Man, it sure is dark and wet today. All I want to do is lay around and read-read-read. Fortunately, I don’t have anything else scheduled, so that’s what I’m doing. I finished that Many Lives, Many Masters book today, and can’t say that I really liked it. I liked the lectures about reincarnation online at the theosophical institute a lot better, specifically that one by John Algeo. They were way more up my alley than this book. Crap, what else? I picked up another Dane Rhudyar book last night at a used bookstore in Williamsburg. I wanted to get an Andrew Weil book too, the marriage of the sun and moon, which is another one of his early ones about drugs, but I ended up not getting it, mainly cause I remembered back to when I read the natural mind, and a lot of it was just not that good, and I had to slog through it to find the few gems hidden within. It’s unfortunate how many books seem to be like that. I’ve slowed down a lot on that “Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy” book by Mircea Eliade for more or less the same reason. There some really good stuff in there, but I just wish it was condensed and put together in some other different way.

Did I already put a link to this site in, Shaman’s Cave, that Laura Jane sent me the other day? No? I’m not sure. It’s a site for “Contemporary Shamanism,” it says. There are some good articles on it. We were talking about this one, about something they’re calling “shamanic recapitulation,” which, as I understand it, is where you sort of go backwards to significant events and people, and basically reclaim any of your personal energy that was taken or trapped in these old patterns, and which may be draining you still, or else forcing you sort of to relive similar situations/patterns. It’s pretty interesting. Apparently, when you start doing this, going back and reclaiming this heretofore locked personal energy, the people involved seem to notice, on some psychic/unconscious level, that some kind of connection has been severed. Like they are no longer able to draw on your energy, and then they start to magically pop up into your life. I have definitely witnessed this sort of thing happen to me before, during stages where I kind of close myself off, withdrawing to repair, or whatever, and then, all of a sudden, people will seem to come back from long absences. Its very weird, and I never knew that there was a formal name and practice for something that I was sort of just naturally doing, I think.

Hey, so today is the solstice, which is cool. I found a halfway decent and short article about it, which I recommend reading if you’re at all curious about some of the old-school backdrops to today.

Also, from that site, here is a picture of a bunch of people. I don’t know what to make of this… How come Wiccans are so often fat and weird-looking? Now, I know my personal approach to life and “spirituality” (which i almost never use that word to describe it) is not terribly different from what someone who calls themselves a Wiccan might be doing themselves. I don’t know. The whole concept of Wicca just turns me off. It seems like a crutch in one way, or else maybe I see it as accepting a final answer. Like by finally settling down and calling yourself a “Wiccan,” I feel like you’re basically just saying, “That’s it! I found all the answers! Now I can stop looking!” I don’t know though, maybe that is the answer for some people though, just like other religions might offer the answer to other people. But not to me.

That reminds me, of something I read recently. If you look up the word “religion” in the dictionary, and look at the Latin etymology of the word, you get “religare” as one of the entries, which means something to the effect of “to bind” or “to tie fast,” and I really think that is what religion is for a lot of people, something rigorous to hold the world and themselves to. When I think ultimately, It should be quite the opposite, it should be something that helps you loosen and break free of the binds that have been placed on you.