The first book I can remember is The Little Black Princess by Aeneas Gunn, which was read to me by my mother when I was 4 or 5 years old.It is about a young Australian Aboriginal girl and set in the Northern Territory.I used to have vivid dreams about Aborigines and the bush, bringing them to life.At the same time there was The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs, an Australian classic which personifies bush plants and animals.I feared and loathed the evil Banksiamen.
I can remember some picture books: one about an English sheepdog in an English garden;a girl and boy go to the beach for a day;and fairies in the form of different flowers.I used to dream about these books and sometimes I couldn't tell whether the images in my mind were from a dream or from daytime imagination.The power of the imagination is such that alternate worlds can be created.Pictures from the seaside book would create in my mind the sound of the surf, the cries of the seagulls, the very presence of a starfish and other beach scenes.
I read some Secret Seven books by Enid Blyton at about ten.Children love adventure stories where adults are outwitted, such as by the precocious leader of the Seven.I hugely liked the secret passageways and hideaways in these books, and I looked for and imagined such in real life.I had a cubby under the house, and dug a big hole in the backyard, placed a sheet of tin over the top and covered it with earth to make a hideaway which was fashionable among neighbourhood boys at the time. I enjoyed adventure stories such as Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Dana.Also works by Robert Louis Stevenson, including The Master of Ballantrae, Kidnapped and Treasure Island.
Later I read stories about animals by Gerald Durrell, which were brought to my attention by a school friend who wanted to be a zoo worker.(One day he stopped coming to school.I never saw him again).)This was about age 13.At 15 I became entranced with the historical novels of Henry Treece.I really liked the ones with a hero my own age or a bit older whom I could identify with.
Required school reading didn't do very much for me, except Shakespeare.There was A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar and Richard II.I would declaim some of the phrases from these plays,e.g."You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" ; "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him..."; and "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;he thinks too much.Such men are dangerous." I called my pet cross Kelpie dog Casca, from Julius Caesar.Once, at a school assembly on March 15 a boy called out"Beware the ides of March."For his trouble he got a talking to, as spontaneous behaviour was not encouraged.
The Passage by Vance Palmer was set for the Intermediate Certificate and The History of Mr Polly by H.G.Wells for the Leaving Certificate.Hardly earth shattering stuff! I can't remember the poetry studied: there could have been Judith Wrigth and Kenneth Slessor.Lacking were any teachers who could breathe some life into literature and generate enthusiasm.
At 15 or 16 I read two love stories that made a great impact on me at the time.They were "First Love" by Ivan Turgenev and "The Apple Tree" by John Galsworthy.Being impressionable, I identified with the young men in the stories and thought being in love was like this.I became the young men and lived through their enchantments and agonies.Some years later I realised they were infatuated with the particular young women, projecting their fantasies onto them.But at the time these stories evoked a state of magic in me.I also read "Tess of the Durbervilles" by Thomas Hardy and a scene where Tess wakes from an a snooze and stretches like a cat in the afternoon sunlight lodged vividly in my imagination.
Le Grand Meaulnes (The Lost Domain) by Alain-Fournier (1886-1914) weaved a spell over me.It is a story of growing up and losing the the magic of our young years.The rapture of the lost domain lodged deep in my mind but the actual book was forgotten, and it was only some years later that I rediscovered this book.
At University I studied economics, government, industrial relations and sociology.Boring, boring,boring.I was a socialist and read Marx, Marcuse and many New Left works, which exposed shortcomings of the conventional wisdom in the textbooks I had to read.To escape from my studies I read works by Balzac,Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and hugely enjoyed Tolstoy's masterpiece War and Peace.I had a "decadent" period, reading Baudelaire,Rimbaud,Gautier,Lautreamont,Huysmans' Against Nature and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.These books stimulated in imagination my desire for strange and exotic experiences.
After University I was able to read only those books which I chose.I discovered the writings of Hermann Hesse.Demian just blew me away.It was the first book I read that spoke to my inner self.I was ready for some soul growth and this book came at the right time.Demian is the story of a youth learning about his true nature through various initiations.Of the many Hermann Hesse books I have read I would put Demian and Steppenwolf at the top of the list.
I was not only looking for knowledge in my reading, but also excitement which I got from Jack Kerouac's writings. For a while Neal Cassady was my hero, with his high powered energy and crazy criss-crossings of America. Years later, when I read books about the Beats such as Kerouac's biography by Ann Charters I saw the reality of their lives: drink, drugs, and broken relationships. The glamour is in the reader's mind.
A major discovery for me was William Blake.I had an instant rapport with his cosmic vision.He is a real prophet for humanity.As a poet, visionary and painter he is in a class of his own.Richard Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness also appealed to my mystic aspirations.I greatly appreciated the writings of Henry David Thoreau for his timeless philosophy of life and advocacy of learning from Nature.
The Dharma Bums by Kerouac and writings of Allen Ginsberg prompted me to investigate Eastern religions.I read works by D.T.Suzuki on Zen Buddhism and many works by Alan Watts.I did some elementary yoga practices and for a few years considered myself a Buddhist.The works of Alan Watts are very readable, but eventually I came to see them as being too facile, skimming the surface and lacking depth.(I have ditched Eastern religions because they are patriarchal and world-denying.)
The next author to impress me was the English(or Welsh) writer John Cowper Powys.He wrote sprawling novels, letters, diaries, literary appreciations and philosophy of life books.His enthusiastic advocacy of the classic authors encouraged to read many of them.In particular I appreciate Wordsworth, Keats, Walt Whitman,Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. From Powys' philosophy of life I got a renewed interest in the magic of Nature. I can relate to his animistic/polytheistic outlook.I find his novels too idiosyncratic.Currently I am reading Petrushka and the Dancer, the Diaries of John Cowper Powys 1929-1939, which has renewed my interest in him after a good many years.Above all, I get from his works the importance of (mythic) imagination in everyday life.My all time favourite novel is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, especially for the range of characters and humour.
Moving on about ten years, the books that next made a real impact on me were in the esoteric field.Linda Goodman's Sun Signs provoked a study of Astrology.Her descriptions of my sign,Aquarius, rang true, making more sense than any psychology book.I learnt how to construct a birth chart and interprete it.I read many works on astrology, those of Dane Rudhyar standing out.For chart interpretation I like Katharine Merlin and Isobel Hickey, as well as my own knowledge and intuition.
My horizons have been broadened by reading works by feminists authors on patriarchy and religion.Some of these are Merlin Stone When God was a Woman, Mary Daly Beyond God the Father, Monica Sjoo The Great Cosmic Mother,and Karen Armstrong The Gospel According to Woman.It is these and other women writers who have exposed the core of patriarchy, particularly in relation to religion.They bring new insights that men have not been aware of.
I have read many works on the tarot, the Golden Dawn, the Western Mystery tradition and related areas.I find the works of Dion Fortune and R.J.Stewart extra noteworthy.Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah is one of the best books on the subject, and of her occult novels I like best The Sea Priestess and The Goat Foot God.The Complete Merlin Tarot Book by R.J. Stewart is very comprehensive and presents the tarot in a pristine condition.It is in the Celtic and Western Mystery traditions and sweeps away much accumulated occult baggage.A number of his other works contain powerful visualisation excercises.Various works by John and Caitlin Matthews on Celtic tradition have influenced me. A person can change his or her consciousness by wide reading in a chosen tradition, especially the myths and legends.
Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime by Robert Lawlor is an excellent book on the Australian Aborigines.It shows they had a sophisticated metaphysical system that enabled them to live in harmony with the land for over 100,000 years.An Aboriginal once said that the white man has lost his Dreaming.This is so true, and a book like this can help us regain it.
Alvin Boyd Kuhn on the ancient wisdom
Recently I have discovered the works of Alvin Boyd (Sept.22,1880 - 1963), born near the hamlet of Upton, Franklin County, Pennsylvania.In his many works,such as The Lost Light: an interpretation of ancient scriptures (1940) and Shadow of the Third Century: a revaluation of Christianity (1949), he gives the clearest exposition of the ancient wisdom I have ever come across.He also shows very forcefully how the Church of Rome tossed out and distorted the true message of the ancient wisdom, to the detriment of humanity for 1800 years.
From ancient times it was recognised that people had a divine spark within, given various names in different places, such as Osiris/Horus in Egypt, Orpheus in Greece and so on.The early Christians called this divine spark the Christ ( from karast or mummy in ancient Egypt).The historical Jesus was a complete fabrication by the Church which,in the 3rd century, became a political organisation and jettisoned the true meaning of the Christ and wiped out the ancient wisdom from its own teachings and destroyed nearly all of the ancient wisdom writings .Kuhn explains Christian scriptures in their true light, that is, as symbolic statements of the ancient wisdom.To him ,true Christianity is part of the ancient wisdom, it is the Church which has deviated from the true path. This wisdom is lying right under our noses, and Kuhn is able to explain it very clearly.
I have read much to find answers to life.Once I thought that somewhere there was a book with the answers, so I searched and searched.But answers come from our own experience and development.We can read very wise words, but they can only have an impact if we are at a stage to receive them.The best and most cherished books are those which enrich our life by stimulating the imagination and promoting true knowledge.