Octavia Butler’s The Book of the Living is the foundational text of the religion of Earthseed as described in her two novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. The primary philosophy of Earthseed is that God is Change. As a Hermetic mystic, I find this text valuable for helping us to develop a pantheistic understanding of the Divine, where God is embodied in the world around us. This first chapter helps set the stage for the work as a whole:
1. God is Change
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
∞ = Δ
By coming to understand God less as “the Big Man in the Sky” and more as “The Pervasive They That Permeates All Things,” we grow in our awareness the Divine so that we may cultivate a better relationship with it.
You can read The Book of the Living here.
Frater Zigmund 