Bookstrumpet: The Sage Age by MaAnna Stephenson

Bookstrumpet is pleased to take part in the virtual blog tour for The Sage Age by MaAnna Stephenson. This is a comprehensive and amazing book which connects the scientific with the intuitive. Scroll down to the end of this article to find links for more information and where you can purchase the book. Here's a brief synopsis of the book:

Combining the knowledge of physics with intuitive practice is no small task. The two disciplines often use the same words to mean entirely different things. Written for the seeker with more than a casual interest, The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom demystifies complex ideas with intelligent analogies and examples designed to appeal to both the scientist and the natural intuitive.

Four years in the writing, this expansive new work combines knowledge from the physical sciences and the intuitive arts to present a visionary perspective that harmonizes these diverse disciplines into one body of knowledge.

With a well-researched approach to its subjects, The Sage Age covers a broad range of material from ancient to modern thought, frontier science and current intuitive practice to deliver a depth and breadth of understanding that culminates in a holistic perspective for our time.

Living up to its mantra of "new models for new thought," The Sage Age is certain to be a catalyst for dialogue and is destined to be a major work in its field.

MaAnna Stephenson Bio

While currently known as a visionary thinker and new author, MaAnna Stephenson is a true Renaissance woman. From an early age she was exposed to a myriad of influences including her father's engineering and artistic endeavors, her maternal line of intuitives, and an intrinsic fascination with sound and music. Born in the small town of Humboldt, Tennessee, MaAnna began her journey as the youngest of three children with a huge age gap between her siblings and herself. Constant inclusion in the world of adults led to an early maturity and perhaps a different view of the world than most children experience – especially with the special gifts of the adults in her family. None of it was lost on young MaAnna. "My mother was also an intuitive, as
were all the women in my immediate family. Having psychic senses was quite normal and the information derived from these methods was respected and adhered to. I became accustomed quite early to the fact that there were things - forces and powers - which could not be measured with a ruler but were just as real as anything I could see or touch."

An additional gift was bestowed by her paternal grandmother – the gift of music. Time spent at the organ with her grandmother, who was well known for her passion for music, ignited a flame in MaAnna as well. By the time she was a teenager, she was already a multi-instrumentalist and composer, exploring sounds and techniques with special interest in how they affected listeners spiritually and emotionally. Her advanced education continued this line of exploration as she attended Jackson State Community College and Lambuth University concurrently, double majoring in Music and Acoustics with a special apprenticeship at a local recording studio as a sound engineer.

MaAnna transferred to Jackson Area Vocational and Technical School, acquiring a degree in Electronics. This led to a prestigious job offer and subsequent move to Dallas, TX in 1984. She continued her work in sound engineering and music with several international hits to her credit.

After a decade in the big city, she accepted a field assignment in Nashville, TN where she has resided since. It was in Nashville that she began her writing career with a short story triggering what she calls "soul memories." In response to her experience, MaAnna began her self-education in the fields of technical, scientific and New Age thought, exploring ancient mysticism and the rational sciences with equal emphasis. After a five-year preparation period, she was initiated as a shamanka. Her training for this initiation further contributed to her education process as she continued her studies in reconciling the rational sciences and the intuitive arts. This process has culminated in the writing of the newly released "The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom".

While maintaining this intense pace, MaAnna has somehow found time to feed her inner artist, working in stained glass, wood carving and, of course, continuing to indulge her love of music. A member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, she considers herself a "bridge builder" as well as an artist, composer, scholar and author. Her current focus on "new models for new thought" is leading her to develop interactive classes that continue to explore the concepts in "The Sage Age".

And finally, here is an article by MaAnna about one of my favorite new sources of fascination, The Hadron Collider.

The Mythos of the Large Hadron Collider
by MaAnna Stephenson

Billions of years from now, a father and his young daughter may be enjoying the twinkling beauty of a clear summer night when she asks, “Dad, how did all those stars get there?” To which he will reply, “It all started with a big bang.” Today, as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ramps up to speed, speculations abound as to whether science is on the verge of the biggest breakthrough in history or on the event horizon of creating a black hole. Even some physicists are concerned that while we think we are safely recreating only the first instant of the Big Bang, we may actually be hitting the “Reset” button on the entire cycle of creation instead.

High energy particle colliders are nothing new. The first ones were developed in the 1930s and called cyclotrons. This type of device used large magnets to guide and accelerate particles ever faster through a spiral configuration. By the early 1940s, such a device was used to enrich uranium for the Manhattan Project. The cyclotrons were eventually developed into extreme high-energy particle colliders which were the biggest machines ever conceived and can only be seen in their entirety from the air because, instead of spiral tracks, they use full circles that are miles wide. They are often referred to as “atom smashers” because they send two particles at high speed around a circle in opposite directions and then document their collision. There are currently seventy-five particle colliders located on six continents around the world. Of the largest, one is the International Linear Collider located at Fermilab. The other is the Large Hadron Collider built for CERN, which is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The expanded use of so many colliders opened the door for multiple research projects revealing the existence of one new particle after another. Of course, with every new particle came its anti-particle twin. The cornucopia of new particle discovery was so plentiful that it eventually became known as “the particle zoo.” It’s important to realize that few, if any, of these anti-particles have actually been recorded. They are merely theorized to keep the mathematical equations balanced. This same sort of theoretical balancing act is also applied to the existence of many fields and forces. For every force, there must be a particle to carry it. Conversely, every new particle found by the colliders must be associated with a force.

The most elusive of these particles, and one that the LHC was specifically designed to find, is the Higgs Boson, which is associated with the Higgs Field. It is commonly referenced in science circles as the “God particle” and is thought to be the reason why things have mass. The force of gravity is associated with mass. In Einstein’s pursuit of a single Theory of Everything (TOE), he simply could not get gravity to play well with relativity theory. And neither could anyone else. Mass and gravity have successfully provided a monkey wrench to thwart all attempts by physicists to establish a Grand Unified Theory (GUT).

Considering the fact that much of the science behind the experiments that will be conducted at the LHC are, at best, theoretical, is it any wonder so many folks are nervous about what might happen? Let’s get a historical perspective. Even though theories of the world being round instead of flat were recorded as early as fourth century B.C., many still thought that Columbus would certainly fall of the edge of the Earth if he sailed west into the unknown. Many people, scientists among them, thought that a plane would simply explode if it attempted to break the sound barrier. When the U.S. was ready to send a living being into orbit, they chose a chimp rather than a human because they were concerned about unknown contaminations from space. It’s often overlooked that Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize in Physics for E=mc2. At the time, relativity theory was looked upon with a raised eyebrow and the scientific community withheld its laurels until the theory could be substantiated. History shows us that new theories are usually not embraced immediately. More often than not, they are fully accepted only after they are proven.

Will the LHC create an uncontrollable Big Bang or a black hole big enough to swallow the Earth and all its surrounding space, as sensationalized by the popular media? Not likely. It’s more likely that the quantum leap of faith taken by a few contemporary physicists will demonstrate a lack of fear based on an understanding that transcends the science and the math. In doing so, they just might give us a small glimpse from a unique perspective into the nature of reality.

Some content excerpted from The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom
© 2008 MaAnna Stephenson
Content may be used freely with proper credit and a link to www.SageAge.net

To learn more about MaAnna Stephenson and The Sage Age, visit www.sageage.net and you can subscribe to The Sage Age Newsletter while you are there.

For more tour information, visit http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2008/09/sage-age-by-maanna-step...

You can order your own copy of The Sage Age at http://www.amazon.com/Sage-Age-MaAnna-Stephenson/dp/1933449632