Reading as a Spiritual Practice
Ideas
The mythology of the gods, their stories and deeds, form a kind of sacred text for those who worship them. Just like a Christian might find meaning and comfort in reading the Bible, or a Muslim the Koran, so too can we find meaning in reading and understanding the stories of our gods. Spending time learning and reading about deity and keeping them in your thoughts is also a mental way of welcoming them into your life.
Once you have read some of the myths and stories connected to the deity in question, you can start using them as a tool for active connection to the divine. I started this practice after attending a talk hosted by a Pagan artist discussing his methodology for creating his pieces. What I found interesting about his work was that even though the figures were recognizable as gods from the Norse pantheon, they very much had his own unique spin on them. They did not depict familiar stories yet conveyed something vital about the deity in other ways. He started off by meditating on a passage from the Hávamál, and afterwards he would start sketching based on the impressions and feelings he got from the meditation. Afterwards I started doing something similar. I would take a short passage from a myth or in some cases one of The Triads of Ireland, which are short sayings on various topics, many of which mention the Irish gods, and used those as my focus for meditation. After the meditation I might journal or write a prayer for the deity I was trying to connect with through the focused meditation. Other times I would try to create something artistic based on what revealed itself in the meditation.
Resources
Articles
https://lithub.com/how-to-read-any-book-as-a-sacred-text/
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/27/1195954927/this-jane-eyre-enthusiast-invites-you-to-treat-your-favorite-books-as-sacred-tex
Books
- Praying with Jane Eyre
- on secular sacred texts
- author is secular but comes from a Jewish background
- unfortunately haven't read this yet because the audiobook for it is a dead torrent :/
- inspired the Well Worn Scripture
- Reading for the Love of God - Jessica Hooten Wilson
- Christian
- didn't like this one, a bit meandering and had a "books virtuous technology bad" assumption that I thought was stupid
- Deep Reading - Rachel B Griffis Julie Ooms Rachel M De Smith Roberts
Podcasts
- How to Read as a Spiritual Practice: Books, Shared Meaning, and the Love of God in the Text
- by Jessica Hooten Wilson & Matthew J. Smith
- on the podcast Yale Center for Faith & Culture
- Notes: Christian, Western
- Hot & Bothered
- by Vanessa Zoltan
- a podcast "which explores reading and writing romance novels as a sacred practice."(Book Dreams - Ep 67 - Vanessa Zoltan on What Makes a Secular Text Sacred )