#The Enchanted Life by Sharon Blackie

[wherekizzialives]

November Reads

Seven books finished this month, again including the next book from my chronological order Discworld series re-read. If I had to recommend only one of the seven it would – hands down – be Nicola Chester’s On Gallows Down, which made me laugh and cry and left me uplifted and feeling that it is possible for each of us to make a difference in this world, even now.   Reiterating (as always) that…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * * *

"Ultimately, to live an enchanted life is to pick up the pieces of our bruised and battered psyches, and to offer them the nourishment they long for. It is to be challenged, to be awakened, to be gripped and shaken to the core by the extraordinary which lies at the heart of the ordinary. Above all, to live an enchanted life is to fall in love with the world all over again. This is an active choice, a leap of faith which is necessary not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the wide, wild Earth in whose being and becoming we are so profoundly and beautifully entangled."

- Sharon Blackie The Enchanted Life, Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday beyond the fields we know

Thanks to Whisky River

The Coming of Túrin to Brethil by Alan Lee

[kimbazee]

What I've Been Reading Lately

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I will receive a small compensation at no extra cost to you. This helps keep my blog ad-free. Here’s a very short list of three books I finished reading in the past week. Enjoy! No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering by Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the late teacher’s most-read books. When I was in my…

[innervoiceartblog]

‘You want to know what beauty is, boy? Look again at Old Crane Woman. Listen to Old Crane Woman’s cracked, croaking song. Beauty is a body bowed from the weight of a life fully lived. Beauty is hair bleached in the light of a life fully loved. Beauty is the angular, bony edges of a life fully risked. Look into Old Crane Woman’s cavernous black eyes: you’ll learn a thing or two about beauty. Listen to Old Crane Woman’s song: you’ll learn a thing or two about beauty. Listen to Old Crane Woman laugh in the long, cold dark. Listen to her weep in the fragile light of dawn. Listen to her joy in the pain of giving birth. Are you learning now about beauty?

You think she cares what you think? You think she cares, Old Crane Woman? Old Crane Woman is hatching an egg. She’s the watcher in the dark, the keeper of the tales. She’s the guardian of the gate, the crystal in the cave. Old Crane Woman was here before you and she’ll be here after you.

You pay your respects.’

From #theenchantedlife by #sharonblackie

[booksandwitchery]

List of books I’ve mentioned or reviewed on my blog

Here is the master list of books I’ve mentioned, with links to their pages. I will be keeping this list current and linked in my description.

*The ankh symbol [ ☥ ] indicates that this book is especially important to me and/or drastically changed my life

Secular/Science-Based/Skeptic-Friendly:

☥ Atheopaganism: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science by Mark Green

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

☥ Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler

☥ DIY Magic by Anthony Alvarado

How to Become a Witch by Julie Wilder

☥ Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation by Mat Auryn

Storytelling Alchemy by Renée Damoiselle

The Beginner Witch’s Guide to Grimoires by Julie Wilder

The Door to Witchcraft by Tonya A. Brown

The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday by Sharon Blackie

The Witch of the Forest’s Guide to Natural Magick by Lindsay Squire

The Witch’s Guide to Manifestation by Mystic Dylan

☥ Witchcraft Therapy by Mandi Em

Wisdom, Psychology, Philosophy, Self-Growth, etc…

☥ The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Non-Secular:

☥ Sane Occultism by Dion Fortune

Simply Wicca: A Beginner’s Guide to the Craft of the Wise by Lisa & Anton Stewart

☥ Wicca for Beginners by Thea Sabin

[entheognosis]

To live an enchanted life is to pick up the pieces of our bruised and battered psyches, and to offer them the nourishment they long for. It is to be challenged, to be awakened, to be gripped and shaken to the core by the extraordinary which lies at the heart of the ordinary. Above all, to live an enchanted life is to fall in love with the world all over again.

Sharon Blackie

[red-ibis-red]

But we also use the word 'hedge' to indicate a quite different kind of boundary: the wild margins which surround the cultivated fields. Think now of the gnarly old hedgerows of Britain and Ireland: thick, richly flowering, berried hawthorn and elder, blackthorn and hazel. An abundance of food and shelter for wild things. Secret places, where treasure might be found, where birds might speak to you and foxes shelter while singing to the stars. The suburban hedge walls us in; the wild hedge marks the edge beyond which freedom lies - the place where village becomes forest. There's nothing safe about an ancient hedge: on the other side lies the dark wood and the road which goes ever on. An ancient hedge is an enchanted place; a place where anything might happen. A liminal place, where the wisdom of the wild margins is available to all. Hedge wisdom: the wisdom of the wild world, unfettered by rules and impossible to institutionalise.

—Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life

[thenarrativefoil]

okay so I started reading Sharon Blackie's The Enchanted Life at the suggestion of my therapist and even tho I cited a lot of her research in my college work I never actually read any of her books and I got things to say idk this introduction is very easy going i think this was written for people with absolutely no understanding of colonialism/capitalism

maybe i should skip the intro and see how much it levels up

[rainwashedsoul]

https://www.bookdepository.com/Enchanted-Life-Sharon-Blackie/9781912836444?ref=pd_detail_1_sims_b_p2p_1

[samiholloway]

Yay!

Last song: let me down slowly - Alec benjamin -- for whatever reason the other day, I was reminded that this song existed, found it on Spotify, and then listened to it on loop for two hours straight.

Currently watching: mom's been rewatching mentalist and I've been watching whatever eps are playing when I'm home and conscious; currently season five and everything is so complex and dire!

Currently reading: almost done with rooted, and loving it so much; recently started a modern celt and it's too soon to have an opinion so far:

Current obsession: I'm like four weeks into a twelve week thing on reconnecting with nature, and I'm letting it take me wherever it leads. Next up is and enchanted life by Sharon blackie. Have done several Google dives on shamanism related topics and keep getting annoyed by all the racism and appropriation (need to find other words to search, I think). I'm waiting for fall leaves the way the cats wait for their breakfast in the morning. I'm pining for the fjords (well, for the sea and the mountains, NC doesn't have them together).

Also journaling. Always. Crystals. Always. I'm planning a trip to the grocery store to see how many plants I can grow from there over winter (including star fruit, funnily enough!). I'm craving sushi enough that it's taking up a large part of my brain. I'm thinking about trees a lot (just found out the one by work is a bald cypress (associated with mourning, sacred to Hades) and the one by the river is eastern hemlock (poisonous)).

Tagging: all A' y'all! Play along if you want!

Tagged by @threefill thank youu!

Tag 9 people you’d like to get to know better.

Last song: Blinding Lights - The Weekend

Currently watching: the Watcher guys put out a new season of Ghost Files and I’m nothing if not a sucker for funny spooky stuff I can consume without triggering my brain weasels

Currently reading: Uhhh

I just got a job as a school librarian (more or less) and I found this stuffed in an old filing cabinet in my office

exciting stuff I know.

Also, this morning I was reading Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen because I’m going to structure a class around it, and out of nowhere had to go lock myself in the bathroom because I thought I was going to start bawling because I HAVE WANTED TO DO THIS FOR SO LONG YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Current obsession: uhm… Sandman. Yeah, still, and for the long-foreseeable future. But also, see above about the new job. It is Consuming Me because getting thrown headfirst into it is Terrifying.

And starfruit trees. I am determined to have one. We got fruit from three different sources (fancy schmancy organic grocery store, ye olde regular grocery store, and the back yard of some lady we know) and I have eight different labeled pots in different locations and we’re waiting to see which seeds are viable. I’m guessing Team Lady’s Back Yard will win.

Tagging @61below @xxsneepsnoppxx @ghostboyjules @kianga @hannibalatemyheart @ye-olde-norrington-stan @pellaaearien @emfyre @samiholloway

[bookymcbookface]

The Enchanted Life, Reclaiming the Magic and Wisdom of the Natural World, by Sharon Blackie

[heathergorse]

An open letter to Sharon Blackie

I don't write much about trans issues. Its not because they're not of interest to me - they're of deep existential interest to me because I'm a trans woman - but it is not often that they cross with the topics of this blog.

When they occasionally do, I'll write about them.

So it is that I'm writing an open letter to the author and podcaster Sharon Blackie, after she made comments about transgender people in episode 13 of her podcast, This Mythic Life. Its an old episode, but I only very recently listened to it and it prompted me to write an open letter to Sharon in response.

I don't expect anything to come of this or many people to see it, least of Sharon herself, but it was simply important to me to write it. You can read it below:

Dear Sharon,

Gosh, but its been a good few years since I started to read your writing; I was a subscriber to Earthlines from issue 1 and ever since I’ve kept a close eye out for whatever you’re writing. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve recommended The Enchanted Life to! It's been over 10 years and I’ve enjoyed so much of what you’ve written. I’m passionate about story and place and how they can intertwine and so obviously there was a lot for me to enjoy!

I’ve listened to your podcasts for a while too, dipping in and out as time allows. So it was that I eventually came to episode 13 of This Mythic Life. I don’t think I can properly quantify how upset I’ve been since hearing it and I hope you’ll let me explain why. 

You see, I’m a trans woman. That’s a difficult “hero’s journey” to be on and there are many perils and monsters on the way. It's not an easy story but it is often a redemptive story, but I’ll talk more about story later. I can’t help talking in terms of story, I’m sure you can understand that. Listening to your episode 13 of Mythic Life was not a peril I was expecting to encounter.

Let me state as clearly as possible that I’m not trying to take anything away from what your body can do and its part in your identity, Sharon, as you expressed concern about happening in the podcast; I don’t think I know of anyone who would. I do know what it is to have things “tied up with my vision of who I think I am,” as you put it. There are also things I don’t know. 

I don’t know what it is to menstruate. I don’t know what it is to carry a child or give birth. When my cis women friends have discussed this together or told me about it privately its a time for me to be silent and listen and try to understand. It's absolutely not a time to express an opinion that is uninformed, it's absolutely not a time for me to try to prevent a conversation from happening because it's not something I can experience. 

I don’t want to take anything away from you, I don’t want to take anything away from any cis woman. I want to make sure I listen and try to understand whenever anyone trusts me with any part of their own story like that.

I wish that this was something you were wanting to do for trans women,  because going by your comments about trans (I’m going to presume women, but on the podcast you stumbled over your word choice here and went for “trans person” instead) people who have approached you about finding themselves in story it appears you haven’t properly listened to the stories of trans women yet, or of trans men or non-binary people. 

I’m going to hope that it wasn’t your intention, but your suggestion to the commenter who wanted to know where they fit into mythic stories that they go and create their own mythology, combined with your repeating comments about “third sex” people feels tantamount to segregationist language to me as a trans woman. It is very dismissive and, despite your protestations to the contrary, sounds incredibly exclusionary. Go make your own stories and maybe in 2000 years there’ll be mythic stories for trans people feels like being told there’s no place in these stories for you. How could that be? The podcast episode was about the mythic masculine and there is, of course, the mythic feminine. Are trans men and women not able to find themselves in the mythic masculine and mythic feminine by this assessment?

Sadly, your passing assertion about some cultures recognising a third sex is perhaps the worst of options. It suggests that you do not believe that trans women are women, or trans men are men. Is that a reasonable conclusion to reach, Sharon? Let me ask you respectfully and genuinely - do you believe that trans women are women and trans men are men? 

I believe that the right thing to say to a trans woman seeking to find resonance and meaning in mythic stories is to enable them to find it, to say that they are entitled to find it in the mythic feminine. I believe that the right thing to say to a trans man seeking to find resonance and meaning in mythic stories is to enable them to find it, to say that they are entitled to find it in the mythic masculine. I believe that that would have been the compassionate, inclusive and caring thing to do, Sharon, not to dismiss them to “third sex” segregation to come up with their own stories. To say that is to say to trans women and men that there is nothing for them here and that they should pursue their own culture elsewhere. I don’t believe any mythic story says that. 

Please, I implore you, please listen to the stories of some trans women and men and non-binary people because I think you would benefit greatly from hearing their personal stories and learning about their perspectives in a spirit of openness. To pursue and state the positions that you did in episode 13 of your podcast is rightly going to leave you open to accusations of transphobia, because what you have said and how you have said it is transphobic. It's entirely possible that this was not your intention at all, we are all subject to cultural and societal prejudices and can easily fall prey to them and this is a very hostile time for trans women particularly. 

I think it is entirely reasonable to respectfully and simply raise the question with you though, after what you said on your podcast and how you said it;  do you believe that trans women are women and trans men are men, or not? 

It can be a perilous road, being trans. Merely to express an opinion online, to step outside your door, to exist in public can be fraught with danger; I’m sure you’d agree that in that at least cis women and trans women have a great deal in common. Just as cis women are bombarded with messages from the world around them that they are less, so are trans women. Very sadly, episode 13 of your podcast told me that I was less and I suspect that I am not the only trans woman, man or non-binary person who heard it who felt that also. Words and how we use them can do staggering damage as well as incredible good. I want to believe that you had no intention whatsoever of doing harm and I hope that you won’t dismiss any possibility that you have done so; saying “I don’t say this in any way to offend anyone” as you did is not a free pass to not causing offence and harm. 

I’ll always value the different perspectives I discovered reading Earthlines. The Enchanted Life will always be a favourite, Foxfire Wolfskin was spine-tingingly good and Hagitude has had such rave reviews that I’m sure it more than deserves. I truly wish you every success with it. I can only hope that there’s a place for me to continue reading your writing, because right now I can’t imagine wanting to read the writing of someone who has currently left me with the impression that they believe I am not validly entitled to “my vision of who I think I am”.

[fatehbaz]

“Urban Ecology and Animism in the Landscape of the Great Lakes”: An interview on decay, restoration, bioregionalism, and “ecological citizenship” in the Midwest

From 26 December 2018, Belt Magazine. Excerpts:

Authors Matt Stansberry and Gavin Van Horn recently published books on the urban wildlife of the Great Lakes region (Rust Belt Arcana: Tarot and Natural History in the Exurban Wilds by Belt Publishing, and The Way of the Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds by University of Chicago Press, respectively). In this wide-ranging conversation, Stansberry and Van Horn discuss the overlaps in each other’s books and the progress, challenges, and joys of living with and writing about nature in the industrial Midwest.

GVH: Some of the book is about holding on to what remains, trying to live in a way that allows others to live (such as when you write about box turtles or salamanders). But there are also expressions of hope in the book, particularly when it comes to meeting people who are hard at work on restoration projects. I’m thinking here of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s work at Mentor Marsh, and also the lessons you glean from Tim Jasinski of Lights Out Cleveland. Could you tell us a little bit about those projects? And perhaps the strides you see in the Rust Belt to respond with care to the land and water, which you call “holy work”?

MS: Those two chapters show different approaches to dealing with our impacts on wildlife. The first chapter you reference, “Temperance,” explores the effort needed to restore one of Lake Erie’s largest wetlands back into a functioning ecosystem. It’s inspiring because of how daunting the task must have seemed—to try to remove hundreds of acres of nearly impervious invasive reeds. After years of sustained, systematic effort and investment, we are seeing a return of biodiversity to this site.

-

GVH: You end with “The World” card and reflections on what E.O. Wilson has called the “Age of Loneliness” (the Eremozoic Era). After detailing the historic superabundance of biological life in Ohio, you say, “I want to leave you with the impression that our home has a potential to be one of the wildest, most fecund places on the planet… I tell you these things to repeat the names, so that you know that they are there. …There is still plenty of time to roll in the dirt in a forest. Stare out at Lake Erie. Listen to the wind. Don’t live separately from the world. Don’t despair.” What kinds of practices would you recommend for connecting to the magic of the everyday? 

MS: So you mention a bunch of good ideas right there. Roll in the dirt. Stare at the lake. Since finishing the book, I’ve read The Enchanted Life by Sharon Blackie, and it’s full of so many brilliant ideas that I’ve been trying, ways to make myself more grounded in the place where I live. We can learn the myths of our home regions, draw big maps of the places we live and hike, plant gardens with native species, craft objects and food out of the plants around us, name the species of birds, start re-enchanting the landscape.

I see a lot of overlaps in our work as well. For example, both of our books center around the study of urban wildlife, animals in the city. You write: “When the city presses in upon me, coyotes remind me of the vitality that weaves its way between the buildings. Humans may often disregard, displace, and disrupt other kinds of animal life, but the anima of what we now call Chicago is not gone. The coyotes keep it flowing; they keep going along, beckoning us toward greater fidelity with our non-human kin. Lead on coyotes. Show what a city can be.”

Engaging with urban wildlife is not something you expected to be doing, and not something historically that has been of interest to the science/naturalist community. What do you learn from studying city creatures that you don’t learn in more rural or wild environments?

GVH: A city constitutes one portion of a landscape continuum. Occasionally in the book, I venture outside of city limits, acknowledging that many species don’t do well in smaller patches of habitat and with human presence (hell, I don’t do well with continual human presence). Yet my focus is on “ordinary” and close-to-home creatures as amazing expressions of life, worthy of our fascination and attention. Familiarity need not breed contempt. Familiarity can be a portal into our most intimate and meaningful relationships. Several essays feature ecologists and biologists who are turning back toward the city with curiosity and scientific rigor, seeking to counter the story of urban nature as less-than-worthy. I suppose I’m doing something similar with my writing.

MS: In one of my favorite essays, “De los pajaritos del monte” you marvel at your friend’s lifelong connection—physical, familial, cultural—to a landscape. You’ve moved around the country, the same way I have, and seem to struggle with that rootlessness. I think we both envy what your friend has with his home landscape. Can you write your way into place? Is even one lifetime enough to get rooted?

GVH: One lifetime, so far as I know, is all we’ve got, so I hope that’s enough to actualize one’s ecological citizenship. As you know, this book was part of my own process of adapting to life in an urban area. Writing is a way to further deepen the bonds of memory, to invite others (and perhaps yourself) to see the world from a fresh perspective. It’s an alchemical process—to transform experience into ink, and then for readers to permit those words to conjure new worlds in their imaginations. And the hope is that those stories, then, shape how a person moves through the landscape and the way they value it.

But the question of roots is one that haunts me a bit, in all honesty. I’m a person that has lived in many places. Some of us are more nomadic in spirit; some landscapes make our hearts sing more than others. What if a person feels displaced—like a plant outside of the microbiome to which it is most suited—and no amount of spiritual equanimity or sheer amount of time spent in a place can create a sense of at-homeness? (...)

MS: You have a chapter exploring Aldo Leopold’s concept of the numenon of the north woods, the ruffed grouse. You suggest Chicago’s numenon is the Night Heron? What’s a numenon and what’s a night heron?

GVH: As one young man who does ecological restoration work on the South Side of the city told me, “It’s a getting better Chicago.” He’s right. A lot of Midwestern cities, like Chicago, are in what is sometimes called a post-industrial phase. (...) [But] the recovery is tangible ...

-

Read more.

[dk-thrive]

It is to be challenged, to be awakened, to be gripped and shaken to the core

Ultimately, to live an enchanted life is to pick up the pieces of our bruised and battered psyches, and to offer them the nourishment they long for. It is to be challenged, to be awakened, to be gripped and shaken to the core by the extraordinary which lies at the heart of the ordinary. Above all, to live an enchanted life is to fall in love with the world all over again. This is an active choice, a leap of faith which is necessary not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the wide, wild Earth in whose being and becoming we are so profoundly and beautifully entangled.

- Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life, Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday (September Publishing, February 27, 2018)

[innervoiceartblog]

“But there’s the interesting thing: what if, searching for new stories to live by, we actually looked back at those old stories again – the fairy tales we loved as children and the myths which entrance us still as adults? What if we could find some clues there – in the stories which tell us that we are a part of this living, breathing world around us? The stories which taught and inspired us for millennia – the stories which, today, are largely dismissed as primitive, and regulated to the domain of children…" - Sharon Blackie

[booksandwitchery]

“The exterior landscape interacts with our interior landscape, and in the resulting entanglements, we become something more than we otherwise could ever hope to be. We take on and begin to express something of its mysterious, earthy qualities…to welcome those entanglements, to become in them and through them something both greater and infinitely more interesting than a single, isolated human life–is to be enchanted.”

- Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life