Explore the holistic, vital world of the shaman and you, too, can live your life more fully and joyously.This refreshing and inspiring book will set you on the right track, and show how you can bring the rich wisdom of the shaman into your daily life, whatever your creed or religion. Caitlin Matthews teaches you to explore your inner space, journey between the everyday world and the spiritual realm of the shaman, and find your spirit voice and true destiny. Fresh new approach, ideal for everyone, regardless of creed or religion. Packed with clear, practical exercises and comprehensive instruction. Shows how to harness your creative imagination and innate healing powers, and discover your real place in life.

    But what if they want to include their children? Here is a handbook to help parents, caregivers, teachers, and counselors create meaningful spiritual experiences that will inspire children of all ages. The ideas, suggestions, and activities collected here show how to bring children into rituals that celebrate seasonal cycles and help reclaim the spiritual roots of today's modern holidays. With surprisingly little effort, earth-centered activities and rituals can be incorporated into simple daily routines. Part 1, “Handbook for Earth-Connected Parenting,” gives techniques for developing a child's inner wisdom and sense of the sacred: dream journals, visualization, Tarot play, talismans, and interactions with the natural world Part 2 is a guide to the specific seasonal festivals, and offers a comprehensive collection of practical and enjoyable ways to celebrate the sacred days of our ancestors. Make a bean rune divination system, gather smudge sticks, grow grass pots, assemble a “dream pillow,” create altars the authors offer easy-to-follow suggestions. Includes suggested reading and resource sections for locating additional information and materials for creative projects.

    They told tales of giants in the hills, dragons in the lakes, marshes swarming with will-o’-the-wisps, and demons and wild folk in the mountains who enjoyed causing landslides, avalanches, and floods. They both feared and respected these entities, knowing the importance of appeasing them for safe travel and a prosperous homestead. Exploring medieval stories, folk traditions, spiritual place names, and pagan rituals of home building and site selection, Claude Lecouteux reveals the multitude of spirits and entities that once inhabited the land before modern civilization repressed them into desert solitude, impenetrable forests, and inaccessible mountains. He explains how, to our ancestors, enclosing a space was a sacred act. Specific rites had to be performed to negotiate with the local spirits and ensure proper placement and protection of a new building. These land spirits often became the household spirit, taking up residence in a new building in exchange for permission to build on their territory. Lecouteux explores Arthurian legends, folk tales, and mythology for evidence of the untamed spirits of the wilderness, such as giants, dragons, and demons, and examines the rites and ceremonies used to gain their good will. Lecouteux reveals how, despite outright Church suppression, belief in these spirits carried through to modern times and was a primary influence on architecture, an influence still visible in today’s buildings. The author also shows how our ancestors’ concern for respecting nature is increasingly relevant in today’s world.

    RJ Stewart offers contemporary techniques for enhancing awareness and subtle energies through Faery consciousness.

    It discusses the origins and meaning of all the known runes, and includes text and translations of rune poems and riddles from England, Norway amd Iceland, as well as two short essays on The Norfolk TIW runes' and The Brandon runes'.

    Medievalists are familiar with the image of a queen offering a drink to a king or chieftain and to his retainers, the Wealhtheow scene in Beowulf being perhaps the most famous instance. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology and philology, as well as medieval history, Professor Enright has produced the first work in English on the warband and on the significance of barbarian drinking rituals.

    It encourages our deeper involvement with trees both on the physical level and offers ways we can open our spiritual connection to trees and nature.The book focuses on 13 native trees of the British Isles and their corresponding 13 moons and place on the wheel of the year's cycle. This is based on the authors understanding of their inherent energy and unique healing properties. This creates a tree circle, which can be planted and used as a sacred grove or celebration circle.These are the native trees of the British Isles that our ancestors would have worked with and the book explores some of the myths and folklore surrounding these trees, as well as past and present uses of the wood and the herbal and culinary uses of their leaves, sap, fruit and bark.Also there are suggested ways to communicate with tree spirits and the spiritual and healing qualities that each tree has to teach us.Illustrated with line drawings of the leaves, flowers and fruit of each of the trees and also includes how to grow and plant trees.

    It has also been much praised by depth psychologists for its precise linking of an archetypal perspective in biography and history to the macrocosm of planetary movements, providing an invaluable new bridge between astrology and psychology.

    "I would highly recommend this publication...a must for your bookshelf" Beltane Fire "....an excellent and truly comprehensive work, an essential reference and invaluable companion for everyone interested in the use of herbs for magic and ritual. Highly recommended" Prediction "most comprehensive book...The sheer amount of information in this book is staggering...books with this kind of collated information are rare treasures." Manchester Pagan Wheel Moves beyond herb folklore and examines their true magical nature, showing how power plants can be employed for the transformation of Self and consciousness, according to the teachings of Native Pagan Tradition. Detailed descriptions of herbs, cultivating them for magical purposes, their traditional uses, explanations of lore, the art of herb simples and traditional recipes. Correspondences - animal totems, magical tools, deities, planets, elements and festivals. Set out in alphabetical order, with appendices designed to help each individual with their own personal development.

    The power of these images lies not only in their aesthetic, and counter-aesthetic, appeal but also in their psychological and emotional effect. As objects of fury and force, these works are intended to protect and empower people and cultures that have long been oppressed.In this first major study of its kind, Suzanne Preston Blier examines the artworks of the contemporary vodun cultures of southern Benin and Togo in West Africa as well as the related voudou traditions of Haiti, New Orleans, and historic Salem, Massachusetts. Blier employs a variety of theoretically sophisticated psychological, anthropological, and art historical approaches to explore the contrasts inherent in the vodun arts—commoners versus royalty, popular versus elite, "low" art versus "high." She examines the relation between art and the slave trade, the psychological dynamics of artistic expression, the significance of the body in sculptural expression, and indigenous perceptions of the psyche.Throughout, Blier pushes African art history to a new height of cultural awareness that recognizes the complexity of traditional African societies as it acknowledges the role of social power in shaping aesthetics and meaning generally. This book will be of critical importance not only to those concerned with African, African American, and Caribbean art, but also to anthropologists, African diaspora scholars, students of comparative religion and comparative psychology, and anyone fascinated by the traditions of voudou and vodun."An extraordinary tour de force."—Choice"Extraordinarily detailed....Blier's examination of the entire, often mysterious history of vodun is...in a word, definitive."—Booklist"A serious study that concentrates on the hidden power of objects and the meaning behind that potency is long overdue. Welcome Susan Blier's African Vodun....Certainly a must for...those concerned with the psychology of art."—Janet L. Stanley, Art Documentation"[Blier] is usually sensitive to the need to resist imposing Western artistic values and academic methodologies inappropriately upon such art. But she offers the reader a gift even more precious; she offers rare insights into how various art forms—sculpture and home architecture in particular—yield meanings for the African users of such art.—Norman Weinstein, Boston Book Review

    It will appeal to all who are drawn to visit such natural and archetypal locations in the landscape as tree groves, sacred springs, the seashore and the Wild Wood. All these are Secret Places of the Goddess. It shows why certain locations have been considered numinous and magical and how we can each go about finding these special places in the landscape and provides a vision of the variety of ways in which we might respond to the spirit present at such sites and thereby enter into a closer relationship with the Old Ones. ISBN 1898307 40 7

    Myth blends with science in this inspiring story of one man's crusade to preserve the ancient and revered, yet recently threatened, yew tree.

    Considerable recent interest has been focused on the role of goddesses in ancient societies, though not always with a clear eye on the actual source material. This book, written by one of the leading scholars of Celtic myth and religion, examines the significance of the female in Celtic belief and ritual as expressed in surviving archaeological remains and written sources. Divine and semi-divine females abound in Welsh and Irish myths, often associated with themes of virginity and sexuality, promiscuity and destruction. The concept of partnership is a prominent aspect of Celtic religion and myth, and it is possible to trace evidence of the divine marriage in both European iconography and Irish myth. Interestingly, the female is sometimes the dominant partner. Terrifying battle goddesses were invoked in times of war, often believed to change into raven-form as harbingers of death. A Mother Goddess was venerated, often in triple form, and supplicated for fertility of animals and crops. Goddesses were often linked with animals: birds, dogs, bears, pigs and snakes all had their divine protectresses. The great Celtic horse-goddess Epona even had a Roman festival dedicated to her. The transition from polytheistic paganism to monotheistic Christianity in the Celtic west is examined in a final chapter.