Jeff Russell

Sorry for going a bit without a substantive post. This time, I share my thoughts on David Spangler's Blessing: the Art and the Practice, and as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

This week, a fairly quick rundown of my thoughts on Devotional Polytheism by Galina Krasskova.

As always, let me know what you think!

Another fairly short write-up of a book I read of late, this time The Sunlilies by Graham Pardun. Though this book is written from very much within the Eastern Orthodox worldview, I found it to have a number of useful spiritual insights for those of us outside of that, but your mileage may, of course, vary.

Besides the post, I also have a request: I would very much appreciate it if you enjoy my writing if you either a) subscribe to my DIY mailing list, or b) let me know in a comment whatever reasons you'd prefer not to.

While I am mainly writing as a way to gather and sharpen my thoughts, it's nice to have some idea of whether what I'm writing is worthwhile to folks. Email subscriptions tend to be a pretty strong indicator of genuine interest, and should writing ever turn into a part of how I earn my keep, email lists are very helpful (promoting new books, soliciting more direct feedback, and so forth).

So, I'm starting to feel my way around that whole process, but refusing to do it the easy way and just creating a substack. Not that I'm going to start selling anything any time soon, and if I ever do, I will give everyone on the list a chance to get out of Dodge before the shilling commences, and after that, I will do my very best to make it occasional and non-annoying.

Oh, and btw, if you are not interested in subscribing, I will in no way be offended, but I would be just as glad to hear your reasons, as that also helps me understand the landscape I'm dealing with.

I've been hearing a lot about The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, and I finally got around to reading it. Very short version is that it's a good and interesting book, but unless it intersects with some particular interests of yours, you might be fine with a summary. Here's my attempt at such a summary, with some thoughts on what I got out of it (and wanted to, but didn't).

As always, any and all thoughts are most welcome.

Time for a review of another book by Shani Oates, this time In Search of Odhinn. Once again, I admired the breadth of evidence she brought to the table and her consideration of fine details, but was frustrated with her thoughts not being better organized or easy to follow. Let me know what you think!

This week, after the possibly synchronicity of folks asking about working with Jung's concept of the Shadow on JMG's Magic Monday right after having read an excerpt of a book on the Shadow, I decided to give it a read. It's called Transforming Darkness, and I found it interesting and helpful, though if you've read much on the subject or done much of such work, you might not find much new here.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts here or through email.

k_a_nitz was kind enough to send me a copy of The Rebirth by Karl Kolb, which is a quirky little book on Christian "letter mysticism," which is, on its own, not so directly within my spiritual wheelhouse, but the book turned out to have lots of interesting bits in its few (~100) pages.

After The Seed of Yggdrasill, I wanted to read a book that was still relevant to my spiritual pursuits, but much shorter, so I went for Stories of the Rose by Anne Winston-Allen. It's a pretty short book about the development of the Rosary in the middle ages, and it was chock full of useful nuggets on the practice for someone trying to develop a parallel practice with different deities.

As always, let me know what you think!

We've finally made it! I've written up my thoughts on the last chapter of The Seed of Yggdrasill by Maria Kvilhaug!

This one's one of the longer ones, as the chapter was longish, sparked a lot of thoughts, and was the last one, so I felt called to wrap things up a bit. That being said, I think I'll likely do one more post on the book: an overall rundown of what I think is most important to know about the whole book (both the most useful stuff and what to watch out for). We'll see. Anyhow, thanks for sticking with me through this project which ended up bigger and longer than expected.

A shorter one this time, as I continue to work my way through Kvilhaug's big book. This chapter was basically two transcripts of a youtube videos with an intro, so it's not the most informationally dense we've dealt with, but there's a couple of interesting ideas. Check it out here.

I'm also trying something new: a mailing list. Basically, DIY substack. There's a link in the new post, as well as at the top of my Webstead, to sign up, but it's literally just an email to me saying "sign me up," so if you'd like to get my blog posts as emails, you can use one of those links or just let me know in a comment here.