During his travels, Alexander Carmichael spent hours with peasants in their huts in front of peat fires listening as they "intoned in a low, recitative manner" these poems and prayers. This unique collection of living spirituality drawn from the depths of Celtic Christianity, represents a hidden oral tradition of great power and beauty, handed down through countless generations of Hebridean peasants.Previously available only as a bilingual text in six volumes, this edition in English contributes to a broader awareness of Celtic literature in general. John MacInnes' introduction puts the poems in the context of the life and folklore of the Gaelic community.

    On "The Age of the Great Goddess," Marija Gimbutas, Professor Emeritus of Archeology at UCLA, uncovers the rich world of this lost culture, documenting her ideas with a lifetime of research and discovery. The story of the audio session begins in the 1920s, when Marija Gimbutas was a young girl living in Lithuania. Gimbutas was fascinated with the folk tales of the region, where Christianity was introduced relatively late (the 16th century). Many of these stories concerned the "Old Religion" and the Great Goddess--and were passed down as folklore from before the birth of Christ.After training as an archeologist, Gimbutas led five expeditions over three decades to explore the origins of the earliest European religions. What emerged from her life's work is evidence of an advanced culture, based not on weapons and fear, but on the presence of a unique female figure symoblizing a sacred union with all of nature. "The Age of the Great Goddes" describes the dramatic findings of Marija Gimbutas, and her quest for a sacred heritage lost in antiquity.

    Each section features a song for the goddess of light, a litany for the associated elemental creature, poems inspired by tarot cards and love spells in the ancient poetic form of the charm. A four-part "Goddess Instruction Manual" is woven through the book and included is a 73-minute CD of 25 poems set to song.

    An annual cycle of celebrations is included, as is advice on how to set up an altar and use simple tools. The author, a practitioner of Wicca (witchcraft), expounds the life-affirming, eco-feminist values of that tradition. Suggestions for rituals and ideas for inventing one's own are given. Poetry and blessings blend in a title which supports celebration of the Goddess image in daily life. These rituals are personal, moving rites which celebrate love and peace, and which act as meditations for considering new rituals, old traditions, and the course of women's lives.

    Steiner's penetrating insights into the events and personalities history are one of his major contributions to modern times. Steiner focuses here on the Babylonian and Greek cultures and the connecting threads running between individual personalities and the evolution of humanity as a whole.

    He is both storyteller and explicator, deciphering the symbolic world of Lithuanian mythology.This first English translation of Apie Dievus ir zmones is a brilliant convergence of Greimas's historical and folkloric studies. Greimas examines the origins of ancient deities; discusses the concepts of life and death, fate and fortune; looks at codes used by farmers to organize systems of mutual obligations and implicit contracts; examines pranks and games associated with agrarian seasonal changes; and discusses the semantic reconstruction of the names and functions of several deities.Emphasizing the historic dimension of myth analysis, Greimas assembles concepts and deities from scattered texts, integrating them into their Lithuanian cultural context. This study of mythology is his archeology of culture.

    

    

    Features full scenes of daily life, folklore, and symbols.