As our society becomes more comfortable with psychedelic drug use, we will begin to see more metaphoric comparisons like this. I have been saying the same thing for years regarding music. As a sound healer (with over 10 years of experience btw, unlike so many sudden sound healers that sprang up during the lockdowns), I have always known about this. It wasn't until I began reading about psychedelic studies that I realized this is the language I needed to explain what sound, music, and the arts in general can do for the psyche.
The same can be said for dance, drawing/painting/sculture, the act of writing itself, as well as religious worship. Monks in the east have taught us to meditate using breath patterns, vocalizations, as well as what appears to be simple walking around the garden.
We have many opportunities for "psychedelic" experiences. I believe it is our birthright.
I love this perspective of reading as a psychedelic drug. I agree. I became hooked on it as soon as I was able to comprehend the act itself.
Fascinating — and I totally agree that any art form can be psychedelic. I’ve rarely had a more psyche-expanding experience than standing in a room full of Rothkos. Thanks so much for reading!
Ah yes! I had my first and only experiences in front of Rothko paintings. Rothko speaks/communicates through his painting in a way that I was physically and emotionally overwhelmed by.
Oh Ellie, this is just so wonderful and so timely. I have been engaging with Paul Kingsnorth's writing on the Abbey of Misrule in which he posits that the internet may be a portal, a way for dark forces to infiltrate our reality. And if this is true (and I am beginning to think that he is right) I think part of the way they may be able to do this is because of the nature of our bodily engagement with a glowing screen, it's ability to disrupt our natural hormonal cycles, the false light of back lit screens out of sync with seasonal rhymes.
And of course the speed at which memes become disseminated, out pacing our capacity to fully absorb their meaning and overwhelming our critical faculties, in Steve Bannon's phrase 'flooding the zone with shit'. (There is a whole other discussion to be had about whether the memes that flood the public consiousness via the internet are themselves the demonic energies that he's talking about, egregores)
So reading in the way you are describing is exactly the opposite of this, it is as a portal to opposite energies, ones of slow contemplative wisdom transmission at a pace that can be fully and deeply absorbed by the human mind. I am Irish and I always think of the stunning Book of Kells, the illuminated manuscript that must have had so much time and devotion dedicated to its creation, energy that comes through on its perusal. The Enlightment strip mined our perceptual awareness, imo, narrowing it to the decoding of glyphs on pages (and I also think the introduction of coffee had an influence on changing consiousness!).
Anyway, please, please keep writing and exploring. You are pushing the boundaries and we are all behind you!
Ahhh BM, thank you so much for this and for your other, ever-enriching comments. You are definitely tipping me over into re-subscribing to The Abbey of Misrule — just intuitively, this idea that the internet is a portal rings SO true to me.
I love “the Enlightenment strip-mined our perceptual awareness” — YES.
I’ve actually been thinking of starting a lectio divina group for subscribers of this Substack — but it would have to be online, so perhaps using the dark portal of the screen would outweigh the benefits of engaging deeply together like that. Something to mull, anyway.
As I read your essay, I was reminded of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The way most cursory reading is done, the words are like the shadows projected on the cave’s wall. An illusion of reality.
A deeper reading is like the effort of the prisoners that crawl out of the cave into the sunlight. The wisdom in the writing is revealed only by the true light of understanding.
That sounds like a wonderful idea Ellie, and I'm sure there are ways around the false light of the screen problem. We are all connecting here online after all, so it's not all bad. I feel like I'm very aware that the internet is the front door to the rest of the world, mine has a latch chain on it, so that only people I like get in!
Incidentally, I don't think this problem is confined to texts, I think images have also been decontextualised and stripped of deeper meaning to a similar extent.
I have had a discussion with Meg over on Missives on the Edge about images, I hope you don't mind if I quote from it , it was about a piece I came across where a Harvard professor discussed the benefits of sustained attention to a painting:
‘just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness.’
and I went on...
'And what I think has happened over the last 300 years is that our sensual perception has both narrowed and sped up. We are children of the Enlightment, our eyes flick over the surface of reality, we look, but we don’t see anymore. And the pace of life has sped up (interesting that this is also the time that caffeine became a key part of Western lifestyles)
So our big mistake is that the world is immediately accessible to our visual senses.'
Perhaps the deeper take away is that our visual sense has been corrupted both for reading and looking at images. Maybe the way to restore this is to recognise (as you have done) and to attempt a restoration and recontextualising of both reading and seeing. Perhaps it might be worth asking your audience how they think we could retool online reading to do that? For example, asking your audience to read texts aloud, copy portions by hand? Reflect on the processing of meaning and the situational awareness of when meaning arrived? I sometimes find that letting a text sit in awareness for some time, means that an insight pops up in unexpected locations, like the bus or the supermarket queue!
Anyway, sorry if this is off track, but I do think you are onto something....
I love all these ideas -- am bearing them in mind as I pull together this lectio divina idea. Thank you! Not off track at all.
And I absolutely agree about the benefit of sustained attention to a painting. I always try to look at only one or two things, whenever I go to a gallery. It feels so strange to just wander round and look at everything briefly -- like going to a party and saying two words each to 150 people. Awful.
Thank you so much for all your rich thoughts and insights!
Yes, Ellie! All Hail The visceral, the corporeal, the carnal, the embodied!
I had two teachers for my English A Level. Mr Heft - a horrible bully and a nonce (convicted eventually!) who utterly ruined Shakespeare for me (and I got off lightly, obviously). He was the ultimate dissector, once exploding into a violent rage because none of the sixth form class could give a definition of a particular word. "How can you understand the play if you don't know what every word means!!" It was only about ten years ago that, determined to reclaim the Bard from him, I went to see Measure for Measure at the Globe.
And then there was Mr Gardener. A beautiful, effete man who enthralled us with Chaucer and Blake. Said 'cunt' (let forth a thunderous farte clap) and arranged a trip for us to see Blake's manuscripts at Cambridge through his personal connections. Wonderful teacher.
No reason for me to tell you all this! But that's where *I* went reading your piece. Xx
LOVE this. Gods bless the great English teachers of the world; they are true spiritual leaders. Glad you’re finding your way back to the bard. I don’t think there’s ever a wrong time.
So refreshing to understand the point of lectio divina. Feeling that meditative approach to reading in not trying to analyze everything, but simply emboding it. As much as I like prescriptive non-fiction and the escapism of good fiction, this reminder to just take it in without judgement is pretty liberating. Makes me want to read more poetry, especially that which I cannot decipher but for the prosody. New ears for folks like Dylan Thomas, who I love but cannot understand for the life of me . . . and maybe that's exactly the point. Great stuff here.
"understanding" in the cognitive sense is waaaaaaay overrated when it comes to poetry, imo. So glad this sparked something for you! Thank you for reading.
So enjoyed reading this, Ellie! I'm remembering many wonderful evenings with a group of friends--actors, musicians, a couple of writers. None of us scholars, but all of us with a love for literature. We'd get together at each other's homes, have a simple meal and spend the evening doing a round robin reading of a Greek play, short novel, long poem, ancient tale. We would all read the piece in advance but what a different experience it was when we read it together. It came alive in such unexpected ways! I'm not sure how much wisdom we gained, but those evenings were filled with joy and delight which is probably almost as good.
Thank you for your wonderful pieces, all of them! I work with a somatic movement practice where poetic images are read aloud, embodied and (perhaps) lead to movement. From a state of releasing tension, the whole self (physicality, imagination, emotions…) is available to receive the image and for ’it’ to move you. Some dances I have experienced have been earth quakingly life changing, reweaving every tendril of my being, travelling in deep time, becoming dancing particles in space. Simply letting the words move me, being touched by the god in them.
Thank you so much for reading! This somatic practice sounds great — maybe a little like butoh? Or is it butoh? I just started practicing butoh and it is absolutely blowing my mind — the link between somatics and imaginal/poetic practice feels like exactly what I’ve been looking for my whole life.
It’s called Skinner Releasing Technique, developed by dancer Joan Skinner. A different approach to butoh and body weather, which I also absolutely love. Finding SRT was for me just like what you describe - exactly what I’d been looking for my whole life. I introduce it a little in my most recent post, with a link for more info, then some somatic poetry audio. Welcome to ((center for resonance))!! Wonderful to know that you too are dancing Ellie, I can feel that movement in your writing.
I did a few SRT sessions and it was great! I don’t think I found the right teacher though. So glad you have. I love the idea of a Soma Sonata. Just subscribed to the Center for Resonance!
Oh I get what you mean. It’s so much about how you receive the resonance of a voice. It’s rare that I meet other teachers these days as there’s no others in Sweden, so I practice solo and give myself the classes when I teach.
Thanks for subscribing! I look forward to share more Soma Sonata with you!
Brava Ellie! I applaud your intellectual rigor and the evolution of your consciousness. I believe your kind of writing and reading is exactly what humanity needs at this point in our planet's history. I've just spend some time reading some of your posts and essays, and not only am I grateful to have found your work, but I'm also curious as to your educational background as you seem to be such a free thinker. I see on your website's 'About' page that you are doing or have done a "Masters in mythology and oral culture at Dartington Arts School in Devon." That sounds fascinating in itself. I'm also curious if you know of Michael Pollan's work - in particular his book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.
I know of a spiritual teacher who says something similar, "Forget hope, you're all going to die." And I believe that it's only in facing this reality that we can truly find joy in the living of the human experience as a spiritual being.
and p.p.s. Wow to this: "Did you know that Maslow borrowed his hierarchy of needs from the beliefs of the Blackfeet Nation, and never attributed the idea?"
and this is fascinating:
"In the Blackfeet Nation version, self-actualization isn’t life’s final destination — it’s the start.
No, the final destination — the goal of life — is cultural perpetuity:
the recognition that each member of the community will die,
so success means not individual flourishing, which can only ever be ephemeral,
but rather the vitality and preservation of community wisdom and ways through the ages, beyond the lifespan of any individual."
Camilla! Thank you so much for this lovely comment, and I’m so sorry it’s taken me a while to reply. I’ll confess that after many years of publishing a newsletter for about 80 people, I’m a little overwhelmed by all the lovely new readers and comments, and I had to step away for a while in order to get back on track with my other work.
It’s so lovely of you to read my older work. Thank you. You asked about my educational background — I have a BA and an MA in English lit, and another MA, in Poetics of Imagination, taught mostly by Valentin Gerlier and Alice Oswald at Dartington, with a few cameos from Martin Shaw. That last degree was the one that changed my life. Though lots of other things have been huge teachers to me too, not least the journey of addiction and recovery in a 12-step program, plus spending 11 years flitting around the world, and being addicted to reading.
Really glad you popped by — and apologies again for my tardiness in replying. x
Ellie you mention Valentin Gerlier teaching you Blake. As you know he is a dear friend of mine, I know he would be happy to offer an online Blake course/study group if people are interested. Obviously there would be a fee for this. I already have three people interested - can we get more? Could you promote this. I learnt my Blake from Dr Kathleen Raine, but find Blake a never ending joy after 35 years and I would love to study him under Dr G who,is one of the finest teachers I know. Please let me know your thoughts. David.brazier@substack.com #thebrazieroftruth on instagram.
Hi Ellie, I love reading your lucid and thought-provoking essays, and I'm going to respond to the last two here, as I didn't get round to writing my thoughts earlier.
Many cultures, including the monks you write about, practiced the recitation of sacred texts as a way to connect with God, Consciousness or whatever we wish to call it ( definitely not sky-daddy god as you say) Reading aloud is powerful, yes, however when meter is added, and the words are sung to a simple, repetitive melody, they resonate on a different frequency within our minds and bodies, which makes the transcendent experience more accessible. In Sanskrit this practice is called Swadhyaya , and in Welsh it is Plygain. I've experienced both and it can be be very powerful. I think reading some poetry aloud can also have a similar effect. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was God" We can read this as the power of the word, the Matrika Shakti spoken of in the Vedas, the energy in words, in Welsh this is called Awen.
I also wanted to mention the Shiva Sutras to you, just in case you have not come across them. In your last essay you wrote about Consciousness contracting into human form, ''from the imagined realm into this material realm.' The Shiva Sutras describes this contraction from absolute potential into limited awareness, and the pathway back to supreme Consciousness. https://ia600505.us.archive.org/15/items/Scriptures/Jaideva_Singh_Siva_Sutras.pdf.
The words hold the experience, it's heady reading.
I think all the elements of lectio divina come naturally when the text is recited, and the silence afterwards is profound and vibrant, full of that indefinable presence that uplifts and expands us.
Josie, thank you so much for this. I haven’t read the Shiva Sutras but it absolutely sounds like I need to — thank you, thank you for sharing.
And I agree that the stages of lectio divina sort of happen naturally when you engage a poem in a deep and bodily and slow way. In fact, that’s what happened in the experience I mentioned with Blake. The reading session wasn’t formally structured as lectio divina; it’s just that I realized later that that was pretty much what was going on. It seems to me that those five stages are definitely intuitive — but it’s also helpful to have a more structured framework at this late stage of rationalization of everything.
Thank you so much for the wonderful insights and conversation, and for your generous reading. x
tangentially related: have you come across the theory that Jesus' parables were *not* meant to be interpreted literally or allegorically, but were designed more like Zen koans—baffling the Left brain so that the Right could open up to the sublime? it makes a lot of sense, if we imagine pre-literate villagers from 2,000 years ago, who didn't have our Cartesian head trauma and might only have needed a gentle push to switch hemispheres.
Fascinating! I’ll have to spend some time with this. Though it strikes me that I already know how to do this through two very different activities - reading the I Ching (mirrors the five stages almost exactly) and possibly following a recipe for cooking if the purpose of the dish is in some way an act of love of care.
Oooh that is fascinating. I’m not experienced with the I Ching and had no idea it mirrored this process. I keep meaning to move towards it but it never feels like the right time, though this has nudged it closer to the centre of my consciousness.
My attitude to recipes is nowhere near as reverent or considered as yours, by the sounds of it.
Dear Ellie, this came in such a right moment. thank you. thank you! I have read about lectio divia in the Wisdom of Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault, where she describes the christians mystic's way of relating to a sacred text and how to practice this, so I am happy to be reminded of this through your wonderful essay, very powerful!
Great piece! To me, all of reality is a living tissue. Texts, the same, though their potencies, can vary widely, think the difference between the vitality of a rock versus the vitality of a human being. Arthur Versluis talks about the “heiroeidetic” function of texts in his book on Platonic Mysticism. The idea is much like what you say: texts are living things. Texts which have a heiroeidetic function are capable of transmuting consciousness, they are often considered to have initiatory power. William Blake is certainly one known to have that kind of potency to it. Hence, your mystical experience. I, too, have and continue to have deep, transformative experiences with texts. In the end, I just wanted to say, I really enjoyed reading this and am glad people are rediscovering and discussing just how potent reading can be. There is a group practice called philosophical fellowship that is like a group lectio divina, one by John Vervaeke, but which he derived from Ran Lahav who wrote an essay called “Philosophical Practice as Contemplative Philosophy” which is further detailed in Lahav’s book “Philosophical Contemplation,” which may be of interest to you. It’s a great practice, some call it a “secular seance.”
Thank you so much for this! So many threads I want to pull on, especially the Arthur Versluis book (can’t wait to read that!) and the secular seances. I will be digging deeper. Such a pleasure to meet others who are reading and experiencing the world in similar ways. Thank you for writing!
Two major comforts and excitements were brought out of me reading this:
1) That with the last two books I have engaged with, I became aware of a subconscious pull toward this practice, yet early on it tended to get stifled by my fearful/rational ego protection, but now as I approach the last few pages of perhaps the most powerful book I have ever met, I feel clarity and confidence in adopting this practice intentionally.
2) That my close friend Mizraim and I have on more than one occasion over the summer, stood in his kitchen reading passages aloud from books or poems we were praising that week. I have plans with him tonight and I will be bringing this subject up to him to try to make us both aware of the practice we had no idea we were already beginning.
Thank you for your writing. I’m looking forward to learning even more!
Ahhh this comment made me SO happy! I’d love to know what the book is that you mention in your first comment. Perhaps the most powerful book you’ve ever read! Sounds amazing.
And you know, I think it is instinctive, to read this way. When I look at my young niece, who is just learning to read, it seems to be the way she is absorbing the pages. Almost eating them with her eyes, and saying the words aloud, over and over. I think we just get that schooled out of us later.
Please let me know how your further adventures in reading go!
I think that’s absolutely true that we get it schooled out of us. It’s sometimes difficult not to feel really jaded against my early education when a book absolutely unlocks some secret I felt was kept from me until a person wrote it. The book is called The Lost Country by J.R. Salamanca, about a boy growing up in Virginia (it’s so much more).
I’ve read two of his books I loved, this one and another called Lilith. Thank you for connecting with me on this!
I absolutely love this idea, and it comes at a timely moment for me - I've just started a postgrad course in teaching creative writing and in my first assignment I want to explore ideas of care in the creative writing classroom. And now I'm wondering what it would look like to encourage students to use lectio divina while reading each other's workshop submissions. The stage where you cultivate humility seems like it could be particularly apt in what risks being a competitive and emotionally raw environment. I may be quoting this essay!
As our society becomes more comfortable with psychedelic drug use, we will begin to see more metaphoric comparisons like this. I have been saying the same thing for years regarding music. As a sound healer (with over 10 years of experience btw, unlike so many sudden sound healers that sprang up during the lockdowns), I have always known about this. It wasn't until I began reading about psychedelic studies that I realized this is the language I needed to explain what sound, music, and the arts in general can do for the psyche.
The same can be said for dance, drawing/painting/sculture, the act of writing itself, as well as religious worship. Monks in the east have taught us to meditate using breath patterns, vocalizations, as well as what appears to be simple walking around the garden.
We have many opportunities for "psychedelic" experiences. I believe it is our birthright.
I love this perspective of reading as a psychedelic drug. I agree. I became hooked on it as soon as I was able to comprehend the act itself.
Fascinating — and I totally agree that any art form can be psychedelic. I’ve rarely had a more psyche-expanding experience than standing in a room full of Rothkos. Thanks so much for reading!
Ah yes! I had my first and only experiences in front of Rothko paintings. Rothko speaks/communicates through his painting in a way that I was physically and emotionally overwhelmed by.
YES. It's wild, isn't it, how much power is in those paintings?
Ah, those notes between the sounds. That's what I remember from my one experience of sound healing. Like tiny crystal bells.
YES! So much energy happening in those moments.
Oh Ellie, this is just so wonderful and so timely. I have been engaging with Paul Kingsnorth's writing on the Abbey of Misrule in which he posits that the internet may be a portal, a way for dark forces to infiltrate our reality. And if this is true (and I am beginning to think that he is right) I think part of the way they may be able to do this is because of the nature of our bodily engagement with a glowing screen, it's ability to disrupt our natural hormonal cycles, the false light of back lit screens out of sync with seasonal rhymes.
And of course the speed at which memes become disseminated, out pacing our capacity to fully absorb their meaning and overwhelming our critical faculties, in Steve Bannon's phrase 'flooding the zone with shit'. (There is a whole other discussion to be had about whether the memes that flood the public consiousness via the internet are themselves the demonic energies that he's talking about, egregores)
So reading in the way you are describing is exactly the opposite of this, it is as a portal to opposite energies, ones of slow contemplative wisdom transmission at a pace that can be fully and deeply absorbed by the human mind. I am Irish and I always think of the stunning Book of Kells, the illuminated manuscript that must have had so much time and devotion dedicated to its creation, energy that comes through on its perusal. The Enlightment strip mined our perceptual awareness, imo, narrowing it to the decoding of glyphs on pages (and I also think the introduction of coffee had an influence on changing consiousness!).
Anyway, please, please keep writing and exploring. You are pushing the boundaries and we are all behind you!
Ahhh BM, thank you so much for this and for your other, ever-enriching comments. You are definitely tipping me over into re-subscribing to The Abbey of Misrule — just intuitively, this idea that the internet is a portal rings SO true to me.
I love “the Enlightenment strip-mined our perceptual awareness” — YES.
I’ve actually been thinking of starting a lectio divina group for subscribers of this Substack — but it would have to be online, so perhaps using the dark portal of the screen would outweigh the benefits of engaging deeply together like that. Something to mull, anyway.
“Deus ex liber” a fascinating concept.
As I read your essay, I was reminded of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The way most cursory reading is done, the words are like the shadows projected on the cave’s wall. An illusion of reality.
A deeper reading is like the effort of the prisoners that crawl out of the cave into the sunlight. The wisdom in the writing is revealed only by the true light of understanding.
Yes! I love that. And I think we're heading into another very Neoplatonist moment right now, so it absolutely makes sense that this came to mind.
That sounds like a wonderful idea Ellie, and I'm sure there are ways around the false light of the screen problem. We are all connecting here online after all, so it's not all bad. I feel like I'm very aware that the internet is the front door to the rest of the world, mine has a latch chain on it, so that only people I like get in!
Incidentally, I don't think this problem is confined to texts, I think images have also been decontextualised and stripped of deeper meaning to a similar extent.
I have had a discussion with Meg over on Missives on the Edge about images, I hope you don't mind if I quote from it , it was about a piece I came across where a Harvard professor discussed the benefits of sustained attention to a painting:
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2013/10/the-power-of-patience
in which she said:
‘just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness.’
and I went on...
'And what I think has happened over the last 300 years is that our sensual perception has both narrowed and sped up. We are children of the Enlightment, our eyes flick over the surface of reality, we look, but we don’t see anymore. And the pace of life has sped up (interesting that this is also the time that caffeine became a key part of Western lifestyles)
So our big mistake is that the world is immediately accessible to our visual senses.'
Perhaps the deeper take away is that our visual sense has been corrupted both for reading and looking at images. Maybe the way to restore this is to recognise (as you have done) and to attempt a restoration and recontextualising of both reading and seeing. Perhaps it might be worth asking your audience how they think we could retool online reading to do that? For example, asking your audience to read texts aloud, copy portions by hand? Reflect on the processing of meaning and the situational awareness of when meaning arrived? I sometimes find that letting a text sit in awareness for some time, means that an insight pops up in unexpected locations, like the bus or the supermarket queue!
Anyway, sorry if this is off track, but I do think you are onto something....
I love all these ideas -- am bearing them in mind as I pull together this lectio divina idea. Thank you! Not off track at all.
And I absolutely agree about the benefit of sustained attention to a painting. I always try to look at only one or two things, whenever I go to a gallery. It feels so strange to just wander round and look at everything briefly -- like going to a party and saying two words each to 150 people. Awful.
Thank you so much for all your rich thoughts and insights!
Yes, Ellie! All Hail The visceral, the corporeal, the carnal, the embodied!
I had two teachers for my English A Level. Mr Heft - a horrible bully and a nonce (convicted eventually!) who utterly ruined Shakespeare for me (and I got off lightly, obviously). He was the ultimate dissector, once exploding into a violent rage because none of the sixth form class could give a definition of a particular word. "How can you understand the play if you don't know what every word means!!" It was only about ten years ago that, determined to reclaim the Bard from him, I went to see Measure for Measure at the Globe.
And then there was Mr Gardener. A beautiful, effete man who enthralled us with Chaucer and Blake. Said 'cunt' (let forth a thunderous farte clap) and arranged a trip for us to see Blake's manuscripts at Cambridge through his personal connections. Wonderful teacher.
No reason for me to tell you all this! But that's where *I* went reading your piece. Xx
LOVE this. Gods bless the great English teachers of the world; they are true spiritual leaders. Glad you’re finding your way back to the bard. I don’t think there’s ever a wrong time.
So refreshing to understand the point of lectio divina. Feeling that meditative approach to reading in not trying to analyze everything, but simply emboding it. As much as I like prescriptive non-fiction and the escapism of good fiction, this reminder to just take it in without judgement is pretty liberating. Makes me want to read more poetry, especially that which I cannot decipher but for the prosody. New ears for folks like Dylan Thomas, who I love but cannot understand for the life of me . . . and maybe that's exactly the point. Great stuff here.
"understanding" in the cognitive sense is waaaaaaay overrated when it comes to poetry, imo. So glad this sparked something for you! Thank you for reading.
Your piece is deeply thought provoking, and deserves to be read in the manner you prescribe! Thank you you
Thank you so much for reading!
So enjoyed reading this, Ellie! I'm remembering many wonderful evenings with a group of friends--actors, musicians, a couple of writers. None of us scholars, but all of us with a love for literature. We'd get together at each other's homes, have a simple meal and spend the evening doing a round robin reading of a Greek play, short novel, long poem, ancient tale. We would all read the piece in advance but what a different experience it was when we read it together. It came alive in such unexpected ways! I'm not sure how much wisdom we gained, but those evenings were filled with joy and delight which is probably almost as good.
These sound like fantastic gatherings. Always, always YES to joy and delight in reading.
Thank you for your wonderful pieces, all of them! I work with a somatic movement practice where poetic images are read aloud, embodied and (perhaps) lead to movement. From a state of releasing tension, the whole self (physicality, imagination, emotions…) is available to receive the image and for ’it’ to move you. Some dances I have experienced have been earth quakingly life changing, reweaving every tendril of my being, travelling in deep time, becoming dancing particles in space. Simply letting the words move me, being touched by the god in them.
Thank you so much for reading! This somatic practice sounds great — maybe a little like butoh? Or is it butoh? I just started practicing butoh and it is absolutely blowing my mind — the link between somatics and imaginal/poetic practice feels like exactly what I’ve been looking for my whole life.
It’s called Skinner Releasing Technique, developed by dancer Joan Skinner. A different approach to butoh and body weather, which I also absolutely love. Finding SRT was for me just like what you describe - exactly what I’d been looking for my whole life. I introduce it a little in my most recent post, with a link for more info, then some somatic poetry audio. Welcome to ((center for resonance))!! Wonderful to know that you too are dancing Ellie, I can feel that movement in your writing.
I did a few SRT sessions and it was great! I don’t think I found the right teacher though. So glad you have. I love the idea of a Soma Sonata. Just subscribed to the Center for Resonance!
Oh I get what you mean. It’s so much about how you receive the resonance of a voice. It’s rare that I meet other teachers these days as there’s no others in Sweden, so I practice solo and give myself the classes when I teach.
Thanks for subscribing! I look forward to share more Soma Sonata with you!
Brava Ellie! I applaud your intellectual rigor and the evolution of your consciousness. I believe your kind of writing and reading is exactly what humanity needs at this point in our planet's history. I've just spend some time reading some of your posts and essays, and not only am I grateful to have found your work, but I'm also curious as to your educational background as you seem to be such a free thinker. I see on your website's 'About' page that you are doing or have done a "Masters in mythology and oral culture at Dartington Arts School in Devon." That sounds fascinating in itself. I'm also curious if you know of Michael Pollan's work - in particular his book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.
p.s. this is one of my favorite essays of yours, https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/ask-ellie-what-can-i-do-about-my-apathy/ Especially where you write, "Fuck that; let’s be honest: you’re going to die."😂
I know of a spiritual teacher who says something similar, "Forget hope, you're all going to die." And I believe that it's only in facing this reality that we can truly find joy in the living of the human experience as a spiritual being.
and p.p.s. Wow to this: "Did you know that Maslow borrowed his hierarchy of needs from the beliefs of the Blackfeet Nation, and never attributed the idea?"
and this is fascinating:
"In the Blackfeet Nation version, self-actualization isn’t life’s final destination — it’s the start.
No, the final destination — the goal of life — is cultural perpetuity:
the recognition that each member of the community will die,
so success means not individual flourishing, which can only ever be ephemeral,
but rather the vitality and preservation of community wisdom and ways through the ages, beyond the lifespan of any individual."
Camilla! Thank you so much for this lovely comment, and I’m so sorry it’s taken me a while to reply. I’ll confess that after many years of publishing a newsletter for about 80 people, I’m a little overwhelmed by all the lovely new readers and comments, and I had to step away for a while in order to get back on track with my other work.
It’s so lovely of you to read my older work. Thank you. You asked about my educational background — I have a BA and an MA in English lit, and another MA, in Poetics of Imagination, taught mostly by Valentin Gerlier and Alice Oswald at Dartington, with a few cameos from Martin Shaw. That last degree was the one that changed my life. Though lots of other things have been huge teachers to me too, not least the journey of addiction and recovery in a 12-step program, plus spending 11 years flitting around the world, and being addicted to reading.
Really glad you popped by — and apologies again for my tardiness in replying. x
Ellie you mention Valentin Gerlier teaching you Blake. As you know he is a dear friend of mine, I know he would be happy to offer an online Blake course/study group if people are interested. Obviously there would be a fee for this. I already have three people interested - can we get more? Could you promote this. I learnt my Blake from Dr Kathleen Raine, but find Blake a never ending joy after 35 years and I would love to study him under Dr G who,is one of the finest teachers I know. Please let me know your thoughts. David.brazier@substack.com #thebrazieroftruth on instagram.
Hi David, thank you for this! Val and I are going to have a chat on Tuesday about some Blake offerings. I will keep you posted!
Count me in
Hi, if you would be interested please E-mail me at Teddytoff@me.com
Ooh, just saw that you've already got people interested. I will drop you a line, David.
Hi Ellie, I love reading your lucid and thought-provoking essays, and I'm going to respond to the last two here, as I didn't get round to writing my thoughts earlier.
Many cultures, including the monks you write about, practiced the recitation of sacred texts as a way to connect with God, Consciousness or whatever we wish to call it ( definitely not sky-daddy god as you say) Reading aloud is powerful, yes, however when meter is added, and the words are sung to a simple, repetitive melody, they resonate on a different frequency within our minds and bodies, which makes the transcendent experience more accessible. In Sanskrit this practice is called Swadhyaya , and in Welsh it is Plygain. I've experienced both and it can be be very powerful. I think reading some poetry aloud can also have a similar effect. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was God" We can read this as the power of the word, the Matrika Shakti spoken of in the Vedas, the energy in words, in Welsh this is called Awen.
I also wanted to mention the Shiva Sutras to you, just in case you have not come across them. In your last essay you wrote about Consciousness contracting into human form, ''from the imagined realm into this material realm.' The Shiva Sutras describes this contraction from absolute potential into limited awareness, and the pathway back to supreme Consciousness. https://ia600505.us.archive.org/15/items/Scriptures/Jaideva_Singh_Siva_Sutras.pdf.
The words hold the experience, it's heady reading.
I think all the elements of lectio divina come naturally when the text is recited, and the silence afterwards is profound and vibrant, full of that indefinable presence that uplifts and expands us.
Josie, thank you so much for this. I haven’t read the Shiva Sutras but it absolutely sounds like I need to — thank you, thank you for sharing.
And I agree that the stages of lectio divina sort of happen naturally when you engage a poem in a deep and bodily and slow way. In fact, that’s what happened in the experience I mentioned with Blake. The reading session wasn’t formally structured as lectio divina; it’s just that I realized later that that was pretty much what was going on. It seems to me that those five stages are definitely intuitive — but it’s also helpful to have a more structured framework at this late stage of rationalization of everything.
Thank you so much for the wonderful insights and conversation, and for your generous reading. x
tangentially related: have you come across the theory that Jesus' parables were *not* meant to be interpreted literally or allegorically, but were designed more like Zen koans—baffling the Left brain so that the Right could open up to the sublime? it makes a lot of sense, if we imagine pre-literate villagers from 2,000 years ago, who didn't have our Cartesian head trauma and might only have needed a gentle push to switch hemispheres.
NO I haven’t come across that theory and obviously I’m already obsessed with it. Thank you.
Fascinating! I’ll have to spend some time with this. Though it strikes me that I already know how to do this through two very different activities - reading the I Ching (mirrors the five stages almost exactly) and possibly following a recipe for cooking if the purpose of the dish is in some way an act of love of care.
Oooh that is fascinating. I’m not experienced with the I Ching and had no idea it mirrored this process. I keep meaning to move towards it but it never feels like the right time, though this has nudged it closer to the centre of my consciousness.
My attitude to recipes is nowhere near as reverent or considered as yours, by the sounds of it.
1) Find a quiet space and formulate the question
2) go through the meditative process of building the hexagram and looking it up
3) read the answer -
4) sit with it, understand what it has to offer your question
5) whatever grounding or closing ritual you need to do to finish up
Not exact but you see what I mean.
Cooking - it’s because I am VERY VERY BAD at it and can only function by following recipes exactly!!
That is SUCH a close match. Thank you for sharing.
Dear Ellie, this came in such a right moment. thank you. thank you! I have read about lectio divia in the Wisdom of Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault, where she describes the christians mystic's way of relating to a sacred text and how to practice this, so I am happy to be reminded of this through your wonderful essay, very powerful!
Hi Cosima, I’m so glad it found you at a good moment. Love Cynthia Bourgeault, she’s one of my heroes. Let me know if you practice any lectio, please!
Great piece! To me, all of reality is a living tissue. Texts, the same, though their potencies, can vary widely, think the difference between the vitality of a rock versus the vitality of a human being. Arthur Versluis talks about the “heiroeidetic” function of texts in his book on Platonic Mysticism. The idea is much like what you say: texts are living things. Texts which have a heiroeidetic function are capable of transmuting consciousness, they are often considered to have initiatory power. William Blake is certainly one known to have that kind of potency to it. Hence, your mystical experience. I, too, have and continue to have deep, transformative experiences with texts. In the end, I just wanted to say, I really enjoyed reading this and am glad people are rediscovering and discussing just how potent reading can be. There is a group practice called philosophical fellowship that is like a group lectio divina, one by John Vervaeke, but which he derived from Ran Lahav who wrote an essay called “Philosophical Practice as Contemplative Philosophy” which is further detailed in Lahav’s book “Philosophical Contemplation,” which may be of interest to you. It’s a great practice, some call it a “secular seance.”
Thank you so much for this! So many threads I want to pull on, especially the Arthur Versluis book (can’t wait to read that!) and the secular seances. I will be digging deeper. Such a pleasure to meet others who are reading and experiencing the world in similar ways. Thank you for writing!
Two major comforts and excitements were brought out of me reading this:
1) That with the last two books I have engaged with, I became aware of a subconscious pull toward this practice, yet early on it tended to get stifled by my fearful/rational ego protection, but now as I approach the last few pages of perhaps the most powerful book I have ever met, I feel clarity and confidence in adopting this practice intentionally.
2) That my close friend Mizraim and I have on more than one occasion over the summer, stood in his kitchen reading passages aloud from books or poems we were praising that week. I have plans with him tonight and I will be bringing this subject up to him to try to make us both aware of the practice we had no idea we were already beginning.
Thank you for your writing. I’m looking forward to learning even more!
Ahhh this comment made me SO happy! I’d love to know what the book is that you mention in your first comment. Perhaps the most powerful book you’ve ever read! Sounds amazing.
And you know, I think it is instinctive, to read this way. When I look at my young niece, who is just learning to read, it seems to be the way she is absorbing the pages. Almost eating them with her eyes, and saying the words aloud, over and over. I think we just get that schooled out of us later.
Please let me know how your further adventures in reading go!
I think that’s absolutely true that we get it schooled out of us. It’s sometimes difficult not to feel really jaded against my early education when a book absolutely unlocks some secret I felt was kept from me until a person wrote it. The book is called The Lost Country by J.R. Salamanca, about a boy growing up in Virginia (it’s so much more).
I’ve read two of his books I loved, this one and another called Lilith. Thank you for connecting with me on this!
I absolutely love this idea, and it comes at a timely moment for me - I've just started a postgrad course in teaching creative writing and in my first assignment I want to explore ideas of care in the creative writing classroom. And now I'm wondering what it would look like to encourage students to use lectio divina while reading each other's workshop submissions. The stage where you cultivate humility seems like it could be particularly apt in what risks being a competitive and emotionally raw environment. I may be quoting this essay!
Oh, that sounds like a GREAT use of lectio. If you do it, please let me know how it goes!