 what book would you represent your ancestors in Salon? What book would you pick to represent the new beginnings of Imulk? Find out in this tag video what my choices would be. Hey there saplings! Welcome to esoteric moment. Today I'm doing a tag video. I'll have a link to the original by Crescent Moon down in the description if you'd like to see where the tag started. I love the idea of combining booktube which is that part of youtube all about reviewing and reading and all the books and kind of the pagan youtube sphere. Obviously my videos already bridge that but I love finding new people who are also doing the same thing. So I hope by doing this tag you'll join me and show me all of your pagan and non-pagan reads and kind of relate back to your spiritual practice and the wheel of the year. First holiday of this tag video is Imulk. She asks what book or new to you would represent new beginnings and kind of the season? What new to you book or book series are you anxious to start reading? For me I'm going to pick Birch Oak and You by Penny Billington. I read her first book. I've paged through this a million times but I've yet to read it cover to cover. So I'm really anxious to get this done and I would love love to do that before the end of the year. Ostara's question is name a book with a happy ending. My pick is going to be The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk. This is a fiction book written by a amazing witch political activist and permaculturalist and I love the world and just the ability of the characters to face really intense oppression and war and drama and just dangerous things happening to their community and their lives and yet they work together peacefully to create a happy ending. Particularly as we hear all of the news in our world today lots of political things are really stressing me out and I know they're stressing out other people reading a book that's all about taking political action into your own hands and it's directly related to using our spiritual ideas and practices in order to do that in the mainstream. I think it's incredibly motivating and really a happy ending that we need in today's world. Beltane, name your favorite passionate couple, canon or not. For me I'm going to choose Leia and Anatoli from the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Barbara Kingsolver is a incredibly detailed and vivid fiction author. She's written a lot of amazing books. While not particularly outright pagan a lot of it focuses on connection to nature and religious overtones so it fits well if that's something you're into reading. I read this book in AP Litt in high school the first time. Anatoli is definitely my literary lover. I so thoroughly love the way they fall in love during this really chaotic family time and illness and it's just really passionate and beautiful and then the rest of the novel you actually get to see what their marriage is like and what their family is like and how does all that passion sustain itself. So I love this couple and I really enjoy this book. Litha, what book or character makes you most want to party? I'm taking this a little in loose in interpretation but by most like to party I'm taking it as like most inspired in your practice or like most motivated. Celtic magic by Christopher Hughes is super practical jam packed with really interesting ways to kickstart your magical practice, your druidry or Celtic witchcraft. I really loved reading this book and I dogged tons of pages because it was that inspiring and just really gets you out there and doing stuff. I think it perfectly captures the momentum and energy and excitement of mid-summer. Lamas, what tasty treat would you love to take a bite out of from a book? I'm choosing the independent farmstead. I'm about two thirds of the way done with this book. It's all about how to grow your own food in a really sustainable and ethical way on a small homestead. Specifically in this book what treat I would choose is their talk of all the ways they utilize extra milk and dairy products and their farm. We would love to have some dairy cows on the farm when we get the pastures in a little better shape so it's really inspiring and just makes me want to have cheese and crackers and a glass of wine and enjoy the evening when I'm reading this book. Maven, what projects have you recently made progress in that you are proud of? Kind of cheating with this one. I am choosing my own book of owen. So on Instagram I posted this really sad photo of my book of owen which is like my book of shadows just kind of completely in disarray. I take it out with me when I do ritual outside, when I'm doing things inside and it just died despite my best effort to do a good job of binding it. It didn't work. So I disassembled it and regrouped it the way I wanted it and sent it to the Grimm Bindery which is a local bindery group and for about $80 they rebound it for me. It's yellow and I kept the like seal that I had on my old book which also has my like consecration or book blessing or just this is like the magical essence of my book in many ways. I kept that and then the obad seasonal ceremonies are in here along with my own pages. I have to go back and replace a lot of the work that I've already done, recreate it and that's a little sad but it also means I get another chance at making my book of owen even more special and it will last this time. I didn't get to use end sheets that had pressed flowers that wasn't something that their machines were super comfortable doing so there are some things that are different but really I'm loving what I'm doing with this project. Owen, name a book that represents your ethnic background. For me there is no other book but Annam, Cara, my favorite John O'Donohue book. It really captures a lot of the thoughts, philosophy and spirit of Celtic ethnicity, my druid practice. I love his writing and this is one of my favorite examples of that writing. I have not been to Ireland but I feel very much like I might be in Ireland when I read his books and then Yule, what book dealt with a really heavy topic but left you feeling hopeful at the end. One of my all-time's favorite is Stop Pretending by Sonia Sones. This is a book of poetry, it's a YA novel and it tells the story of a little sister watching her big sister the mental breakdown and you hear all of these stories of dealing with the mental illness through hospital visits and therapy and all sorts of things that their family deals with. Obviously a heavy topic, mental illness is a really important topic. We don't always give people the support that they need and you're also hearing about mental illness from the perspective of someone else in the family. So for me I really related by being someone who was a sibling of someone with a lot of health issues and yet at the end there's still a lot of hope and just reaffirming the beauty of sisterhood. So I love this book, it's short, sweet, heavy but very hopeful. All right now I'm going to tag three people, mainly I'm going to tag Kara over at Cute Witch 722. I'm going to tag one of my favorite blogs, cupcakes, and machetes. I think it's machetes. Now that I'm thinking about it I'm pretty sure. I'll leave a link and then I would love to tag Katie on Katie Flowers. I know she's traveling so maybe there's time for it when you get back. If you haven't done this tag video and you want to, please do the tag video and then leave a link or let me know in the comments so I can go watch and find more awesome pagan people who are reading and connecting those two worlds. I am so curious to hear what books you would pick for the eight seasonal festivals. This week's sapling shout out goes out to Becca Pooley. She wrote a comment on my healing magic video talking about how tea was a good reminder to her about all the small things she does in her daily life that are magical, that are important, and have symbolic meaning and really emphasizes the magic in her life. So I thought that was a lovely comment and exactly what I'm trying to get across in my magic series is that we can find magic in the smallest things to the biggest things and it's what we give meaning to. It's what we empower in ourselves and in our lives. That's the start of creating a magical life. So thanks for the comment Becca and I hope that you are having a great week. Don't forget to leave a comment below or chat with me on Instagram if you would like to be the next sapling shout out. Thanks for watching and as always may you find peace in the sacred grove.