the shadows we face, and the lives we build every day. Kissing the Limitless doesn't just ask how much magic you can perform. It asks how much more fully you can become yourself, and what might become possible once you do.
September 27, 2024
Kissing the Limitless is far more than a book on magic—it is a manual for profound personal transformation and self-liberation. T. Thorn Coyle masterfully guides readers through the alchemical process of integrating mind, body, and spirit, offering a path to deep self-possession and a continual connection to the divine within. This book is an invitation to engage in the Great Work, not as a theoretical exercise, but as a living practice that transforms both the self and the world. Central to Coyle’s teachings is the idea of “kissing the limitless,” a concept that encourages practitioners to push beyond their perceived boundaries and engage directly with the source of power and will that flows through all things. Coyle’s approach blends techniques from traditional alchemy, shadow work, and energy manipulation, providing a cohesive system that empowers readers to reshape their inner and outer realities. This is not magic for the sake of power, but magic as a means of self-realization and communion with the Limitless Divine.
The book’s focus on using breath, energy, and desire as primary tools for magical work is particularly effective, grounding esoteric concepts in practical techniques that can be applied to everyday life. Coyle’s use of tarot, dreamwork, and meditation as pathways for self-exploration adds further depth, ensuring that each reader can find an entry point that resonates with their unique style and experience level. Her exercises are designed to cultivate awareness and intention, making the book both a spiritual guide and a toolbox for active change.
What sets Kissing the Limitless apart is Coyle’s emphasis on the interplay between personal transformation and the greater world. She positions the work of self-liberation as inseparable from the work of reshaping society, making this book a call to action as much as a guide to personal growth. The integration of shadow work and dream practices encourages practitioners to confront and transmute their own limitations, allowing them to engage with the world from a place of strength, clarity, and purpose. Kissing the Limitless is a deeply empowering text that blends mysticism, practical magic, and spiritual philosophy into a single cohesive vision. T. Thorn Coyle’s teachings challenge readers to move beyond superficial change and embrace the Great Work as a lifelong journey toward liberation. For those seeking a transformative approach to magic that is rooted in both the personal and the universal, this book is a powerful companion on the path.
The book’s focus on using breath, energy, and desire as primary tools for magical work is particularly effective, grounding esoteric concepts in practical techniques that can be applied to everyday life. Coyle’s use of tarot, dreamwork, and meditation as pathways for self-exploration adds further depth, ensuring that each reader can find an entry point that resonates with their unique style and experience level. Her exercises are designed to cultivate awareness and intention, making the book both a spiritual guide and a toolbox for active change.
What sets Kissing the Limitless apart is Coyle’s emphasis on the interplay between personal transformation and the greater world. She positions the work of self-liberation as inseparable from the work of reshaping society, making this book a call to action as much as a guide to personal growth. The integration of shadow work and dream practices encourages practitioners to confront and transmute their own limitations, allowing them to engage with the world from a place of strength, clarity, and purpose. Kissing the Limitless is a deeply empowering text that blends mysticism, practical magic, and spiritual philosophy into a single cohesive vision. T. Thorn Coyle’s teachings challenge readers to move beyond superficial change and embrace the Great Work as a lifelong journey toward liberation. For those seeking a transformative approach to magic that is rooted in both the personal and the universal, this book is a powerful companion on the path.
July 23, 2018
This was an excellent book for people who have been on a magical/spiritual path for a while and are ready to take their spirituality to another level. Full of energy exercises, meditations, quotes and perspective, it has both practical tips as well as advice on walking this into the world at large. I highly recommend it for those who want to explore a deeper connection to themselves, their deity/ies, and their world! It is written from a witchy perspective, but isn't fundie in that regard at all. The author references multiple spiritual paths and how they view things like love, justice, enlightenment, and self-care.
July 7, 2021
This book presents an interesting hodgepodge of various occult and esoteric schools of thought, from Gurdjieff’s work to Crowley’s Thelema, with brief stops at almost every technique in between. That combination of ideas, however, is not quite enough to spark much interest for me in the course of study laid out here; much of the “Doing the Work” sections feel less like work and more like simple guided meditations. An intriguing concept, but it feels to me like mixing so many works together waters them all down in the long run, and one could be better served devoting time to focusing on one of the foundations of this system than the system itself.
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August 6, 2019as much there are many truths in this book I just could not get into this book.
October 8, 2020
A way of being.. your spirituality needn't be separate from other aspects of yourself but rather a part of everything you do.. beautiful.
August 7, 2021
Surprisingly grounded and practical advice. Excited to be deepening the practice.
August 14, 2009
Currently reading this ecstatic account of T. Thorn Coyle's journey through different religious traditions. I find it enjoyable as a travelogue through the territory of paganism, witchcraft, and fairy work with a touch of zen and yogic teachings added in. As an editor, I have to say that it's discombobulated and oddly organized. It also has chapter headings on almost every page, often in an unrelated order, which makes for a disjointed read. Although not revolutionary or new in and of themselves, her meditations and suggestions are a unique combination from different traditions and well-centered in the pagan way. The content is true and meaningful, and a good reminder to dedicate ourselves to daily practice.
June 10, 2015
This is a good book but it is not one that I would recommend as someone's first read about magical subjects. That being said, it is worth the time for readers who are serious about personal transformation and deep magic.
March 15, 2013
A wonderfully deep book to read. Guaranteed to plow deep within your soul. Probably will have to read this one many times.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews