Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success by Frater U.D
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It's a pretty informative book. Good for reference.
Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success by Frater U.D
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It's a pretty informative book. Good for reference.
Lessons in Palmistry: Studies of The Eye and Planetary Influences by Cornelia Ten Eyck Gaffney
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This is an excellent stand-alone read. It's hard to come by due to it's year (1897), but there are PDFs available of it online.
"By yarrow and rue, and my redcap too."
I have just discovered THE VERY BEST INTRODUCTORY PAGAN BOOK EVER.
It is comprehenisve, it is accurate (in a general sort of way), it is HISTORICALLY ACCURATE, it is intellectually honest, and its well organized.
Introduction to Pagan Studies by Barbara Jane Davy
This is totally my new go-to newbie or "what is paganism again" book. I'm going to buy a copy of this for every military chaplain's office in the Navy.
(btw, you can preview a good chunk of it on google)
ETA: Can you tell I'm really excited about this? I feel like jumping up and down and shouting "AT LAST, AT LAST!!!" But my coworkers would look at me funny.
Last edited by thalassa; 01 Jul 2015 at 06:11.
“You have never answered but you did not need to. If I stand at the ocean I can hear you with your thousand voices. Sometimes you shout, hilarious laughter that taunts all questions. Other nights you are silent as death, a mirror in which the stars show themselves. Then I think you want to tell me something, but you never do. Of course I know I have written letters to no-one. But what if I find a trident tomorrow?" ~~Letters to Poseidon, Cees Nooteboom
“We still carry this primal relationship to the Earth within our consciousness, even if we have long forgotten it. It is a primal recognition of the wonder, beauty, and divine nature of the Earth. It is a felt reverence for all that exists. Once we bring this foundational quality into our consciousness, we will be able to respond to our present man-made crisis from a place of balance, in which our actions will be grounded in an attitude of respect for all of life. This is the nature of real sustainability.”
~~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
"We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes--one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way."
~~Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
"Humans are not rational creatures. Now, logic and rationality are very helpful tools, but there’s also a place for embracing our subjectivity and thinking symbolically. Sometimes what our so-called higher thinking can’t or won’t see, our older, more primitive intuition will." John Beckett
Pagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
Books on the philosophy of paganism
Steven Dillon. The Case for Polytheism.Contents: What is a god, Is there a god, How many gods are there, Are the gods good, Unanswered questions.
John Michael Greer. A World full of Gods.
Contents: The one and the many, How do we know about the Gods, Arguments for theism, Arguments against theism, Religious experience, The logic of polytheism, What do we know about the gods, Polytheist worship, Polytheist spirituality, Polytheist ethics, Myth and its meanings, Time and eschatology, Changing of the gods.
Something on ethics
Rosalind Hursthouse. On Virtue Ethics.
This is by a professional philosopher, but accessible to the general reader. Virtue ethics was the commonest theory in Greece and China, and is increasingly accepted in modern philosophy. If you feel that the rede is not enough and don't believe in gods who say "thou shalt not", this is worth looking into.
Walking with the Gods: Modern people talk about deities, faith, and recreating ancient traditions / W. D. Wilkerson.
Wendi Wilkerson is a professional ethnographer and a practitioner of Vudu. She interviewed 120 people, collected via the web, on their religion and here we get the interviews with 24 of them, chosen as particularly interesting. Their practices vary, her only requirement being that they should be real polytheists: not monists, dualists, or worshipers of their own mental archetypes.
Some are well known, like Tess Dawson and P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, others anonymous. The results range from the profound to the entertaining. Laura, a Santeria devotee, got adopted by Loki: I loved the account of his detailed instructions to her on crocheting a woolly hat to wear during worship! I was also touched by Lupus's desire to remember British gods who've been forgotten after being famous in Antiquity: "Everybody knows Apollo ... nobody ever goes, 'Oh yeah! Good old Cocidius!'"
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