Cosmic Ordering is a recently published book which supposes you can gain whatever you want by “ordering ” it from the “cosmos”.

The idea is that the universe wants you to have everything you desire, but has to balance out other people’s wants with yours. The terms, “Cosmic” and “Ordering” don’t quite hit the spot, though, and two other books contain similar ideas, perhaps better expressed.

In his book, The Voice of Knowledge, Don Miguel Ruiz, distils the entire tradition of the Toltec people of Mexico into four principles, or Agreements, as he prefers to call them. At first sight, they could be taken for a boy scout’s creed : tell the truth; don’t take things personally; don’t jump to conclusions; and do your best. But this would be to miss the point. Used as talismans of action, the Four Agreements become a powerfully transformative path to happiness.

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

Deepak Chopra’s fascinating book, SynchroDestiny runs on the same lines, but from an Eastern philosophical viewpoint. The subtitle, “Harnessing the infinite power of coincidence to create miracles”, was probably written by the marketing department rather than Chopra himself.

There are two facets to his thesis: synchrodestiny, a state of infinite potential, and nonlocal mind, or the virtual domain.

The second part of the book presents a programme of practice and activity for attaining synchrodestiny and knowledge of nonlocal intelligence, whereby you can make your deepest wishes come true.

These three books are coming from the same place and have struck chords with many people. It’s a truly supernatural universe.

In The Times (London), that excellent journalist, Ben Macintyre, ask the serious question: where have all the UFOs gone? Here’s part of his answer:

Just a few years ago, the sky seemed to be littered with flying saucers and every other sort of astral crockery: strange lights, cigar-shaped spaceships, paranormal things that went bump in the night. Scully and Mulder were rushed off their feet. Now the UFOs have almost vanished. Sure, you still get a few alien abductions, especially on New Year’s Eve, and diehard ufologists are still recording close encounters of the umpteenth kind.

Since 1955 the National UFO Reporting Centre in Seattle has clocked 125,000 reports of sightings. But in recent years the numbers have dropped dramatically. The British Flying Saucer Bureau closed down three years ago after half a century of saucer-spotting. The simple truth is that the little green men don’t come calling like they used to, and they have stopped leaving circles in our crops.

[ … ]

But it is also a result of human invention, and humanity’s evolving relationship with new technology. UFO sightings have declined as the internet has expanded. The web is the natural home of every crackpot and conspiracy theorist, but it also, eventually, produces a rarefied atmosphere of rationalism in which aliens and other elusive creatures cannot long survive. In the short term, the internet was a blessing to UFOs; but over time, it has all but killed them off.

[ … ]

UFOs tend to appear at moment of turmoil and technical innovation, and the full-scale alien invasion started after the Second World War. On June 24, 1947, an American pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted nine silvery objects hurtling through the air near Mount Rainier in Washington state.

[ … ]

Within a month, flying saucers had been reported in 28 states. On a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, the US Air Force recovered bits of debris from a crash site, and rumours of bodies of bug-eyed aliens quickly spread. Britain became a favoured UFO landing strip, with hundreds and then thousands of reported sightings. “What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to?”, wondered Winston Churchill in a memo written in 1951. “What can it mean?”

Read the whole article.

A book published five years ago has been flying off the shelves at Amazon UK after a well-known TV presenter claimed it had changed his life. The Cosmic Ordering Service by Barbel Mohr describes how anyone can obtain their greatest desire by submitting a wish-list to the cosmos.

Noel Edmonds believes that four of his six wishes have so far come true, including a major comeback on television after years without work. Last week Edmonds, 57, was given the first Bafta award of his career. “It’s fantastic,” he said, “but you’ll think I’ve gone away with the fairies.”

Online bookstore Amazon reported that sales had increased 1000 percent in 24 hours. Brian McBride, the website’s UK manager said: “Everyone’s always looking for the key to success, so when someone who’s got there tells how they did it, people jump at the chance.”

The idea behind this book is very similar to Deepak Chopra’s SynchroDestiny, which deals with how you can use “coincidence” to change your life.

Jonathan Cainer, the UK astrologer, writes on his website today: “I continually stress that. regardless of what’s going on in the sky, when you ask the universe, clearly, positively yet humbly for anything… the universe will always do what it can to supply this.”

Buy the book in North America. Buy in the UK.

You may have heard about Syntagma Media’s short story collection, Naked Tales: Stories by Writers Who Blog, which is being put together by our Writers Blog Alliance. It will be published by Humdrumming early in 2007.

Another title from the Humdrumming list that caught my eye to share with you is a fantasy novel, More Than This by Senior Editor, Guy Adams. And, boy, does the synopsis make you want to read more. Judge for yourself:

More Than This, a novel by Guy Adams

Kiss me quick and squeeze me slow, there’s something amiss in the crumbling seaside resort of Gravestown: Children are vanishing and nobody can understand how.

Gregory Ashe watches them go, sees them hanging from their tatty ‘wanted’ pictures and the wilting bouquets of flowers left by well wishers. Like most thirteen year olds he feels it’s nothing to do with him, he’s far too busy with his face in a book and a head full of dreams.

Then, amongst the seaweed and shingle, a solitary foot is washed up and the violence begins.

Gravestown is infected. People are beginning to lose their minds, changing, becoming other. Blood is spilt, over and over and over…

Through it all the waves roll and, in the dark building on the cliff tops, the lunatics howl by the light of their moon.

Slowly the safe walls of reality are crumbling and it seems nobody can stop it.

Nobody that is except The Magician, a man who takes young Gregory under his wing and shows him how hollow those dreams of his really are, a man with more than just spare decks of cards hidden up his sleeve.

Gregory’s never been in so much danger …

A dark fantasy laced with humour and terror. More Than This is a fast paced journey from innocence to maturity, fear to hope, heaven to hell. Exciting, horrifying and filled with the sort of imagination, escapism and, above all, magic you remember from books you read as a child — magic you thought lost.

Buy it from here.