The inspiration for this site comes from the Towerland, its creatures, visitors, winds, ancient trees and streams, from years of seeking the truth of how we live and how we could live. And some essential books, a few of which I annotate below.
The Hebrew Goddess by Raphaël Patai
An exacting but readable academic book that, by close study of the Old Testament and the archaeological record, reveals the semi-hidden Jewish Goddess or Shekinah. Apart from her story in ancient times [the most important part] Patai traces the idea of a Mother Goddess through the later history of Jewish religion.
The Living Goddesses, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974) by Marija Gimbutas
- Marija Gimbutas
Gimbutas was an Anthropologist who suggested that a more planet-friendly egalitarian civilization existed in (very) ancient Europe.
‘In chapter 6 Gimbutas discusses matrilineal inheritance, stating her belief that the peoples of Old Europe handed down their goods through the female line. In matrilineal societies, women are economically viable since they are able to inherit goods. This leads to greater female autonomy and greater respect for the female. Gimbutas relates social respect for the female to religious respect for the female – the worshiping of goddesses – and states that Old European matrilineal societies, therefore, honored both mortal females and female deities. Consequently, in her opinion these cultures were equalitarian in social structure, honoring both women and men.’
– citations from Miriam Robbins Dexter’s (editor) intro to The Living Goddesses by Gimbutas.
‘Megalithic monuments, which served as places of both ritual and burial, flourished throughout western Europe. Many of these monuments were anthropomorphic in shape, representing the full figure of the goddess. Many, such as Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland and the Maltese Hypogeum, were decorated with regenerative symbols such as the spiral and the coiled snake. These tombs, shaped like the goddess of death and regeneration, were the womb of the goddess.’ The Living Goddesses
A condensed well-written summary about the Mother Goddess across the Ancient World and pre-historical times is here: https://www.thecollector.com/divine-feminine-ancient-art/
A Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman
A very readable novel that fictionalizes research into the Bonobos (primates similar to but behaviourally distinct from Chimpanzees) and is very relevant to how we could learn to be true to our real natures aside from the distortions of patriarchal religion.
‘Bonobos are different from chimps. They don’t go to war with rival groups; they’ve never been recorded to kill. Even when they struggle for dominance inside their own group, there’s almost no violence, just a lot of yelling and slapping things around. The worst I’ve ever seen was a male getting bit. Three drops of blood and they were all so surprised. Every one of them came over to inspect the cut several times.’
Bonobo behaviour, and the way they differ from chimps, seems to support a hypothesis that this subspecies of primate ‘self-domesticated’ or tamed themselves, eliminating angry competition and violence from their lives. The way their social groups evolved placed a greater emphasis on social skills and conciliation rather than aggression. If this was true for bonobos, then why not humans?
The Story of Sex: A Graphic History Through the Ages by Philippe Brenot and Laetitia Coryn
Another book that pushes our understanding of so many ideas that we take for granted but ought to re-examine if we want to save ourselves and the planet.
Island by Aldous Huxley
Huxley was the author of Brave New World (1931), a modernist dystopia that brilliantly predicts much of today’s madness in mass culture and conditioned behaviour. Island from 1962 was his last book, not nearly as well known (or seductive) but is his despairing testament to insist that a better world is within our grasp if only…
‘the great world of impersonal forces and proliferating numbers, of collective paranoias, and organized diabolism. And always, everywhere, there would be the yelling or quietly authoritative hypnotists; and in the train of the ruling suggestion givers, always and everywhere, the tribes of buffoons and hucksters, the professional liars, the purveyors of entertaining irrelevances. Conditioned from the cradle, unceasingly distracted, mesmerized systematically, their uniformed victims would go on obediently marching and countermarching, go on, always and everywhere, killing and dying with the perfect docility of trained poodles.’
News from Nowhere (1890) by William Morris
An artist, designer, poet, radical thinker his masterpiece of ‘Why not?’ proposing a communal, kind, and fulfilling life and lifestyle on the Goddess’ green earth. Please read it.
- William Morris in his working smock
- Frontispiece of News from Nowhere
The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth
A 1952 Science Fiction book that skewers the world of corporate-driven consumerism and environmental degradation. Its predictions become truer, unfortunately, with every passing year.
Journey to the East by Herman Hesse
For me this is the only book about a spiritual journey that really works and, apart from anything else, it’s about a group experience and the spiritual journeys we need to make are those in brother-and-sisterhood, in the work of tikkun, not in some search for solo enlightenment and self-perfection.
The Overstory by Richard Powers
This has got to be one of the most mind-opening books you will ever read. Powers tells linked stories that turn the way we see the natural world upside down.
‘Until a short while ago, we didn’t even let chimpanzees have consciousness, let alone dogs or dolphins. Only man, you see: only man could know enough to want things. But believe me: trees want something from us, just as we’ve always wanted things from them. This isn’t mystical. The ‘environment’ is alive—a fluid, changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other. Love and war can’t be teased apart. Flowers shape bees as much as bees shape flowers. Berries may compete to be eaten more than animals compete for the berries. A thorn acacia makes sugary protein treats to feed and enslave the ants who guard it. Fruit-bearing plants trick us into distributing their seeds, and ripening fruit led to color vision. In teaching us how to find their bait, trees taught us to see that the sky is blue. Our brains evolved to solve the forest. We’ve shaped and been shaped by forests for longer than we’ve been Homo sapiens.’
‘She could tell them about a simple machine needing no fuel and little maintenance, one that steadily sequesters carbon, enriches the soil, cools the ground, scrubs the air, and scales easily to any size. A tech that copies itself and even drops food for free. A device so beautiful it’s the stuff of poems. If forests were patentable, she’d get an ovation.’
