Grimr Reading List

The following is an incomplete reading list.  I put this together randomly over the last two hours.  There is no particular order to it, and it is missing the authors currently.  Additionally, to make it a complete list, I would want to provide a summary of each book, my opinion of them, and a link either to a place it is available to read online in the case of older books, or a place to purchase them for the newer books, if either of these exist.  Some of these are easily obtained.  Others are out of print but not out of copyright and very hard to find, especially at a reasonable price.  The first section is a list of books.  The second is a list of magazines and periodicals.  Anything on either of these list, I recommend or it wouldn't be on here.  Some, however, I have not read and/or do not currently have access to.  I have included some that are highly recommended by people I respect.  I have included some that I know the author and the author's work, and hence know the book listed will be good.  I have included some that I haven't finished reading but recommend it based on what I've read so far.  I have included fiction and non-fiction, history and myth, religious texts and magic texts, esoteric and exoteric texts.  Some people will like some things on this list, others will not, but will like other things.  Some of these are based on years of research, some completely intuitive.  Some are very intellectual, some are very mystical.  Some are very practical, some are purely theoretical.  But all are related to my path, my walk, my stream, and I recommend all of them, just not to everyone.  Take it for what it is.  Your mileage may very.


Book List

• The White Goddess
• The Golden Bough
• Tubelo's Green Fire
• Riding Windhorses
• Drawing Down the Spirits: The Traditions and Techniques of Spirit Possession
• Share My Insanity
• Goddess Initiation
• Fifty Years in the Feri Tradition
• Etheric Anatomy
• The White Wand
• Evolutionary Witchcraft
• Kissing the Limitless
• Spiral Dance
• Magic and Witchcraft
• The Zohar
• Practical Chinese Medicine
• The Web That Has No Weaver
• Tao Te Ching
• I Ching
• The Herb Book
• A History of Medieval Christianity: Prophecy and Order
• Religious Dissent in the Middle Ages
• Witchcraft in the Middle Ages
• A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, Pagans
• Satan: The Early Christian Tradition
• Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages
• Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages
• Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World
• The Prince of Darkness: Evil and the Power of Good of History
• Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages: The Search for Legitimate Authority
• A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence
• Paradise Mislaid
• Inquisition
• I Asked For Wonder
• Plants of Life, Plants of Death
• Primal Myths
• Goddess of the North
• The God of the Witches
• The Elements of the Grail Tradition
• The Jewish Book of Days
• The Kabbalah: The Essential Texts From the Zohar
• The Book of Qualities
• Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies
• Stillness Speaks
• Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia
• Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
• The Elements of the Runes
• The Art of War
• Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
• A Field Guide to Irish Fairies
• The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Myth and Legend: A Definitive Sourcebook of Magic, Vision, and Lore
• The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind
• Magic that Works
• Aradia: Gospel of the Witches
• Roles of the Northern Goddess
• Pillars of Tubal Cain
• Thorns of the Blood Rose
• The Formation Of A Persecuting Society: Power And Deviance In Western Europe, 950-1250
• Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation
• The Origins of European Dissent
• Diodorus Siculus: Library of History
• Lilith's Garden
• Azoetia
• Qutub
• The Roebuck in the Thicket
• The Robert Cochrane Letters
• The Complete Brother Grimm Fairy Tales
• The Book of Fallen Angels
• Masks of Misrule
• The Lesser Key of Solomon
• The Greater Key of Solomon
• Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed
• History of the Kings of Britain
• Book of Invasions
• Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism
• The Middle Pillar
• Chicken Qabalah
• The DustBunnies/MarchHares Big Damn Handout Volume I
• Black Book of the Yezidi
• Drawing Down the Moon
• The Religion of the Teutons
• The Guide for the Perplexed
• The Book of Lies
• The Book of Thoth
• The Book of the Law
• 231 Gates of Initiation
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• Little Flowers of St. Francis
• Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Le Morte D'Arthur
• Living with Contradiction
• The White Hart
• Taleisen
• Merlin
• Arthur
• Pendragon
• Grail
• Avalon: the Return of King Arthur
• The Crystal Cave
• The Hollow Hills
• The Last Enchantment
• The Wicked Day
• The Prince and the Pilgrim
• One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
• Aesop's Fables
• Andersen's Fairy Tales
• The Traveler
• The Dark River
• The Golden City
• Vellum
• Ink
• The Interior Castle

Magazines and Periodicals

• The Cauldron
• Witch Eye: A Journal of Feri Uprising 
• Circle Magazine
• Witch's Almanac

FFF,

~Muninn's Kiss

Establishment and Prophecy

Statue of Peter Waldo.
Image from Wiki Commons.

The year is 1179.  The place is Rome.  It is the Third Lateran Council, and a small group of men stand before Pope Alexander III.  One of them is named Peter Waldo.  They are known as Waldenses or Poor Men of Lyon.  They have come to Rome to ask permission to preach, after the Archbishop of Lyon had forbidden.  The answer was no, they could only preach with the permission of the bishops.  They ignored this decision and preached anyway.  One thing they denied in their preaching was the authority of the church.

Painting of St. Francis of
Assisi.  Image from Wiki Commons.

The year is 1209.  The place is Rome.  Twelve men stand before Pope Innocent III.  One of them is Francis of Assisi and the other eleven are his disciples.  They have come to Rome to ask permission to preach and to found a new order.  Innocent gave his blessing and the Poor Franciscans were formed.  Francis would found two more orders and was declared a saint after his death.  One of his main messages was against the gathering of wealth by the Church and by clergy.  He said that to follow Jesus is to give up all you have and give it to the poor.

Jan Hus at the Stake.
Image from Wiki Commons.

The year is 1414.  The place is Constance, Germany.  It is the Council of Constance, and John Hus, after being promised safe conduct by the Pope and Emperor, is arrested and put to death.  His message was that the Church needed to be reformed and return to the scriptures.

Throughout history, there have been reformers, wanting to change the established order.  Sometimes the order has listened and changed.  Sometimes they have tried to crush the dissenting voice.  But either way, change has come, sometimes immediately, sometimes centuries later.  You can find this pattern in every place and time on earth.  It is the natural order of things.  Change occurs, then settles into the norm and stops changing, then prophecy or reform or dissent come and stir things up, then things settle again.  And the cycle continues.  Most of my ideas on this came from the book A History of Medieval Christianity - Prophecy and Order by Jeffrey Russell.

These two Twins are one way to view history.  Establishment and Prophecy.  Order and Chaos.  Orthodoxy and Heresy.  A constant dance between the two.  Establishment breeds prophecy, prophecy changes establishment and brings a new establishment.  The reformers of one generation are the establishment of the next.

In Taoism, the established order is Yin.  Yin is settled, still, static, passive.  It only acts if Yang acts on it.  Change, revolution, is Yang.  Yang is dynamic, moving, active.  There can be no change without Yang, but there can be no stability without Yin.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss