I have begun reading a wonderful book, David Abram’s Becoming
Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. No book I have ever encountered does as good a job of describing what it is like to be
fully aware of our immersion in the field of consciousness that is our world.  It may well be the most powerful literary
corrective that has yet appeared to the soul killing cultural autism that defines the modern
world.

I want to completely immerse myself in it, but between being
in the middle of a move,  the
attention generated by the New Yorker article on the Kochs, and the madness generated
by cruel bigots over the proposed Islamic Cultural Center in New York, I am making
slow progress. So while I will write a review after I’ve done reading it, I want
to recommend it enthusiastically based only on reading the first few chapters. I think it is a must read for people interested in plumbing the deeper implications of being Pagan.

Abram earlier wrote The Spell of the Sensuous, one of the most magickal books on our perceptions of the natural world that I
had ever encountered.  It was one
of those books that changes the way everything looks after its message is
absorbed.  That book came out in 1997,
and I have been waiting for another from him, always wondering whether it could
possibly be as powerful as his first. 

It sure seems to be.

Abram obviously writes only when he has something serious to
impart, and he does so with a breathtaking beauty in style and impact.  I won’t write more about this book till I’ve had the
pleasure of finishing it.  But don’t
wait for my final opinion.  Get it
now!

And for those who think I like politics too much – this is
NOT a political book.  It is
something much much deeper and better than that.