My Recent Reading

Here are a few books that I have enjoyed reading in the last few weeks:

The Path of Druidry: Walking in the Ancient Green Way.  By Penny Billington.  Woodbury, Minnesota, Llewellyn Publications, 2011.  Index, bibliography, glossary, 331 pages.  ISBN: 9780738723464.   VSCL.  

"Practicing Druid Penny Billington offers a clear and structured course of study grounded in Celtic history and mythology, and highlights the mysteries and modern practice of this nature-based tradition. Each chapter begins with an evocative visualization and captivating Welsh mythic tales from the Mabinogion are woven throughout, introducing lessons and key concepts. A series of hands-on exercises will help you internalize these truths, develop a spiritual awareness rooted in nature, build a relationship with the multi-dimensional world, and ultimately adopt a druidic worldview to guide you in everyday life."

Those who are members of the Bardic Grade of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids will find this book very useful.   

Ecomysticism: The Profound Experience of Nature as Spiritual Guide.  By Cal Von Essen, M.D..  Rochester, Vermont, Bear and Co., 2007.  Index, bibliography, 274 pages.  ISBN:  9781591431183.  VSCL.  

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.  Edited by Thomas H. Johnson.  Boston, MA, Little, Brown, and Co., 1890, 1960.  Index of First Lines, Subject index, 770 pages.  VSCL.  

The Power of the Five Elements: The Chinese Medicine Path to Healthy Aging and Stress Resistance.  By Charles A. Moss, M.D..  Berkley, California, North Atlantic Books, 2010.  Index, bibliography, 298 pages.  ISBN: 9781556438745.  VSCL.  

I enjoy reading biographies.  I borrow them from the Tehama County Public Library.  This past summer, I read longer biographies about Charles Darwin, Aldo Leopold, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ansel Adams, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Wallace Stevens, Alan Watts, John Muir, and Allen Ginsberg.   


Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth, 1798

"For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes             90
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels                             100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul             110
Of all my moral being."

-  William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey 

One of the first voices of Autumn
Singing clearly in our garden is the 
Chrysanthemum's 
"yellow yellow yellow" 
heard every time I walk nearby.