Like this:

(it’s actually for brains, as in, I don’t have any this week so I’m going for easy.)

We’re all pagan here, right? (unless you aren’t and then that’s okay, too). We like home work. Why follow what’s out there already established for us when we can blaze our own trails? For a lot of folks, this means studying, and studying means books. I like books. I actually rather love them, not just for the knowledge they contain but for the history in them, too, and the freedom and exchange they represent. Books are amazing.

Books are also a big part of why I wound up pagan – or, maybe, they’re a big part of how I discovered that there were other people like me and labels that applied to them. I’ve always been an animist, which seems common enough with pagan and pagan-friendly people. I’m not sure how I grew up an animist, but I blame my grandparents and PBS and later cable TV. And the squirrels and birds and cats and talking trees, and the hours and hours spent with my grandmother and grandfather just . . . watching.

I write. I’ve always written. I’ve always read. Fiction led me to Wicca, but it wasn’t Mists of Avalon as it was for so many people. Neither was it American Gods, which came much later. No. It was actually L.J Smith’s Secret Circle series, in a round about way. (I joke some times that I’m pagan because of Damon) (and for the curious I’m in staunch denial of the continuation of the Vampire Diaries. It’s sorta like the last ST:TNG movie – it never happened) (I’ve digressed). Reading that series and then deciding I was going to write a series like it, only better, and with witches and a werewolf and a vampire (oh, if only I hadn’t been ahead of my time at that point! It could have been great! Alas) made me go research the topic, which in when I discovered Scott Cunningham. From there I gobbled up others before I developed discerning reading skills.

Yes, Wicca (n-esque) was my gateway drug. ;o) I read a lot, I read from a variety of paths and traditions. I still do. And, books are amazing.(I weep when I think of the Library of Alexandria and its loss. Can you imagine? I mean, can you imagine?). I’ve delved into the mysteries of the Eastern religions, I’ve studied the Sagas, I’ve visited the Celtic lands, I’ve hung around the ancient Mediterranean, I’ve gotten acquainted with Western mysticism. My reading taste is, like many, incredibly eclectic, and a lot of the books that nourish my path as a pagan are fiction. Currently, C.E. Murphy is my favorite “pagan-friendly” safety read. I’ve talked a lot about her Walker Papers over on my writing blog, but I’ll say it here too – her treatment of the gods in her world is extremely believably polytheistic. It seems a no brainer, but the popular trend (which is done well and done not so well but done a lot and I like variety) is to decide gods are archetypes or all Northern European gods are fairies and all Native America spirits are spirits and a distinction must be made (and really, how much of that distinction is hair-splitting for we-who-love-labels-and-boxes? At some point it really just means “bigger and stronger and more powerful than me,” and ceases to be useful beyond that point). I also rather love Mark Chadbourn’s Age of Misrule series. He does make all the gods just the Celtic gods only under different guises with different cultural trappings (which I don’t like so much because it’s too close to saying “all paths go to the same source,” which I don’t agree with) but in his story telling it makes sense, so I can deal with it. Charles De Lint’s work always does wonders to nourish me, and I don’t hate Richelle Meade’s Dark Swan series. Patricia Briggs goes without saying, just sayin’.

And, of course, there’s still a warm fondness for Adam and Cassie and Diana and Faye and their opening me up to this world. Even if their town was totally transplanted into the sea and left a gaping whole in the middle of Massachusetts. . .

What books brought you here? What books were fundamental to your progress on your path? Which books did you think would move you and didn’t? What books surprise you?

(read more about the pagan blog project here. And then, go read more pagan blogs!

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