Two more books to recommend

1. Pagan Grace - Ginette Paris

Ginette Paris takes us into the world of Greek gods and goddesses, not in any dogmatic way, or as ‘types’, but more as meditations. In Pagan Grace she takes us into the world of Dionysus and Hermes and the Goddess of Memory(and in her other book, Pagan Meditations, which I would also recommend, she takes us into the world of Aphrodite, Artemis and Hestia).

She has a gift in personalizing the gods and goddesses(and in bringing the ancient deities to life). And she has a good blend of research and insight and a personal and intimate style of how the gods and goddesses have touched her. Myth is not an abstract thing with her, but often earthy, and she brings some flesh and bones to it, showing how the world reveals itself through these gods, and the different kind of world than shines through them, and she gives the feeling of their archetypal imagination and spirit.

Here are some things that stay with me from her book:

‘At this point we sense the difference between Dionysian consciousness, emotional and experiential, and Apollonian consciousness, which is abstract and formal’. And ‘Dionysus brings madness to King Lycurgus and his cousin King Pentheus, because they won't recognize his divinity. It is a story worth telling. One can read it as a fable about the danger of having an exclusively rationalistic point of view on life'. And this ‘Apollo teaches us distance, whilst Dionysus teaches us proximity, contact, intimacy with ourselves, nature and others’.