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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Mini Review: Home to Her

I was pleased to write an endorsement for the new book, Home to Her, by Liz Kelly, forthcoming from Womancraft Publishing. Pre-orders are currently open for the book. (Side note: I was interviewed by Liz about Walking with Persephone last October.)

Home to Her is a compelling narrative at once personal, herstorical, mystical, and exploratory. Liz’s voice is both gentle and fierce, weaving an engaging book that draws from personal experience—both mundane and mystical—family and ancestral experience, and the work of other foremothers, wayshowers, and theorists from years gone by. 

Willing to wrestle with complex topics such as the legacy of colonialism and European appropriation of indigenous land, voices, stories, and traditions, Home to Her skillfully guides the reader across a multifaceted landscape of experiencing, questioning, exploring, and coming into relationship with the divine in our lives and our world.

Home to Her is a love song to the Sacred Feminine, in her many forms and faces, past, present, indwelling, and strong.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

"When she arrived at her building, she noticed a beam of silvery light shining down on the front stoop. Even after all those years, the moon still knew where she lived."

--Elizabeth A. Gould (The Well of Truth)

The Well of Truth is a creative synthesis of novel with metaphor plus myth, allegory, symbolism, and archetypal experiences of truth. I’ve never read another book quite like it—it blends the fictional story of a woman’s life with larger mythical understanding and lessons and reads more like a “teaching” than like strictly fiction.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Molly, The book sounds really cool!
  • Molly
    Molly says #
    It was quite interesting!

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Book Review: We'Moon Datebook 2022!

By Molly Remer

I read my first book about Goddess herstory in 2001. I bought my first copy of the We’Moon datebook two years later, my first infant son slung across my chest in a baby sling. I picked this colorful, woman-honoring, b2ap3_thumbnail_IMG_5113.JPGgoddess-worshipping, spiral-bound form out of the stacks of lesbian, feminist, witch, and anarchist literature piled in untidy heaps on a table in the small radical bookstore located below street level in the liberal college town where I’d attended graduate school. I felt as if I was doing something risky, forbidden, possibly even dangerous and I still remember how to felt to carry my datebook up to the dim counter to make my purchase, the smell of patchouli drifting in the air as I ascended the stairs back to street level, now with both hidden knowledge and a baby carried in my arms. Perhaps it was my upbringing within the subculture of religious fundamentalism—not my own family, we were agnostic—but the culture of my peers, which had taught me that to name the body as sacred, to explore one’s own wisdom and self-authority, to partake in magic, to embody and envision the divine as feminine, are all dangerous acts. In some way, somehow, I absorbed that these are the realms that are restricted and denied and with that datebook in my hands, I was daring to break beyond those rules and taste the unknown, the mysterious, the magical, the powerful. There was something here for me. Something that would last forever.

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1st anniversary of book launch!

Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path was published on August 1st, 2020. I put off doing a book tour hoping I'd be able to go on a post-pandemic belated book tour in 2021 but it's not yet time for a lot of in person events this year either. Hopefully next year! So, instead of a book tour:

Review party week!

Post a new review of my book on Amazon, Storytel, etc. (wherever you bought it) or your blog, post the link as a comment here, and win a surprise prize! (You'll get a choice of 3 different surprise prizes. Must message me on social media or email me in order to choose and claim your prize.) Or if you've previously posted a review on Amazon, your blog, etc., post a link to that review and you still win a prize! Because what is time? (Oh but that's another story lol.) I'll share your review link across my social media platforms (that includes a link to your blog, magazine, podcast, etc. if that's where your review is.)

Review party week goes from today (Saturday July 31, 2021) to next Saturday  (August 7, 2021.) Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path is the new, longer, updated version of my out of print book Asatru For Beginners.

Find all the links to buy the ebook, paper, or audiobook on the following link, or ask for my book at your local bookstore or library.

https://www.erinlaleauthor.com/asatrua-beginners-guide.html

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Mythic Moons of Avalon
by Jhenah Telyndru
Llewellyn Books, 2019b2ap3_thumbnail_mythic-moons-cover.jpg
(www.ynysafallon.com)
Reviewed by Molly Remer,
brigidsgrove.com

Rich with insight and lore from Celtic myth and legend, while also steeped in a steady structure of contemporary spirituality, Mythic Moons of Avalon is best for people with a specific interest in lunar workings, lunar magic, and Celtic traditions, and specifically, the stories of Avalon. It makes no pretense at being an authoritative historical compendium and is clear that this is a specific and modern approach with some ancient, historical roots and a deep connection to the physical landscape and terrain of the mystery, culture, and spirit of Avalon and Arthurian Britain (for a modern age).

The book is organized in month by month sections, some of which can feel repetitive, though the workings do build on one another as the book progresses. I did find it somewhat easy to inadvertently start to skim parts of the book due to repetition.

Excellent for a small group study as well as a personal journey of devotion and exploration, Mythic Moons of Avalon is definitely best suited to serious practice rather than casual curiosity. This is a book that is meant to be working into and through. It is meant to be treated respectfully and approached with dedication by someone serious about journeying into the depths of Avalonian mystery and tradition as well as into their own psyches and souls, applying the stories, wisdom, lunar phases, and herbal correspondences to their own lives.

 

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Molly, Thanks for sharing the review! A few of the deities I worship are Celtic, so even as a Platonist and Hellenist the godlore
  • Molly
    Molly says #
    I've not read that one! I do like Caitlin Matthews' writing a lot though!

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

“Let us hold hands with the woman who cooks,
with the woman who builds,
with the woman who cries,
with the woman who laughs,
with the woman who heals,
with the woman who prays,
with the woman who plants,
with the woman who harvests,
with the woman who sings,
with the woman whose spirits rise.”

Pat Mora, Let Us Hold Hands
(in Auga Santa, reprinted in the UU Service Committee’s Gender Justice curriculum)

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Deck Review: The Herbcrafter's Tarot

As a long-term fan of The Gaian Tarot, I eagerly awaited receipt of the new Herbcrafter’s Tarot deck illustrated by Joanna Powell Colbert and written by Latisha Guthrie. I knew from the first card that I was in b2ap3_thumbnail_IMG_8376.jpglove. The illustrations for the Herbcrafter’s Tarot are exquisite and breathtaking. Even the precise detail of the illustration on the back of the deck as a whole is enchanting. It has become my favorite card-back illustration of all time, the little tincture bottles, butterflies, and sprigs of herbs prompting a sense of discovery and joy every time I touch one. Instead of immediately shuffling the deck and drawing a card, which is how I usually approach a new deck, I made the decision to approach The Herbcrafter’s Tarot card by card, day by day, even (mostly) resisting the urge to peek ahead at the cards to come. It is truly a deck to be savored and I knew from the third card that I could recommend it wholeheartedly to others.

Drawing inspiration from the shared Celtic heritage of the authors as well as from Latisha’s Mexican-American heritage, The Herbcrafter’s Tarot is a sister deck in many ways to The Gaian Tarot. Like a traditional tarot deck, it includes 78 cards. The 22 cards of the Major Arcana follow an herbcrafter’s journey. The Minor Arcana cards are divided in four suits, aligned with the four elements: Air (Swords), Fire b2ap3_thumbnail_66007504_2368806219998253_6388625486133592064_n.jpg(Wands), Water (Cups), and Earth (Pentacles).  Each card contains a detailed colored pencil drawing in photorealistic style. Each card is alive with vibrant detail and thoughtful connection, most of the illustrations containing very subtle nods to the original major and minor arcana cards of traditional tarot decks. Depending on the suit and type of plant, some of the herbs are shown in the act of being prepared or harvested, in use in baths or teas, or in their native environment. The People cards for each suit, depicting the hands of women healers at work, have been titled according to the archetypes each woman embodies as she “matures into her craft from wonderer to warrior to midwife to teacher.” The skilled, creative, intuitive hands of Hijas (daughters), Adelitas (warriors), Madres (mothers), and Curanderas (healers) are represented in the People cards. Accustomed as I am to the faces and personalities of the people depicted in full in The Gaian Tarot, I did find myself sometimes missing that human component and wanting to see who is “behind the scenes” of the beautiful herbal layouts, nature mandalas, works in progress, and the gnarled hands at work in The Herbcrafter’s Tarot. The inclusion of scenes, plants, and hands rather than faces is intentional, however, because the primary perspective of the deck is from that of the plants.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Anne Newkirk Niven
    Anne Newkirk Niven says #
    What a wonderful review, I love this deck, too!
  • Molly
    Molly says #
    I'm really in love with it! I keep thinking of more things I should have added to the review--it is visually "nourishing," I find.

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