Walking the Hedge

Dizzy: What are you reading right now?

Juniper: I have a very short attention span, so I rarely read one book just straight through. I usually have two or three on the go and I sort of rotate.

D: Yeah right! I remember you reading a whole book from start to finish in like 6 hours straight on a car ride to Drumheller. It wasn’t an easy book either it was like a history book on the Celts or something. You were reading like a hundred pages an hour or something scary like that.

J: Okay so sometimes I can do that. I don’t think that was a history book, I think that was a mythology book.

D: Please tell me that wasn’t the Mabinogion.

J: Which translation? *laughs*

D: You’re such a nerd! I’ll ask again, what are you reading right now?

J: Lets see, my purse book is a paperback fiction by Anne Bishop, one from her Black Jewels trilogy. A world I’d love to go live in, so long as I didn’t wind up in one of the bottom castes!
My bathroom book right now is “The Quest for Merlin” by Tolstoy.
And my bedside book is “Masks of the Muse” by Veronica Cummer.

D: Cool! And what are you listening to right now?

J: I spent most of the winter listening to a bunch of Alan Watts’s lectures and a few podcasts, like the Crooked Path podcast and I got all caught up on Deo’s Shadow.
Now I’m trying to work through my audio OBOD course, so that’s taking up most of my listening time and to compliment that I’ve started to Celtic Myth Podshow from the beginning again.

D: Oh, cool. I actually meant music though.

J: Oh, sorry I’m such a nerd! I’m going through a Celtic Punk phase right now, lots of Dropkick Murphy’s and such.

D: When we first met you made me listen to lots of Classical.

J: Yeah, I go through that phase every few months.

D: So I am not a very good reader. And like non-fiction books are really hard for me. But to be a good pagan you have to read all these fringing books! Any suggestions?

J: Oh good question! Let’s face it, not everyone can handle non-fiction, textbook style reading material. Some of folks might not have the reading comprehension, the text book style of teaching might not gel with how you learn, maybe non-fiction is just too damned dry for you.

D: Or maybe you’re a student and are sick to death of instructional manuals and stuff. So what do I do?

J: Okay let’s see…
Reference material. Okay, still non-fiction. However, reference materials, such as encyclopaedias are a good non-fiction option for non-fiction haters. In something like “The ABCs of Witchcraft” you have all sorts of information condensed down and in alphabetical order. The wonderful thing about books like this is that even if you only read one or two pages a day, you will still learn something.

D: Ick!

J: Har har.
Poetry. From Homer to Yeats and beyond, there is a plethora of poetry out there chalk full of great folklore and wicked witchery. And that’s not counting our modern pagan poets to be found either!
Podcasts, and you could try to wade through Youtube to find hidden gems…
Hmmm… This is a tough question for a bookworm!

D: So you once told me to pick a tree and look at it everyday. Talk to it and stuff.

J: That’s pretty standard; you see that in a lot of 101 books now, because it’s a good idea.
Hmmm how to put this?
When you are first starting out its like you can’t see the forest because of all the trees. There’s just so much. Actually even when you first get out into a real life forest its like that, not knowing the names of the trees and suddenly wanting too.
But once you start to learn about the trees themselves. This is a spruce, this is a willow it grows near water etc, the more familiar you become with the forest. Suddenly you can navigate and start to feel yourself along.

D: Literally and spiritually.

J: Layers of metaphors there. *laughs*

D: If you want to connect with nature start small.

J: Sure, bite sized pieces. Learning about just one tree can lead to all kinds of discoveries. What kinds of birds live near you, magickal properties of the wood, maybe the berries are edible, watching the life cycle of another living being, maybe there’s folklore attached to that kind of tree, connecting with the land, starting to add a spiritual aspect to your daily routine…

D: All that good stuff!

J: Indeed.