THE PLAGUE LIBRARIES - PART 4

Photo by Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

How is one to live a mythic life, a magic life? How to live with soul, during these tough times? My pen is my wand, my imagination is my spellbook, my words are my power. My storytelling and blogging are my mission to seed order in the chaos. It is my middle pillar, a broad pyramid that touches the stars above and extends down to depths below, with me as axis mundi pole up and down – shooting out to all four directions as I write. For me, these wittering thoughts collected on a page are my soul work, my bard Druidry, my old ways.

Anubis guarding a hoard

During this pandemic and weird new normal, words have kept me alive. Words – reading them, writing them, speaking them, listening to them – and its logos, the power of the written – that is my food and medicine. And boy have I been eating words. Alan Moore (watch this video of him riffing on Language, Writing and Magic), Thomas Moore, Neil Gaiman, Paulo Coelho, Joseph Campbell, Jung, James Hillman, Ronald Hutton and pretty much every book on a Treadwells shelf – they have been my go-to. I got started back in April when this lockdown began building a magical library from which I could study and learn. I read about Paganism. I read about the Druids. I read about Planetary and Renaissance Magic. I read about Chaos Magic. I devoured words about the History of Witchcraft and the religion of Wicca. Egyptian Magic, Kabbalah, Folklore, Medieval History, London Lore, Herb Magic galore and Plant wisdom. Alchemy, Depth Psychology and Jungians, Goddess work, Heathenry, Grimoires, Green magic, contemporary Feminism, Conjure and Rootworkers (Hoodoo), Discordians, Angel magic, Mythology, Archetypes, Shamanism, Animism, Green Men, Mystics, Templar, Freemasonry, Crowley, Orishas and Santeria, Hellenic Astrology, Saint Work and Catholic magic, Prehistory Starlore, Psycho geography, Ancestor work, Astral travel, Divination, Tarot, Candle Magic, Golden Dawn, Cunning, Paganism, Neoplatonism, Greek revival, Eastern Yogic, Nature Magic, Italian Folk Magic - all manner of things.

Magic and Psychology from my shelves, 13 here are from Treadwells

I made my own bibliotherapy, my own self-help on a bookshelf. I read. I wrote. I learnt. I practiced and I imagined. And four months into my blogging journey, I am still a beginner, an initiate, a lowly adept.

And this post, a continuation of my Plague Libraries 1, 2 and 3 #bookporn series, is an ode to books, a spell to language and the written word. The spines of books, they run like magic leylines through my mind. So here, in visual storytelling for once, is what I have been reading through the corona craziness, my tomes for Covid-times. These have entangled me in their fairy code, their prose shimmers off the page. Books truly are the machinery of the universe, and the elves within those machines. They are key and pillar to History, to Magic, to Life. In the crazy decade of an inverse tree of life, in a reverse Malkuth year, they are my shards of gleaming awe and magical weapons. They are my TARDIS, my Enterprise, my Narnia, my Westeros, my Middle Earth, my Westworld and my Earthsea.

Graphic Novels and Mythology during the Pandemic, my reading

These miracles on a shelf are custodians of the past, keepers of the present and tellers of futures. They help me run backwards and forwards in time and space (in my head) and help me balance. They are angels to my mad demons, spirits to the destiny of my dance, historians of our fates and fortunes. The books are my path to maintaining coherence, cognitive sovereignty, mental immunity, invincible force (invisibly shielding). They are my best rituals and remedies for self-care, they are my healing charms in uncertain times and help me ward off challenges. Books and blogs for me are building blocks for our success (and survival sometimes) in life. I use language like Thoth, like Promethea (another of my preferred avatars, Artemisia’s other side) – for magical purposes. The proof of the pudding is in the mix, one needs a varied mix and some reliable favourites. I want victory for my family, I want prosperity (not necessarily economic), I want to feel abundance not scarcity in dark times. In a dark night of the soul or at a crossroads, words keep my sadness at bay. Words help me to remove blocks, to feel more able to thrive. Words help me imagine and thus purify my old thoughts with new ones, they open roads. I cannot recall if it was Alan Moore or Warren Ellis who said a spell is spelling and grimoires are grammar – but they are. Magic is a technology carried by words, towards an alchemical result. Sprinkle your life with print, illuminate new pathways, bulk-up muscles of inner strength, find joy, guard your headspace, flourish, and find renewed faith in the future – all with words. They are like a living statue; they help us re-enchant the everyday life. They give us the power to balance and centre, to invoke happiness, to cleanse out the bad stuff, to riff on a lighter mood, maintain more peace, create more individual freedom, and protect. Books are healers for the soul. They are tools to help us find our own magic resilience inside of us, with fortitude and self-reliance. They help us bounce forward unafraid. Books comfort me, they deal with grief and anxiety, they bring loving kindness to problem solving and despair, they overcome inertia and lethargy, they blast through blocks and entropy. Words on Treadwells-bought paper pages, heard on audiobooks, even read on a great piece by a writer on Blogger or a Kindle – they are storm havens, they are glyphs of gladness and sigils of soulfulness. They help me to never give up. I bend with the books, and the Universe thus bends with me, like the ancient one in a Marvel movie.

Another Treadwells hoard of ten plus more, here's the green-fingered herby ones

These marvels give me freedom, meaning, time and meta-time and are my preferred route of self-care. Reading, just like writing, can be a revolutionary act – an escape from oppression, a response to terrible situations, like emergency word first-aid. Books give me knowledge and help me to question things, they often help me get unstuck. My library during these months lifts my spirits when they have been dampened or resigned. They help me re-possess myself amidst all the opinion, news, slander, fake news, and chaos that is thrown around on media and social media. I use my books as weapons, as a war tactician might, as a sailor may to navigate and recalibrate course. The words help me buffer storms and ride the waves in dark times, they nurse my acorn/daimon psyche. Words help me help myself, so that I might help others. Wordcraft helps me live magically, a magic life. They are a torch and beacon in the dark on the rocks, they are a warm cocoa blanket of love to wrap around one’s shoulders in refuge, they are lifeboats and buoys of hope in the cold waters.

Hermes my hero of magic and all things liminal, keeper of the top shelf

This – 2020 – to echo XR, is not a drill. It is a fucking mess. It is weird and strange and occult as hell. We all need to magic the fuck out of it to fix it. We need our books to help us craft that response to the apocalyptic times. We need the books to show us how to rather than steal, to barter fire from heaven. We need the writers as shoulders to stand on, in all their “occulty and marvellous” ways. We need to read a book, write an article, write a prayer or spell – like our souls depend upon it. Words are part of our landscape, our nature – they are too our wild edges although they are living in printed ink (and code) rather than leaves of grass. Words help us explore the very edges of humanity, of civilisation, of history, of culture and examine the future of our species and possibly our planetary mass extinction. Words help us define the Anthropocene and might just give us the alchemy we need to prevent it. Words, magic words (and EVERY word is magic – every word is an intent, a gauntlet thrown down through time, daring a karmic ripple effect from a predetermined history) can help us to fix this shit. Be Coach. Be Therapist. Be Writer. Be Healer. Be a goddamn Wizard Magician!

On my Kindle

So here I will end my word ramble. Grab a book, an ontological war in heaven is going on. It is time to battle and remedy with purpose and determination. It is time for sacrifice for our children. The plague song is still a humming, and that pandemic is crying out for a psychic and psychological rescue mission (or salvage mission as Rune Soup calls it). Be a sea priestess if you want, imagine yourself a moon magician, a child of Artemis, a wizard of Camelot. Whatever your mojo, mage – the world needs you; it needs your resilience magick, it needs to hear your magic words. Live a magical life, write a magical life. And pass it on. You are the best spell we have. Tell your story. Encourage word-therapy, bring all your archetypes out to play or out to fight. The wheel is turning. The spread is bad. Your pen is portal to power. Light that fire inside, that creative spark of genius. It is bloody grim out there. So read a grimoire. Better still, write your own. Wander in words. Imagine up new possibilities for the world. Find the sun, find the light. Set yourself ablaze with the burning rays of language and logos.

So do a Hamilton, and write your way out. Write magic. Put intentions on a page, craft them, ritually. Be in the regular practice of reading magic words – all books help us to see the magic in our lives. Wield language as sword. Collect grammar, prose and type. Compose essays and articles. Create. Heal with soothing poetry and fiction for the soul. Manifest, invent, generate. Be a work of art. Own Athena-Minerva’s wisdom, be Sophia, embrace Isis’ alphabet, scribe like Hermes Trismegistus your own Egyptian Emerald Tablet. In the time of the Celtic God Lug, as during this Aquarian Full Moon the seasonal wheel has turned from Summer towards Autumn Equinox, be Healer-Magician. Be an Asclepius of medicinal wordcraft.

Audible and Kindle collections. Lots of Resilience Coaching and Green Herby magic too

Words are soul. Words are the universe’s language. Words write our past, present and future. Words are a work of art and science. Words spring forth from the love in our hearts and intuition in our bones. Words want to be born, desire to be given life. Words have purpose and meaning. Words help us live out our myth, our personal legend, lead a magical life. Words inspire us into action. Words help us move forward in the face of fear. Words challenge our sensibilities. Words are a philosophy, a way of living. Words make us whole and bring presence to our present moment. Words are the start, the middle and the end. Words are the call the adventure. Words are our treasure in the cave. Words can be dangerous and noble, they are beautiful, unafraid and give us wings. Words are magic and poetry, they are the soul of the world. And books are their conduit.

Begin. Begin. Begin. If it harms none, do what you will. Your word is law. Your word is will. Begin, begin, begin. Because in the beginning, there was the word. It is written, Maktub.

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”

― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky