Robert Holdstock won the Newberry Fantasy Award in 1988 for his book, Mythago Wood, a novel which spun fantasy around the theories of Jung and Campbell, and delved deeply into the mythic world of the Finnish Kallevala. The tome is one of my favorites ever and changed the way I interact with myth, religious calendars, and role playing (as it relates to religious ritual). I’m reminded of all of this listening to Spatial Specific, the explosive first album of the Toronto duo, Legion of Green Men, whilst meditating on the cycle of earthly pleasures, regrets, and aspirations. Today is, after all, Jewish New Years, the Rosh (head) of the Shanah (year), and my thoughts are spinning in the whirlpool of conflicted and resolving intentions and prayers embracing my peeps today. So I am doing my best here in my humble shack to, like a young yoda, discover the force that pervades all, as any good panentheist mystic would. Years ago I took this pilgrimage by way of symbiosis with my fungal cousins. Today, I am alone with my music… the mushrooms outside being only of the common poisonous stripe. This album is a worthy surrogate though, and contains within it secrets worthy of any spark seeking its flame. The track listing alone will give some indication of the tangled roots within. Find the first 13 second track entitled “To kiss the hare’s foot” and soon you’ll find yourself at track 6, “Veneration of the Goddess.” Such a lovely album. I can only point you to it… if only I could share it with all of you. But I can wish you all an outrageous new year full of beautiful discoveries, which with open ears and under sunshine filtered watery clouds and greenish leafery, many treasures will be shared. Huzzah and love to all fellow earthlings and spacelings. Love to all in this spinning orbiting, living world.

About Aharon N. Varady

Aharon's Omphalos is the hobbit hole of Aharon Varady, founding director of the Open Siddur Project. He is a community planner and environmental educator working to improve stewardship of the Public Domain, be it the physical and natural commons of urban park systems or the creative and cultural commons of libraries and museums. His advocacy for open-source strategies in the Jewish community has been written about in the Atlantic Magazine, the Yiddish Forverts, Tablet, and Haaretz. He is particularly interested in pedagogies for advancing ecological wisdom, developing creative and emotional intelligence, and realizing effective theurgical praxes. He welcomes your comments, personal messages, and kind words. If you find his work helpful to your own or you'd simply like to support him, please consider donating via his Patreon account.

• View all posts by Aharon N. Varady →
• website
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google+

“there are Green Men here. (don’t try looking for ’em)” is shared by Aharon N. Varady with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.