Pagan Paths - Celtic

Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers and Blessings

Celtic Devotional:
Daily Prayers and Blessings
by Caitlin Matthews
Fair Winds Press, 2004

 

Four years ago when I began my Ninth Wave studies (www.lunaea.com – see review in SageWoman #67), one of the first lessons involved discovering the power of prayer.

Read more: Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers and Blessings

Being Druid Today

John Michael Greer

 

 

 

Being Druid Today
by John Michael Greer

The original Druids, the priestly caste of ancient Celtic peoples in Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, went extinct more than a millennium ago. Very little information about them survived the centuries: a few scrappy second- and third-hand references in Greek and Roman texts, a few stories in Irish legends written down centuries after the coming of Christianity, and the ambiguous testimony of archaeology. Despite generations of hard work by scholars and archaeologists, the honest answer to most questions about the ancient Druids is still “we don’t know.”

For 300 years, though, the meager heritage of the ancient Druids has inspired people to follow a Druid path themselves. The historical setting of the Druid Revival makes it easy to understand why: the time of modern Druidry’s emergence also saw the Industrial Revolution, and the triumph of an ideology that sees nature purely as a source of raw materials and a place to dump waste.

From the dawn of the eighteenth century on, those who set out to craft a spirituality and a way of life in harmony with nature, found in the ancient Druids a potent symbol of their hopes. The image of a priest-hood of nature, worshipping in oak groves and stone circles beneath the open sky, inspired pioneering Druids such as John Toland and William Stukeley to propose a nature-centered Druidry profoundly relevant to the modern age. The result was the Druid Revival — a movement of nature spirituality which has flourished now for 300 years. This movement is inspired by the ancient Druids but draws freely on many spiritual traditions from around the world, united by a passionate reverence for the living Earth and a tradition of tolerance within which Druids of many different paths can work and worship together in peace. This vision of Druidry still guides many Druids today, and has deep roots in the cultural imagination of the Western world.

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The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year

The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween:  
Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year  
by Jean Markale
Inner Traditions

 

Halloween is one of America’s most popular holidays, yet many Americans remain woefully ignorant about its true origin and meaning. The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween provides a nice starting point for Halloween novices seeking a well-researched and scholarly introduction to “The Celtic Festival of Samhain” and an unraveling of the mystery and meaning of that most Christian of all holidays — All Saint’s Day, which quite literally means “eve of all the saints.”

Read more: The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year

Goddess Initiation: A Practical Celtic Program for Soul-Healing, Self-Fulfillment & Wild Wisdom

Goddess Initiation:  
A Practical Celtic Program for Soul-Healing, Self-Fulfillment & Wild Wisdom  
by Francesca De Grandis
Harper Collins Publishers

 

The Goddess must be smiling over Francesca De Grandis’ new book, Goddess Initiation. Here is a course of inner wisdom work that is disciplined, profound, and absorbing. The straight-forward prose, the amusing and touching anecdotes, the moments of lyrical beauty, have the same power as those which made her first book, Be a Goddess, so successful.

Read more: Goddess Initiation: A Practical Celtic Program for Soul-Healing, Self-Fulfillment & Wild Wisdom

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