Spirit Marriage

[lb_lee]

Rogan: Okay, so, I finished Megan Rose's Spirit Marriage.

It took me weeks, not because it was bad, but because I kept having to put it down and think and feel about it every few pages. It gave me so much food for thought, and simultaneously gave me clarity not just on my own marriage, but also what I've been flaccidly calling my "unwanted religious experience," which dragged me pretty hard for a year and a half or so, and which I found extremely difficult to understand or talk about. Thanks to this book, I feel like I'm finally getting words for it. (It also helps that while I knew there were other people who experienced this, Spirit Marriage was the first time I could find people TALKING about it. And there are sources that I can comb through to learn more!)

I highly recommend it for any plural with in-system relationships, inner mythos, or religion, ESPECIALLY if you think it DOESN'T apply to you.

Mori: now I'm digging through the citations. Other things on the reading list:

• Carl Jung's Red Book. (The oversized folio version, thank you very much.)
• Deren's Divine Horsemen: Living Gods of Haiti.
• Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. (This one is a BEAR, one of those never-digitized, limited-print run 500 page monsters that are at least $40 for a used paperback on Amazon, but the library has it in closed-stacks, in-library use only, and everyone says it's amazing, so TIME FOR A LIBRARY ADVENTURE.)
• Craig Chalquist's Storied Lives: Discovering and Deepening Your Personal Myth. (This one seems to be unavailable anywhere unless I buy it, so I might just have to suck it up and hope Chalquist... y'know, doesn't suck as a writer.)
• Popul Vuh.
• Davidsen's "The Religious Affordance of Fiction." (And the other installments in the fiction-based religion issue of Religion.)
• Tyson's Sexual Alchemy. (Not sure it'll do anything for us, but whatever, it's about boning spirits, seems like it could be relevant.)
• Carroll's Liber Kaos, Liber Null, and Psychonaut

Done/Almost Done:

• Ida Craddock's "Heavenly Bridgerooms"
• Jason Miller's Consorting with Spirits
• Hine's Condensed Chaos

Comments

[lb_lee]

mori: Ooooh. I have it on reserve from the library (and that in itself was a bit of an adventure), but if I end up needing it longer, I may take you up on that. The monster huge version seemed more relevant to my interests than the smaller "reader" version, but $250 is a lot of money. (Even though the printing surely required it.)

[nightforest]

Yeah, just let me know! I started reading it with Jonathan but never finished, although I think I liked what we did get through. (Part of the problem was I didn't have a comfortable way to read it in my old apartment, which was where I was when I got it. You really have to be at a table and my kitchen table in the old place wasn't right for it.) I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, if you end up sharing notes/thoughts. And I should give it another try one day. But in any case, it's kind of worth having just for the gorgeous art.

~Elle

[lb_lee]

Mori: Oh my god this book is so huge it is actually so heavy we are medically forbidden to lift it for a few more days hahaha.

[nightforest]

Honestly, I'm not even a little surprised to hear it. That thing really brings home the meaning of the word "tome."

Stay healthy; don't conduct any medically dangerous research! XD

~Elle

[lb_lee]

Mori: we're totally eyeing it like a cat waiting for the food to cool enough to steal it.