Sourcebook

"Anything you can think of is true" - Tom Waits

"The war that matters is the war against the imagination / all other wars are subsumed in it" - Diane Di Prima

        Looking over this mongrel list of works both written and filmed that have struck a deep chord in me, I realize they have more in common than I'd at first thought. In a word, they're all about magic: the ways magic shapes our lives, if we let it; the tasks it can be used for, if we commit to learning its ways; the responsibilities with which the magical path burdens us.  The twenty-first century magical adept's favorite disguise is children's lit and/or fantasy author, a guise that allows him or her to hide in plain sight...  


Ursula LeGuin, especially the Earthsea books, The Dispossessed, and The Left Hand of Darkness

Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials series. Like so many kids books, these are all about divination and the shamanic calling to join the larger story

Michael Gruber, especially Tropic of Night 

Neil Gaiman, especially American Gods and the graphic novels The Sandman and The Books of Magic

James Merrill, especially The Book of Ephraim

J.R.R. Tolkien, humble recipient of the greatest imagination of the 20th century: Lord of the Rings trilogy and related ephemera

Toni Morrison, especially Song of Solomon

Some guy named Shakespeare

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay; Summerland



And to kick off the non-fiction list:

I Ching (Yi Jing)/Zhou Yi, especially Liu Ming's translation (simply entitled "Changing")

Robert Moss (books and website on dreamwork and related topics)

Matthew Wood, The Book of Herbal Wisdom, Earthwise Herbal, et al

Martin Prechtel's books on Mayan culture and religion Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Thoreau, Walden

Paul Levy, Dispelling Wetiko and Awakeninthedream.com

Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

Wendell Berry

Michael Meade, Men and the Water of Life

Malidoma Some, Of Water and The Spirit

Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen

Rainer Maria Rilke

C.G. Jung


Films: adding more as I remember them, slowly...

Cloud Atlas

Terry Gilliam, various 

Rise of the Guardians


Music (also in no particular order):

Ludwig Van Beethoven
JS Bach
The Tallest Man on Earth
Doc Watson
Ustad Amjad Ali Khan
John Coltrane
Eric Dolphy
Tortoise, TNT
Shuggie Otis
Tom Waits
Joanna Newsom
George Edwards
Bob Dylan
Glenn Gould
Mississippi John Hurt
Iron & Wine
Joe Henderson
Nick Drake
Talking Heads
Thelonius Monk