HIGHLY
RECOMMENDED REFERENCES -
Personal Favorites whose insights inform much of what I write..
Each book may be purchased through
our advertisers: amazon.com or Alibris (who maintains a database of 60 million new and used books). Each book title is a hyperlink to a page where you can purchase the book in either new or used condition. This small library will change your views about mythology, deity and sacred space forever!
1.
De Santillana, Georgio, and Hertha von Dechend. 1969. Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth & Frame of Time
Boston: David R. Godine.
2. Duerr, Hans Peter. 1985. Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
3. Enright, Michael J. 1996.
Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual, Prophecy, and Lordship in the
European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age. Dublin:
Four Courts Press. * Scarce volume and important research,
very expensive.
4. Ginzburg, Carlo. 1991. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches
Sabbath. New York: Penguin Books.
5. Graves, Robert. 1948, amended and enlarged. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth
New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux. (Robert Graves study of the White Goddess has
been savagely critiqued in recent years and he did play a bit loose with the archeological and historical records.
What has been forgotten in this 'scientific critique' is that
Graves was a major poet and his interest was to probe for
what could be discerned about Celtic poetic mystery. As such,
I believe the White Goddess stands on its own feet rather
well and deserves serious consideration.)
6. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
7. McClain, Ernest G. 1984. The Myth of Invariance: the Origin
of the Gods, Mathematics and Music from the Rg Veda to Plato.
York Beach, ME: Nicolas-Hays.
8. Michell, John. 1994.
At
the Center of the World: Polar Symbolism Discovered in Celtic,
Norse and Other Ritualized Landscapes. London: Thames & Hudson.
9. Padel, Ruth. 1995. Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek
and Tragic Madness. Princeton: University of Princeton Press.
This study will forever change your views about mental illness,
'madness', shamanism and the nature of evil.
10. Richer, Jean. 1994. Sacred Geography of the Ancient Greeks: Astrological Symbolism in Art, Architecture, and Landscape (S U N Y Series in Western Esoteric Traditions)
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Scarce, a bit pricey.
11. Smith, William. 1864. A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology and Geography. New York: Harper & Brothers.
12. Wasson, R. Gordon, n.d. Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, (Ethno-Mycological Studies).
Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.