FOUR BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

LET'S TALK ABOUT BOOKS, BABY...

Reading the room of the collective and the heinous happenings right now, all I can imagine doing is repeatedly smashing my head against the wall. But instead I will take you on a journey to my favorite escapism since I was a child - BOOKS! In this case there are no fantasy lands to escape to, because all these books are pretty raw, but nonetheless they changed the trajectory of my life so I’ll introduce them to you as old friends.

The thing about books is when they find you, they need to find you. Even if it takes you several years of eyeing them in The Pile™ before you get to them. There is a reason they call to you, even the silliest or smuttiest. But there is also a reason they throw you out. Don’t ever feel guilty for not finishing books or barely starting books, they were done with you. At that time of your life you either don’t need them, already got everything you were supposed to get from them, or you’re not ready for what else they can give you yet.  

Trust the books! They know better. 

Ps. There are no affiliate links, please find them in your small local bookshops if possible!

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WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES by Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

As you can tell from the picture of my copy, this book has been LOVED. It is the first thing I reach for in any type of crisis or rebirth. Also to be honest, most of my books are highlighted, full of post-it markers and scribbles, and probably crumbs and grease. I think that’s love.

To emphasize how much this book means to me I have to share that not only did I start my own book with a quote from this book, but I have a phrase from it tattooed on the front of my neck. It says “La Que Sabe”, She Who Knows. The Wise Woman archetype, representing the ancient, wild, and intuitive knowledge of women, which is essentially what the entire book is about. 

I bought this book in a tiny witch shop in Amsterdam I frequented and the lovely Italian girl who works there told me her sleep paralysis simply stopped and never returned after reading this book. Incredible. 

It’s 500 pages in tiny script and it’s incredibly deep so it took me 6 months to chew through it the first time and I only read it during cacao ceremonies. So this isn’t a poolside read, but it is the scripture of the most instinctual, most ancient wisdom women have lost as our gender was colonized.

It is structured around folk and fairytales and focuses a lot on indigenous and ancestral knowledge about women’s deepest inner lives, power, or creativity. Our shame, fears, anger, the way we lose ourselves, hide ourselves, how we yearn and love and die and kill and resurrect, over and over again, laid out for us to understand and come home to. 

We were meant to be wild, because we are beyond powerful. 

“So what compromises the Wild Woman? From the viewpoint of archetypal psychology as well as in ancient traditions, she is the female soul. Yet she is more; she is the source of the feminine. She is all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden - she is the basis. (...) We are all filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught to feel shame for such a desire. But the shadow of the Wild Woman still lurks around us during our days and in our nights.” 

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IF WOMEN ROSE ROOTED by Sharon Blackie 

This book got me to move across the continent and back to my hometown after twelve years away, a plot twist I did not expect. Last year I felt incredibly lost and every time I looked for answers, I ran into walls. I don’t even know how I found this book, but I know it found me.

The format is very similar to the previous book, as in the author uses folk tales to explore certain themes and I’m sure much of it is based on Pinkola Estes’ book because it has her signature all over it. But it’s about her life story of finding roots in her ancestral land and mythology, and the ancient way of living in harmony with nature, after a life of chasing the urban corporate dream. It is about finding home… within, mostly. 

Our lives under capitalism, a patriarchy, a manufactured Father God is ruled by principles and norms that are the opposite of a woman's soul and roots. So sometimes we run around trying to find our place in it, but it only leads us to despair. The Heroine’s journey is not the same as the Hero’s. We are not meant to slay dragons and claim kingdoms…

“She would rather engage with the dragon than kill him, entice him into her purposely diverse team, harness his unique skills. In the Otherworld, the long, hard process of transformation has been initiated; fragmented and dismembered by her experience in the dark, she starts now by searching for the lost pieces of herself. The Journey requires her to explore the source of her own belonging, find her centre, begin to recover an understanding of her own place in the great, connected web of the world. She is walking her way back into being.”

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WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN by Merlin Stone 

For the longest time my journey with feminism and spirituality/magick were on separate tracks, then this book happened and I realized what we rediscover today as women’s mysteries is simply our buried past we’ve never even heard about. It is feminist literature, yes, but mostly a history book. About women’s history. Because what we’ve all been taught at school was written by the victor. 

Before the patriarchy, before Father Gods were implanted on sky thrones, before the colonization of Mother Earth, we lived in matriarchal societies worshipping the Goddess for at least 150,000 years. This current system is a blip in time, a violent anomaly. And reclaiming the real order begins with learning our true history. Not just about religion, about how women are leaders, inventors, oracles, healers.

(Actually, a book that is even better and deeper than this is called The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, but it’s a 500 page marathon of concentrated information, so proceed at your own risk.) 

“In most archaeological texts the female religion is referred to as a "fertility cult," perhaps revealing the attitudes toward sexuality held by the various contemporary religions that may have influenced the writers. But archaeological and mythological evidence of the veneration of the female deity as creator and lawmaker of the universe, prophetess, provider of human destinies, inventor, healer, hunter and valiant leader in battle suggests the the title "fertility cult” may be a gross oversimplification of a complex theological structure.”

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INITIATION by Elisabeth Haich 

And lastly a book that completely unraveled the fabric of reality for me. Written by a Hungarian spiritual teacher (I am Hungarian, hence why you may not be able to read the book title above) born in the late 1800’s, this book is a novel about a woman with quite a "regular" life, who starts dreaming about her past life of being a pharaoh’s daughter in 4500 BC Egypt, where she goes through the entire process of being initiated into the hidden mystical teachings of the priesthood, which is just about as high as spiritual initiations go. She wrote it as a novel on purpose, because sharing this type of wisdom and the secrets of expanding consciousness would’ve attracted the wrong kind of attention in the 70’s, when it was written. 

I technically still haven’t finished this book and I’ve been working on it for about 6 years (they throw you out, remember?) but at one point I literally lost track of time and dimensions and I had an out of body experience for at least a week while reading it. It’s not an easy read, nor is most of the wisdom easy to process or understand. But I think we connect with it on a soul level and it changes us on a soul level. If you are brave enough, this is for you. 

“Everything that is, I am! In everything I love, I love myself, for the only things we think we don’t love are what we haven’t yet come to recognize within ourselves! The self is life and the only reality, and whoever is initiated into the self - and in this way has come to know himself completely - loves everything and everyone equally, for he is one with them.”

Enjoy! And if you wish, I'll share more book recommendations along the way!