This Book Stack is a little looser in theme than other book stacks I’ve done. This is an actual book stack that I looked over at in my studio. My friend Linda Tesner gave me a copy of The Tarot of Leonora Carrington (by Tere Arcq, 2022, RM) just before I left for Playa. I put it in my box of books without thinking about it. It was one of my favorite companions while I was at the residency. I had my eye on that book during the pandemic but it sold out almost immediately. The book gave me a framework to consider a new series of drawings. I have a long standing interest in Tarot. I love Carrington’s approach to the imagery. Tarot is a mirror. As a divinatory tool it requires not pre-existing interpretations but a sense of how the images work in relation to each other and to your question. For makers of pictures Tarot cards are loaded with keys to unlocking the deep visual caves within all of us. What follows is a shaggy description of a stack with tentative connections. They are connections nonetheless.
Being Pagan: A Guide to Re-Enchant your Life by Rhys Wildermuth, 2021, Ritona Press
Wildermuth started A Beautiful Resistance and now Ritona Press. They offer a wide range of publications, online classes and an online journal. I’d been curious about their publications for a couple of years. I ordered a special package of three books from Ritona. I appreciate Wildermuth’s no-nonsense approach to the practice of Paganism. The book ends with a wonderful essay calling into question the kinds of gate-keeping we see in contemporary culture. He pushes back on calls for cultural appropriation that while maybe well-meaning, are ultimately restrictive. I look forward to reading more of their publications.
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women by Caroline Walker Bynum, 1988, University of California Press
Bynum wrote one of my favorite all time books: Metamorphosis and Identity.I seem to have occasion to recommend it to students for all sorts of reasons. I’m only a little ways into Holy Feast but as usual, Bynum proves to be a compelling thinker. She can illuminate seemingly arcane medieval subjects and make them absolutely relevant now. The connections to women’s bodies, holiness and food is rich. Feast and starvation, discipline and ecstasy have complicated relationships. I started reading this book because of my interest in bread as a stand in for the flesh of god in Catholic masses. I am not disappointed so far.
The Celestial Hunter by Roberto Calasso, translated by Richard Dixon, 2020, MacMillan
If you have followed Calasso’s trajectory for the past three decades starting with books such as The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony which synthesizes Greek and Roman mythology or Ka which creates a similar synthesis for Vedic mythology it makes sense that this is the latest entry. The Celestial Hunter is an examination of the great hunter mythologies beginning with European cave paintings and linking them to later incarnations such as Artemis and Apollo. The book is in essence a meditation on the nature of human consciousness and the images that arise from this deep biological relationship to the act of hunting.
The Way of the Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa, 2009, Destiny Books
This book revolutionized how I thought about Tarot. I admit to early on asking my standard Rider-Waite desk all manner of piddly little questions. I would judiciously look up the meanings of each card. Jodorowsky creates a whole system. He dispenses with all but the original Marseilles deck. Looking at the whole deck as a sacred mandala the book allows you to unlock the image potential of the deck. This isn’t about predicting the future and hoping for money, it is about reflection . I have come to prefer the Marseilles deck since reading this book. He creates complex narratives from the cards allowing them to tell stories and go on journeys.
Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols, 1984, Weiser
In concert with Jodorowsky and Carrington, I appreciate Nichols’ walk through each of the Major Arcana as a path. She connects each card with wider cultural imagery. Using Jungian archetypes each character of the Tarot becomes linked to diverse mythological figures and artworks from many eras and cultures.
Strange Beauty: Ecocritical Approaches to Early Medieval Landscape by Alfred K. Siewers, 2009, Palgrave Macmillan
I came across this book while looking for something else in the Reed College library. It immediately caught my attention. The book is written for academics but this short and very rich book offers an ecological sense for looking at medieval literature from the British Isles. Focusing on such works as the Welsh Mabinogion and Irish myths, Siewers shows how pagan beliefs remained intact in medieval stories. The Otherworld of the Celts and then the Irish and Welsh was not necessarily “out there” but all around us. He demonstrates how using these old stories offers a view of the living world different than the prevailing Christian and Imperial stories that later dominate Britain.
Cave Birds: An Alchemical Cave Drama by Ted Hughes with illustrations by Leonard Baskin
Someone in Portland has been selling their original editions of Ted Hughes’ book to Powells. I am only happy to pick them up. Hughes, a long time resident of Devon in southeast England has always had a mythological eye. Cave Birds is a strange collection of poems that feels somewhat like a shadow Tarot reading. The diviner is none other than Leonard Baskin. Like something that emerged from ancient cave walls, the poems cast an odd spell. I have been reading Hughes’ collected poetry lately but these books that he did with his friend and collaborator Leonard Baskin really get to the heart of what image and text can do in concert.
AND A REMINDER: For anyone interested in taking the drawing and storytelling workshop Nostos: the Long Way Home at Building Five in 2024 (details below) we’ve changed the dates from the original announcement. The workshop will be $1600. This workshop will be a rich and deep exploration of storytelling, drawing and visual narrative. We give the story of the Odyssey lots of time to open up, expand and allow you to enter into it. Ultimately you will tell your own story about home; whether that is as a native, an immigrant or a refugee. Join me in 2024 to inaugurate this workshop. Go here to register.
The Odyssey is one of the most iconic of Western stories. We look at what the story has to say about leaving home, coming home, and being a migrant in the world. What does that longing in our stories say about our own longing? Who is a migrant, a refugee, or a native? Our stories root us to the ground and allow us to travel over great distances. How do we define home? Can we find stories in the ground beneath our feet that welcomes newcomers and honors the ancestors?
Over the course of the five sessions we dive deep into the story of the Odyssey through oral storytelling and book discussions.
This course connects one’s innate creative spark with deep-time storytelling and straightforward drawing exercises. Oral storytelling, themed readings, and image making exercises are braided together into each session. This course is for teachers, writers, cartoonists, artists, or anyone interested in unlocking their visual storyteller. This is not about technical prowess, but storytelling and expression. The drawing exercises do not require drawing skill or previous training. Participants come away having created their own story based in image and text; gaining tools for telling stories with pictures and thinking in mythic time.
Each weekend begins with a Friday night lecture.
Saturday is a full day of storytelling, drawing exercises and workshops.
Sunday is work time and presentations.
Building Five, NW Marine Artworks,
2516 NW 29th Ave., Portland, OR 97210
APRIL 12-14, 2024:
Leaving Home
The journey begins. War comes to Ithaca. What causes us to leave home in the first place. Odysseus goes off to war. Telemachus grows up with the weight of an absent father, Penelope takes on leadership and grows into her role. It is springtime. Are we setting out with excitement and possibility? With a heavy heart? With regret? We consider the traveler, the wanderer and the tourist. After each storytelling session you draw. We go from quick intuitive drawing exercises to longer more reflective pieces.
JUNE 28-30, 2024:
Out at Sea
Now that the initial excitement of setting off has settled into the day to day, how do we move through the days? Telemachus tries to be a man, Penelope fends off the suitors, Odysseus heads home and is thwarted. What does it feel like to be a refugee and cast from home? More quick exercises, we build on images from the previous session.
APRIL 12-14, 2024:
Leaving Home
The journey begins. War comes to Ithaca. What causes us to leave home in the first place. Odysseus goes off to war. Telemachus grows up with the weight of an absent father, Penelope takes on leadership and grows into her role. It is springtime. Are we setting out with excitement and possibility? With a heavy heart? With regret? We consider the traveler, the wanderer and the tourist. After each storytelling session you draw. We go from quick intuitive drawing exercises to longer more reflective pieces.
SEPT. 7-8, 2024:
Dreams of home fires
We’re right in the middle. Everyone tries to hold the line and survive. Immigrants and natives consider what home means. New materials, longer exercises after the storytelling sessions.
NOV. 2-3, 2024:
The Land of the Dead
Odysseus consults the dead. Underworld musings, ancestors from the other side of the veil come to have a word. One long project after the telling.
DEC. 13-14, 2024:
Homecomings
Odysseus comes home as a nobody. Penelope starts to waver and Telemachus gets a hint from Athena. Not all homecomings are happy. Who are you when you return after a journey? One final work session and a mini-exhibition.