Five books to reread in this time of retrograde
2024 a year of sacred memory, dreaming dragons, and original prayerWeek 49--in which we curl up with a few old friendsFriends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer, For the last seven or eight years, I have offered a December newsletter sharing five books that meant the most to be that year. I am often as surprised as you are by the odd intermingling of the books. On the surface, they seem disconnected, but I offer them because they spoke to me and I think they might speak to you. But in addition—this is a little tidbit I have not written about before—those books are also speaking to one another. Books are alive. You know that right?The consciousness that came through them is in communication with the consciousness that receives them. That’s how a book finally comes alive. In you. In your eyes, your mind, your hands, your heart, your gut. I think we all understand that. But the deeper aliveness, and the more surprising one, is that the consciousness in a book is in conversation with all the other books around you, whether they are physically in your space or waiting for you somewhere “out there.” When you meet a book like that, it never stops talking to you. It might sit on your shelf for years, and then one day, it whispers your name. And as you pull it off the shelf, perhaps wondering why, and you read a few pages…. Suddenly—OH MY GODDESS!—you realize you missed its fullest meaning the first time. Or the second. But there you are, curled in a blanket, rediscovering an old friend, drinking in her wisdom, and feeling her reenergize you once more. So in preparation for this Notes from the Field, I’ve been looking back at the books I read this year. And with few exceptions, they are books I re-read this year.I sense they’ve been waiting for me to grow a bit more into my mystic witch-prayer artist-firekeeper self so that I could be ready to hear them at a deeper level. As I re-read them, I sense I am hearing their voices with a deeper inner ear. And I feel they are opening new spaces in my mind and perhaps literally rearranging my brain. All I know is that 2024 has been a year of deep deep transformation. And as I begin recording the 2025 forecast with Emma Kupu Mitchell and Marcia Wade, I now see that 2024 has been perfect training for massive shifts to come. I stumbled upon this quote today from an astrologer I was not familiar with. I think he captures the wild dance ahead beautifully.
AHA! No wonder we are all curled up in a warm blankie reading rather than following the siren call of the mass culture to spend and celebrate and decorate and eat! Not me. These are the books I’m digesting in this beautiful retrograde moment. And, hang on to your hats, ALL the personal planets are going retrograde! Yup. All of them. Until next spring. You can panic about that, or you can surround yourself with special friends who know who you are and who you are ready to become. Here are a few old friends from my reading table. I dare say they are having quite the conversation with one another: The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, 1993, Margaret StarbirdI bought this book in 2010 when Margaret Starbird spoke at a local church. I’ve read it three times. I thought I was keeping it on my bookshelves next to her other books as a memento of the days when I first dove into the hidden story of Mary Magdalen and she opened a space in my heart for the Divine Feminine Sophia. But when I opened it this week, I realized there are layers here, especially about hidden messages in art, that I am ready to explore. Labyrinths: Ancient Myths and Modern Uses, 1991, Sig LonegrenWhen I first realized that The Witch Sequence was unfolding on a seven-circuit labyrinth, I reached for this book which had been waiting for me for three years on my reading table. Emma Kupu Mitchell had recommended it back in 2020 when she took labyrinth facilitation training. I guess I was finally ready. And it blew my mind. This book is the foundational text for the seven-circuit labyrinth. It’s out of print and hard to find, but totally worth it. I’m rereading Sig’s because I have fallen head over heels in love with THE most profound book on labyrinths I have ever read. Dancing at the Edge of Death: The Origins of the Labyrinth in the Paleolithic, 2009, Jodi LorimerI stumbled upon this book in a labyrinth online group and the title alone was all I needed to know I HAD to read it. Although the book is out of print and almost impossible to find, a copy practically flew into my lap. After reading just a few pages I told Cathy Pratt, my partner in creating The Witch Sequence, that she HAD to read it too. Cathy found Jodi and is inviting her to be a very important guest teacher in the next Witch Sequence intensive on divination. (Watch for news on ART 5, it will open in March.) I have become a tad obsessed with labyrinths. Jodi’s book helped me understand why. In short, the labyrinth has preserved the Goddess voices of our grandmothers for thousands of years. Like books that wait until we’re ready, the labyrinth has been waiting a very long time for us to be ready to remember the truth about life, death, and resurrection. A truth patriarchal religions and cultures did everything in their power to silence, but our bodies never quite forgot. This is the memory the wild astrology of 2025 and beyond is asking us to remember. In a conversation with Marcia and Emma to plan the forecast, they said the first and most important topic is that in 2025 we are in BOTH a death room and a birth canal AT THE SAME TIME. Suddenly, I blurted out: do you know what a colloid stop is? They did not. But I did. Or rather, I should say, a strong memory of reading about this chaotic moment of death and birth as a colloidal condition surfaced and demanded to enter the conversation. I first read about colloids in a book about near death experiences by a woman who had three NDEs in 1977 and has spent her life researching the phenomena including the deep science that explains it. Future Memory, 1999, P.M.H. AtwaterI read this book at least a decade ago. I can tell I was deeply moved by it because I underlined something on almost every page. But picking it up now, I am experiencing it for the first time. I guess I am at last really ready to let this book rearrange my mind. And oh boy, is it ever! Want to know why? Because the book itself is a labyrinth! One more. At first you might think this is completely disconnected from the others. But you would be wrong. When We Cease to Understand the World, 2020, Benjamin LabatutThis book is described as a hybrid between history and fiction. The characters, all mathematical geniuses, are real historical figures but you can’t quite unravel the truth from the fictional overlay. I found the book fascinating. Somehow it taught me how the mystic mandala works. I’ve long said that we do not make the mandala, the mandala makes us. But I could never explain HOW that happens. Just that it does. Turns out it’s math. Deep math. Deep deep cosmic math. I loved this book the first time and I’m going to spend the solstice week falling in love with it again. So those are five books I’m rereading in this retrograde time. I sense they are just the food I need to be ready for 2025, What about you? What books are calling you to hold them in your hands once more? to meeting old friends for the first time Janet PS December is rich indeed. Here's what's coming:
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