Beginning Again, Again
Dec. 5th, 2019 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthings Welcome to the Book of Old Things!
Or perhaps, the Old Books Achive,
or just Read Old Books!
...One of the foregoing is the name of this blog. One day we'll decide which one.
In any event, this is the first post here. Except it's not really: I went over to Dreamwidth to start this blog today, and discovered that I had already done so, two years ago! I had an introductory post and a review of Dion Fortune's book The Training and Work of an Initiate, which I'd just finished. Apparently I did all of this in the summer of 2017 and forgot all about it.
But that was then, and this is now. The blessed Lady Moon is applying to a lovely trine with my natal Jupiter, even as she trines holy Mercury up there in the heavens; a fine time to begin a thing, I think. (And may the square to Jupiter not rain afflictions on my humble blog, I play, relying on the mercy of the Father of Gods and Men.)
Anyway,
What Is This?
It's a blog. Sort of. Really it's a Dreamwidth, which seems to be a kind of LiveJournal re-tooled for the 2020s and with, one hopes, fewer middle school girls. (Or perhaps the middle school girls are all in their 30s now, and have made their way here, like I have. If so, sorry ladies, I'm off the market.)
The purpose of this Dreamwidth, or Blog, is to talk about old books. I've amassed a fairly large library over the years, you see, from various sources-- a pile of church fathers from a decommissioned Catholic seminary; two shelves of Harvard Classics salvaged from thrift stores; classics of Western philosophy, and so on. Here with me at my desk are works by Jung and Schopenhauer, Spengler and Aristotle; William James and William Butler Yeats; Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Marcus Aurelius; Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine and Saint Justin Martyr. And there are more on shelves throughout the house and spilling out of the house into the garage.
It's been my habit for many years to pull down a volume, read a chapter or two, think about it, and put it back. So in any given week I might read a bit of Aristotle, a chunk of Cicero, and a bit of Max Heindel's Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. It all sort of floats to the back of my mind where it mixes with the others and swirls and ferments, and re-emerges into the world as a detailed and rambling lecture to one of my friends, my wife, or my cat.
Well, the goal of this blog is to put it somewhere.
The plan is to read a book or, much more likely, part of a book, and share my thoughts here. If someone reads it, fantastic! If not, at least I'll have it somewhere I can read and remember it. And if someone should happen to stumble in here with more knowledge than I have on a particular subject, well, that would be a fine thing too.
With all that said, I will now pull a book off of the shelf, read a chapter of it and write a blog post on it. See you in a little while!
Or perhaps, the Old Books Achive,
or just Read Old Books!
...One of the foregoing is the name of this blog. One day we'll decide which one.
In any event, this is the first post here. Except it's not really: I went over to Dreamwidth to start this blog today, and discovered that I had already done so, two years ago! I had an introductory post and a review of Dion Fortune's book The Training and Work of an Initiate, which I'd just finished. Apparently I did all of this in the summer of 2017 and forgot all about it.
But that was then, and this is now. The blessed Lady Moon is applying to a lovely trine with my natal Jupiter, even as she trines holy Mercury up there in the heavens; a fine time to begin a thing, I think. (And may the square to Jupiter not rain afflictions on my humble blog, I play, relying on the mercy of the Father of Gods and Men.)
Anyway,
What Is This?
It's a blog. Sort of. Really it's a Dreamwidth, which seems to be a kind of LiveJournal re-tooled for the 2020s and with, one hopes, fewer middle school girls. (Or perhaps the middle school girls are all in their 30s now, and have made their way here, like I have. If so, sorry ladies, I'm off the market.)
The purpose of this Dreamwidth, or Blog, is to talk about old books. I've amassed a fairly large library over the years, you see, from various sources-- a pile of church fathers from a decommissioned Catholic seminary; two shelves of Harvard Classics salvaged from thrift stores; classics of Western philosophy, and so on. Here with me at my desk are works by Jung and Schopenhauer, Spengler and Aristotle; William James and William Butler Yeats; Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Marcus Aurelius; Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine and Saint Justin Martyr. And there are more on shelves throughout the house and spilling out of the house into the garage.
It's been my habit for many years to pull down a volume, read a chapter or two, think about it, and put it back. So in any given week I might read a bit of Aristotle, a chunk of Cicero, and a bit of Max Heindel's Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. It all sort of floats to the back of my mind where it mixes with the others and swirls and ferments, and re-emerges into the world as a detailed and rambling lecture to one of my friends, my wife, or my cat.
Well, the goal of this blog is to put it somewhere.
The plan is to read a book or, much more likely, part of a book, and share my thoughts here. If someone reads it, fantastic! If not, at least I'll have it somewhere I can read and remember it. And if someone should happen to stumble in here with more knowledge than I have on a particular subject, well, that would be a fine thing too.
With all that said, I will now pull a book off of the shelf, read a chapter of it and write a blog post on it. See you in a little while!
