Parabola's Summer 1997 issue: The Shadow Shadows do not show the true shapes of things. With their transparency they lie. A pole bends up the side of a building. A child becomes twenty feet long on the sidewalk. The nearness of the mountain makes the village beneath it dark all day. Shadows tell us of the sun, indicating where the light comes from, and the proximity and position of the bright things gleaming in the world. They are always a reminder of the opposite of day. --from "Sound Traces" Cover: "Blue Shadow Spirit" by Frank LaPena (Wintu/Nomtipom) Photograph by Jay Daniel. Courtesy of American Indian Contemporary Arts, San Francisco. In this issue:

• "Light's Companion" by Madeleine L'Engle - Balancing the presence and absence of light
• "Inviting the Demon" by Judith Simmer-Brown - Struggling against karma
• "On the Teeter-totter of Ego: An Interview with Robert Johnson" - Owning your own shadow
• "Burnished Gold" by Christopher Bamford - Sadness as a door to understanding
• "Extending the Shade" by Ibn al-'Arabi - Divine involvement in existence
• "Sound Traces" by David Rothenberg - Shadows in music
• "Power and Paradox" - A new translation of the Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin
• "Play of Light at Givet" by Frederick Franck - Impressions of a journey to Holland
• "Toward a Vision of the Whole" by Christian Wertenbaker - Understanding the eyes' work
• "Queen of Air and Darkness" by Mara Freeman - Dark Goddesses of the Celts
• "The Four Demon Lords" - From Douglas J. Penick's translation of The Warrior Song of King Gesar
• Arcs: "Where Daylight Fails"

Tangents - Reviews

• "In This Room of Bones" by Laura Simms - Child soldiers and the theater of war

Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world

• "Searching for Samjna" / Hindu - retold by Robert Svoboda
• "The Sundial" / Jewish - from Rachel the Clever
• "The Rolling Skull" / South American - retold by Marie-Louise von Franz
• "Coyote and the Shadow People" / Nez Percv© - from Coyote Was Going There
• "The Morrigv°n" / Irish - retold by Shanti Fader