One of the options for the OBOD course I’m taking is to receive the course materials either as written text, or on CD (or both). I opted for the CD version, and the experience of hearing the various narrating voices, the sound-scape rather than sight-scape (each lesson on the CD includes a musical transition between sections), and the absence of a text to refer to, all contribute to a remarkable different sense of learning from what I’m used to as a reader. While I’m also taking an evening course at a seminary, and though that class is, like many, heavily discussion based, there’s a written syllabus (also online), we generally refer to one or more of the ten assigned class texts, and somehow the greater class experience still feels book-based, even though 95% of the in-class work is informal lecture and discussion.
In sum, the CDs have much of the effect of radio — sound builds different experience than vision. Though the West is at present heavily biased in favor of sight over hearing, there is a primacy to sound that vision cannot touch. In the beginning, we’re told, was the Word, the creative sound. Interestingly, the Hindu tradition also begins with sound — Vac or Vak, the original Word. Hearing wisdom makes it more visceral and immediate.
A Druid Way 