Spring Reading: An Incomplete List
I am one of those people who reads a lot of books at one time, and who goes through phases of single-minded voracity for reading. I have always been a reader, thanks to my mother, who gave me the bug by reciting Longfellow when I was a child and who always has a dozen books checked out or waiting for her at the public library. Colder months especially warrant holing up with something warm to drink and a stack of books, or in my case a maxed-out e-reader, to disappear into while waiting out the weather.
And now it is spring. Today is the new moon solar eclipse in Aries, conjunct Chiron, here to heal our wounded ‘inner warrior.’ I have been hiding out reading and writing leading up to this transit, but this week the trees have burst open with such brilliant movement and color, and the sun found strength I haven’t felt on my skin since I left home six months ago. As a transitional/eclipse-portal exercise in announcing integrity and identity, I thought I would publish an incomplete list of books I have been in and out of lately.
I resisted writing this in a different way than I resist most writing prompts. These books are not trendy and hot; they are not academic and intellectual; they are not even safely classical and impressive. They are simply the actual texts that have been feeding and serving me these last weeks and months: unpretentious, almost boringly practical, perhaps uncool. Some I have read dozens of times and are on my desert-island list; some I discovered for the first time a few weeks ago. All listed have been valuable enough to want to share.
Energy Medicine, by Donna Eden. “Let the body think / Of the Spirit as streaming, pouring / Rushing and shining into it from / All sides.” —Plotinus. Exercises for circulating and maintaining healthy flows of qi in the body have been especially useful for the abrupt transition from winter into spring, Pisces into Aries, that hard bump that happens at Easter. Expelling the venom of anger that often accompanies the blowtorch of Mars, which rules today’s eclipse and has characterized the last two weeks.
Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall B. Rosenberg. An old classic with a foreword by Deepak Chopra. The template for nonviolent communication in any and all circumstances, intimate, professional, social, political, runs: “I observe… I feel… because I am needing… so now I am asking you to…” It is a compassion-based language for acknowledging what drives you and others to interaction. It is extremely difficult to do in many cases, and also, when possible, immediately rewarding in that it provides a rush of emotional relief unlocked by the simple mental clarity that results from filling out the template correctly based on your internal situation.
Real Self-Care, by Pooja Lakshmin. A bit normie for my taste, and a bit overfriendly with the conventions of allopathic Western medicine, but a straightforward and practical reframing of the wellness-industry concept that has been draining female-bodied consumers for the last few decades. Based on ACT, or “acceptance and commitment therapy,” and containing handy, if oversimplified, formulas and exercises from that model.
Making the Gods Work For You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche, by Caroline Casey. Excellent. Self-described “mystery school disguised as a book” that outlines the signs and planets as gods and archetypes for application in one’s ongoing process of self-understanding. “The only approach to proscribed knowledge is experiential verification for yourself,” she writes in the introduction to her Visionary Activist Principles, rhyming with Antero Alli’s Angel Tech and with Human Design master John Martin’s whole ethos. Recommend.
The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. A straight banger, only gets better with “time,” just a joke of course as eternity is contained in a grain of sand and Tolle pounds the shore with presence in this perfect work. I hadn’t read it since graduate school, around the time I first read All About Love by bell hooks, and so they are somehow connected in my mind as great works that can be infinitely reread, infinitely deepened. I go to this one whenever I need course-correcting, grounding, and a break from my mind. It’s also fun to look up videos of him on YouTube: it is a personal preference to hear soothing, gravelly intonations of the bliss of timelessness in a German accent, and his is subtle and superb.
Spiritual Protection: A Safety Manual for Energy Workers, Healers, and Psychics by Sophie Reicher. Somewhat gloomy, nevertheless practicable and centering text on the ritualistic maintenance of energetic or ‘spiritual’ well-being for highly sensitive types. Directed toward those who work magick, and written by a lifelong practitioner of spellwork etc., at times heavy-handed, although I found it useful as a layperson / as someone who is only very lightly involved in that world. Great reminder of basic centering and grounding techniques and daily routines for strength and flexibility of aura, shields, etc. as external reality seems to grow ever more hostile to sensitivity.
Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner, by Raven Kaldera. If you’re white and espouse any interest in spiritual traditions, shamanism, other worlds, etc., please put down the white sage and throw up the last of your tourist ayahuasca and read this book. Be honest with yourself about your lineage, your earthly desires for spiritual superiority, and your commodified appropriation of things that are ironically useless to you despite what you learned at Dr. Bronner’s Burning Man camp about the one-world family. Humility is what is required. Back off, sit down, read a book. Europeans are generally better educated in their cultural traditions of shamanism, paganism, and magick than white Americans, but Raven Kaldera is an exception. If she’s your style, there is a large bibliography to devour—see her website.
Pussy: A Reclamation, by Regena Thomashauer. I am including this one because I am embarrassed at the idea of anyone knowing I read this book. It’s dated enough to be cringey, being written by a white Boomer feminist, and the flowery writing style is embarrassing for more hardboiled Millennial readers who are used to the adrienne marie brown Pleasure Activism voice. I include it because on the whole, filtering for the awkwardness, this book made me feel like I had choices and some measure of control over my body and its life. A good pairing for it would be Wild Power, by Pope and Wurlitzer, written for people with a menstrual cycle.
There are many other books I have been working with over the last half a year that I will keep secret for myself, books devoted to particular goddesses with whom I am working, books about specific mental health / psychotherapy concerns I have. And there are the books I am using as I write the first chapter of my dissertation, literary and cultural criticism and books of poetry. And there is Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov, which my partner is reading and which he will sometimes read aloud for us to guffaw together at a Russian’s sardonic view of German and American cultures, the two we ourselves know best.
In a quotation that now feels applicable to the United States as well, and perhaps even Germany, Nabokov once said, “Russia has always been a curiously unpleasant country despite her great literature. Unfortunately, Russians today have completely lost their ability to kill tyrants.”
Happy Eclipse! May the new moon of your desires eclipse the tyrannical ego (the blind and blinding sun) of your conditioning and karma. And may books help you bloom along the way.
