I had no idea there was going to be one but the other day I found at the bookstore the sequel to Chocolat: The Girl with No Shadow. How exciting! I bought it on the spot and once I started reading, couldn't put it down. Since Chocolat, I've gone on to read as many of Joanne Harris' books as I can get my hands on; not all of them have been published in the US (she is British) and are often difficult to find. The Girl With No Shadow has become my new favorite.

Joanne Harris is one of those writers who infuses her stories with real magick, as well as the kind of literary magic that makes for delightful reading. She either is a witch herself, or witchcraft and magick and mysterious people are favorite subjects of hers, about which she has extensive and detailed knowledge. More importantly, perhaps, as a reader of her books, she is a very talented writer and she writes precisely the kind of fiction I love to read: clever use of language, compelling characters, rich in detail and location.

The Girl With No Shadow is probably the most overtly magickal of Joanne Harris' books yet. One of the characters refers to herself, Vianne and Anouk as witches. Magick is performed and things are discussed that in Chocolat were only hinted at. Even still, the book's strength lies in its craftily created characters and well-developed story line. I was utterly captivated, not because of the magick, but because of the writing.

I know there is an entire genre of fiction about magical worlds to which rows and rows of shelves in any local mega book store are devoted, but fantasy fiction is not what I'm talking about. With all due respect to fantasy writers and fans, what I'm talking about is literary fiction that manages to include magical themes, characters, realms - entire plot lines even - and yet first and foremost remain well-written works of literature. Alice Hoffman's books falls into this category. So do Susanna Clarke's. There's the magical realism typical of Latina literature in The Hummingbird's Daughter and Like Water For Chocolate, the quirky and comic The Good Fairies of New York, mystic Paul Coelho's latest The Witch of Portobello, and a fascinating British book that I loved, Season of the Witch. Of course, now that I tend to look for them, I find these books more often.

Yesterday I bought Alice Hoffman's latest offering, The Third Angel. I look forward to jumping in over the weekend.

For more of Joanna Harris' books and a variety of my other favorite works of magickal literature, check out the last section of the Blogickal Bookshelf.

Happy reading!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:12 AM | Comments (1)

The opening quote to the introduction in Sera Beak's book is this:

When sleeping women wake, mountains move.

- CHINESE PROVERB

I discovered this book around the same time that I realized my spiritual path diverged in a wood (okay, it turned a street corner) and taking the road less traveled by (the shortcut through the alley) has lead me into Faery. Pursuing a tradition of the Craft that emphasizes the development of personal will and power, ecstatic experience and joy in the practice of magick has become increasingly important to me, and Sera Beak's approach to finding one's own divine spark fits perfectly into that paradigm. "How intensely do I want to exist?" she implores her readers to ask themselves.

. . . what's a smart, gutsy, spiritually curious young woman to do nowadays? Well, how 'bout taking spirituality back into your own hands? How about finding out what it means for you, through your own explorations and experiences and expressions? You know, all this spiritual stuff doesn't have to be so esoteric or traditional or weird or dorky or intimidating or holier-than-thou. Spirituality is not separate and distinct from you and your everyday life. Igniting your divine spark is a simple perspective shift. An internal nod. An expanded relaxation into All That Is. It's about tuning up your senses, cranking up your antennae, generating conscious living. It's about becoming your own spiritual authority.

I don't know how old Sera Beak is but I know I have a number of years on her and yet I stand in awe of the experience and study that she put into leading the life that lead to the publishing of this book. She is my new heroine. I most certainly would suck as a book reviewer because all I want to do is quote every word of The Red Book that I've read so far and turn all blushing and giggly and use words like "awesome" to describe how wonderful I think it is. One commenter on the book with more discipline than I can muster said: "From gentle meditation to bouncing sexuality and much in between, the path to personal rejuvenation through the enlivening of the heart, mind, and spirit is laid out in such refreshing, sparkling, effervescent words that what results is a psychic shower for the soul." Amen brother.

This self-proclaimed Spiritual Cowgirl has traveled the world and is pushing the boundaries of feminist spirituality, ultimately writing The Red Book and starting a whole new movement - a REDvolution. The fact that she lives in San Francisco and is friends with Mark Morford, my favoritist columnist of all time, is just icing on my RED velvet cake.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 7:16 PM | Comments (0)

With nothing brilliant sparking in my head this morning, I offer instead a little something from Yeats:

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, whereof stars, grown old
In dancing silver sandalled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.
Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

Come near, come near, come near - Ah, leave me still
A little space for the rose-breath to fill!
Lest I no more hear common things that crave;
The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,
The field mouse running by me in the grass,
And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;
But seek along to hear the strange things said
By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,
And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.
Come near; I would, before my time to go,
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.

TO THE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME
William Butler Yeats
The Rose (1893)

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

THE WOMAN IN SUNSHINE

It is only that this warmth and movement are like
The warmth and movement of a woman.

It is not that there is any image in the air
Nor the beginning nor the end of a form:

It is empty. But a woman in threadless gold
Burns us with brushings of her dress

And a dissociated abundance of being,
More definite for what she is -

Because she is disembodied,
Bearing the odors of the summer fields,

Confessing the taciturn and yet indifferent,
Invisibly clear, the only love.

- Wallace Stevens

While this poem is not really about Brigid, it made me think a little bit about her, she being the Goddess who brings the warm spark of inspiration, the forge, and the quickening of the Earth in early Spring. But more than that, this poem makes me think about the Goddess who is in each woman, particularly in myself. I've been writing a lot about shining one's personal light and living in the power as one who has divine within, and this poem speaks to me of that.

Wallace Stevens is one of my favorite poets ever. He has such a way with words, that Wallace. Here's another poem, apropos of nothing. As I read it, it makes me think of a man who has fallen hopelessly in love with a Faery Queen.

BOUQUET OF BELLE SCAVOIR

I
It is she alone that matters.
She made it. It is easy to say
The figures of speech, as why she chose
This dark, particular rose.

II
Everything in it is herself.
Yet the freshness of the leaves, the burn
Of the colors, are tinsel changes,
Out of the changes of both light and dew

III
How often had he walked
Beneath summer and the sky
To receive her shadow into his mind . . .
Miserable that it was not she.

IV
The sky is too blue, the earth too wide.
The thought of her takes her away.
The form of her in something else
Is not enough.

V
The reflection of her here, and then there,
Is another shadow, another evasion,
Another denial. If she is everywhere,
She is nowhere, to him.

VI
But this she has made. If it
Another image, it is one she has made.
It is she that he wants, to look at directly,
Someone before him to see and to know.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:10 AM | Comments (0)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:18 AM | Comments (1)

One of the latest memes flying around the internets is to post a picture of the pile of books that you are reading, want to read, hope to get to some time this century. I first learned of this when Chas Clifton posted his and invited his readers to do the same.

Here's mine:

Now, books that I would be reading if I had the money to buy them right now. Well, that's another story. The Llewellyn catalog arrived the other day and these are the books I'm currently lusting after:

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 10:38 AM | Comments (4)

by Czeslaw Milosz
Translated by Anthony Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.

Copyright © 2006 The Czeslaw Milosz Estate.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:57 PM | Comments (1)

Devotion
by Robert Frost

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean -
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

from the collection West-Running Brook, 1928

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:43 PM | Comments (0)

Afterflakes
by Robert Frost

In the thick of a teeming snowfall
I saw my shadow on snow.
I turned and looked back up at the sky,
Where we still look to ask the why
Of everything below.

If I shed such a darkness,
If the reason was in me,
That shadow of mine would show in form
Against the shapeless shadow of storm,
How swarthy I must be.

I turned and looked back upward.
The whole sky was blue;
And the thick flakes floating at a pause
Were but frost knots on a airy gauze,
With the sun shining through.

from the collection A Further Range, 1936

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 1:13 AM | Comments (0)

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:27 PM | Comments (0)

You've read Rachel Pollack. You've read Aleister Crowley. Now read Emmi Fredericks. In The Smart Girl's Guide to Tarot she puts a thoroughly modern twist on reading the cards that is fresh and funny.

Take, for example, her spin on The Queen of Pentacles:

Who wouldn't want to be the Queen of Pentacles? First of all, she's stinking rich. Doesn't have to worry about a thing, financially. Intelligent, talented, a woman of impeccable taste - think Jackie O. or Audrey Hepburn, that's the kind of quality we're talking about.

Truly inspired says this Taurus/Sheep with a thing for expensive shoes.

This book is not a replacement for more serious and academic resources on tarot. But for those of us who know how to read already it offers a perspective on the cards that will be certain to make reading for ourselves and our girlfriends a bit more au courant and entertaining.

Skip the part in the beginning where she spends some time helping readers rationalize why they're turning to tarot in the first place - we're already hip to the scene! You also won't need the sections on how the cards work and how to do a reading. But there's plenty of meaty content when she discusses all of the Major and Minor Arcana, including reversals. She also gives sample readings and spreads, complete with how she interpreted the cards within each context.

It's been a while since I've spent much time with the cards. I'm hoping that this charming book will inspire me to pick them up again. My only question is, where can I get the deck of Meredith Green's delightful illustrations?

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 7:35 PM | Comments (0)

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

e. e. cummings

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)