Heyla! And welcome to the very late Pagan Summer Camp "Beyond the Pagan 101s Senior Seminar".
~~~~~~~
There is a lot of information out there on the web and in mainstream bookstores about the "basics" of paganism. All different colors, shapes, flavors, and styles seem to be represented. And this is a great and glorious thing, a huge change from even just 30 years ago when a seeker had to find (and be brave enough to enter!) the tiny corner occult shop, or wade through a pile of gothic horror font magazines to find the one mimeographed handbook printed in somebody's basement, or wander the less savory parts of town looking for the ritual they heard about third hand but which "was supposed to be around here someplace, I think, maybe, oh gods what am I doing out here by myself?".
But even though you can now walk into almost any Barnes & Noble or Borders and sip your oversized fancy named coffee-like beverage as you wander past well lit shelves of Pagan or New Aged books looking for a comfy chair, it's clear there are some big gaps. Namely... the books on the shelves all seem to focus on the "welcome to the path" end of the spectrum. Where are the books for people who have been pagan for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40+ years?
Now of course there are good reasons for this gap... primary among them being the fact that many pagans find a path or practice that works for them and then simply keep going on their own.
But if you are on your own for year after year, how do you grow? Who or what presses against you or challenges your comfort zone? Who or what asks you the tough questions and provides you with possible answers? (a role which, in other religions, may be filled by a ritual specialist or by relying on a reference text that took hundreds or even thousands of years to compile) How do you keep your practice fresh and meaningful and effective and interesting and engaging? Who or what helps you maintain a daily, weekly, seasonal, annual practice? Who or what let's you know you're "doing it right"? Where do you turn if you realize you can't answer your child's question, or don't understand why bad things happen to good people, or wake up at 3am and realize that you just don't "feel" anything on a spiritual level anymore and wonder what you're doing with your life and whether there's something more out there? Where do you find poetry, and inspiration, and joy, and motivation, and music, and meaning as the decades march past?
My hope is that this thread will provide a place to discuss these questions and offer ideas for staying involved, devoted, inspired, and self-aware on a religious and spiritual adventure that is often lonely and cut off from social support. Tracy's Leo New Moon article actually raises some very on-topic points, asking people to examine what they believe and who they want to be in very concrete way during this coming lunar cycle.
In many religions and traditions there are trained ritual specialists who are available to answer questions or provide guidance. In the pagan world, each individual is called on to be their own specialist. Which can entail a heck of a lot of work over the years! While there is a lot of great information in the MDC Pagan Resource Thread (here), I wanted to pull together a few books that might be of use when deepening a pagan practice. I hope people will add to the list, or share their thoughts about the individual texts listed. Just be aware that many of these books are NOT of the "pagan 101" variety... many of them are used in university level classes and are considered scholarly works (in the fields of religion, anthropology, gender studies, sociology, ethnography, etc). They are fascinating and thought provoking and certainly readable by non-academics, but they are not exactly coffee table books or easy bedtime reading.
Building (or maintaining) a daily practice:
--Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers and Blessings
--Essene Book of Meditations and Blessings
--Devotional Dance: Sacred Movements for Meditation and Transformation
--Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner: A Book of Prayer, Devotional Practice, and the Nine Worlds of Spirit
--Pagan Prayer Beads: Magic and Meditation with Pagan Rosaries (you knew I couldn't leave out beads, right? 
)
General "deep thought" books:
--Green Egg Omlette
--Pagan Visions for a Sustainable Future
--Twelve Wild Swans
--Dreaming the Dark
--Carmina Gadelica: Hymns & Incantations
--evolutionary witchcraft
--The Pagan Book of Living and Dying
--Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God
More specifically "scholarly" books:
--Living With Honor: A Pagan Ethics
--Pagan Theology
--A World Full of Gods
--Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales
--Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
--The Paganism Reader
--Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States
Magazines or Journals:
--Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies
--Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions
--Syzygy: A Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture
Organizations to explore:
--Contemporary Pagan Studies Group (part of the American Academy of Religion)
--Cherry Hill Seminary
~~~~~~~
There is a lot of information out there on the web and in mainstream bookstores about the "basics" of paganism. All different colors, shapes, flavors, and styles seem to be represented. And this is a great and glorious thing, a huge change from even just 30 years ago when a seeker had to find (and be brave enough to enter!) the tiny corner occult shop, or wade through a pile of gothic horror font magazines to find the one mimeographed handbook printed in somebody's basement, or wander the less savory parts of town looking for the ritual they heard about third hand but which "was supposed to be around here someplace, I think, maybe, oh gods what am I doing out here by myself?".
But even though you can now walk into almost any Barnes & Noble or Borders and sip your oversized fancy named coffee-like beverage as you wander past well lit shelves of Pagan or New Aged books looking for a comfy chair, it's clear there are some big gaps. Namely... the books on the shelves all seem to focus on the "welcome to the path" end of the spectrum. Where are the books for people who have been pagan for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40+ years?
Now of course there are good reasons for this gap... primary among them being the fact that many pagans find a path or practice that works for them and then simply keep going on their own.
But if you are on your own for year after year, how do you grow? Who or what presses against you or challenges your comfort zone? Who or what asks you the tough questions and provides you with possible answers? (a role which, in other religions, may be filled by a ritual specialist or by relying on a reference text that took hundreds or even thousands of years to compile) How do you keep your practice fresh and meaningful and effective and interesting and engaging? Who or what helps you maintain a daily, weekly, seasonal, annual practice? Who or what let's you know you're "doing it right"? Where do you turn if you realize you can't answer your child's question, or don't understand why bad things happen to good people, or wake up at 3am and realize that you just don't "feel" anything on a spiritual level anymore and wonder what you're doing with your life and whether there's something more out there? Where do you find poetry, and inspiration, and joy, and motivation, and music, and meaning as the decades march past?
My hope is that this thread will provide a place to discuss these questions and offer ideas for staying involved, devoted, inspired, and self-aware on a religious and spiritual adventure that is often lonely and cut off from social support. Tracy's Leo New Moon article actually raises some very on-topic points, asking people to examine what they believe and who they want to be in very concrete way during this coming lunar cycle.
In many religions and traditions there are trained ritual specialists who are available to answer questions or provide guidance. In the pagan world, each individual is called on to be their own specialist. Which can entail a heck of a lot of work over the years! While there is a lot of great information in the MDC Pagan Resource Thread (here), I wanted to pull together a few books that might be of use when deepening a pagan practice. I hope people will add to the list, or share their thoughts about the individual texts listed. Just be aware that many of these books are NOT of the "pagan 101" variety... many of them are used in university level classes and are considered scholarly works (in the fields of religion, anthropology, gender studies, sociology, ethnography, etc). They are fascinating and thought provoking and certainly readable by non-academics, but they are not exactly coffee table books or easy bedtime reading.
Building (or maintaining) a daily practice:
--Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers and Blessings
--Essene Book of Meditations and Blessings
--Devotional Dance: Sacred Movements for Meditation and Transformation
--Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner: A Book of Prayer, Devotional Practice, and the Nine Worlds of Spirit
--Pagan Prayer Beads: Magic and Meditation with Pagan Rosaries
(you knew I couldn't leave out beads, right? )General "deep thought" books:
--Green Egg Omlette
--Pagan Visions for a Sustainable Future
--Twelve Wild Swans
--Dreaming the Dark
--Carmina Gadelica: Hymns & Incantations
--evolutionary witchcraft
--The Pagan Book of Living and Dying
--Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God
More specifically "scholarly" books:
--Living With Honor: A Pagan Ethics
--Pagan Theology
--A World Full of Gods
--Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales
--Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
--The Paganism Reader
--Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States
Magazines or Journals:
--Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies
--Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions
--Syzygy: A Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture
Organizations to explore:
--Contemporary Pagan Studies Group (part of the American Academy of Religion)
--Cherry Hill Seminary
:
:
: Still in the research phase. I love the scented herbs trail idea! 
