Book Review - Druidry and the Ancestors

  I recently read Nimue Brown's book Druidry and the Ancestors: finding our place in our own history. I was intrigued by the book's title but approached reading it with some trepidation as I have felt ambivalent about the work of other OBOD authors in the past. Generally my approach to Druidism is very different from OBODs and while I have great respect for the wisdom and vision of their organization the result is that books by their authors often leave me with strongly mixed feelings. I must admit I was quite pleasantly surprised by this book and found it thought provoking and more than worth reading.
  The author breaks the book down into a look at how we perceive history, the way that viewpoint shapes our ideas about ancestors, and a discussion of the ancestors themselves. She is refreshingly open about her own biases and viewpoints and uses anecdotes to illustrate her points to good effect creating a personal touch to the text. The author is also not afraid to tackle the more difficult or emotional issues of ancestry - including adoption, abuse, and invention - in a direct manner.
   After an initial chapter which defines who the ancestors were and are the second chapter delves into "history as story". I found this section to be profoundly thought provoking as it challenges the reader to look at what we know about history, how we know it, and how our view of it shapes our understanding at the most basic level. The book raises several points that I had never before considered but which will require some profound reflection long after I've put this book behind me.
  Next is a chapter on 'spotting the melons" which encourages critical thinking in reading and offers a list of basic guidelines to sort bad sources from good. The author feels, as do I, that paganism is plagued by bad source material and faulty or outdated facts and tries to educate readers about the pitfalls to be found. Although I felt that some of the examples used were a bit vague, overall the chapter was a great edition to the book. Particularly in Druidism sorting fact from fiction from fantasy is an endless process and discernment is essential.
  Moving on there is a chapter on the importance of ancestors and then several on individual types of ancestors, including ancestors of place and of tradition. I enjoyed the way that a variety of non-blood ancestors were included and that the author continues to challenge readers with new perspectives and ideas. The reality of ancestors whose stories we know well stand side by side with those who we have invented as part of our own narrative, and we are encouraged to value fact as well as myth in building practice. In this book knowing our ancestors is about knowing ourselves, and indeed one of the final chapters, "ancestors of the future", encourages us to look at ourselves as tomorrow's ancestors.
   This book is not a workbook or how-to of ancestor work; in its pages you won't find how to set up ancestor altars or what offerings to make to who. What you will find is an invaluable guide to connecting to your own past, healing broken connections, and how today's Druids are and will be the ancestors of tomorrows spiritual seekers. More than worth reading, more than once.

Book Review: Mysteries of Druidry

  Since yesterday was a holiday I'm doing my weekly book review today instead. I decided to review one of my favorite books on modern Druidism, Brendan Myers' "the Mysteries of Druidry". This book came out in 2006 and presents an interesting blend of modern mysticism and solid research. I like to recommend it to anyone who is interested in Druidism, especially of the Irish variety.
  The book includes a forward by Isaac Bonewits, an introduction, 7 chapters, an epilogue, notes, index, and brief about the author page. The introduction begins with an imaginative envisioning of a meeting between the young Cu Chulainn and the Morrigan, and then segues into an introduction of the concept of Celtic mysticism and modern Druidism.The chapters look at different core concepts of modern Druidism including 9 concepts that the author identifies as key to Druidism, sacred space, magic, Druidic tools, and outlines of meditations. The epilogue offers a view of what Druidism could be as a viable spiritual path.
   What I like most about the book is the author's engaging writing style and way of discussing difficult or complex subjects in accessible ways. He tackles the often problematic concepts of mysticism within Druidism in ways that are easy to follow and provide food for thought for the reader. He also provides a selection of actual ritual ideas and suggested meditations which allow a reader to experience the ideas being discussed firsthand. One of my favorite parts of the book is a section in chapter 6 that lists and describes 12 qualities of a modern Druid, which I think are well thought out and good criteria for anyone to apply who is interested in this path. The book also includes some lovely artwork and a thorough index.
  One of the only criticisms that I have with this work is that it is formatted using two columns of text on each page rather than one, and I find this a bit distracting. Otherwise I feel like the author has done a very good job of accomplishing the apparent goal of the book, to discuss mysticism in modern Druidism and also supply useful guidelines for actual practice. Mysticism is a hard topic to successfully discuss and I feel that many authors either avoid it or fail to handle it well, so it is nice to have at least one solid resource on the topic.

Book review: Trance-portation

Trying to get back to my Monday book reviews, I've decided to review Diana Paxson's 2008 book Trance-portation: Learning to navigate the inner world. I was excited to read this book after it was released because I feel that there is a distinct need for this type of work. There are many books on the market that are intended to address guiding people through the beginner stages of trance and spiritual journey work, but I often feel that the subject is not handled well. Too many times the basics - grounding, centering, shielding, discernment, and such - are either over emphasized to the point that nothing else is addressed, or else the basics are glossed over in favor of more advanced material. In this work, however, there is a good balance between the essential basics and the necessary advanced steps that creates a very functional and useful manual for trance work.
    The book includes 13 sections: travel planning, crossing the threshold, getting started, trance-perception, there and back again, native guides, getting along in the culture, mapping the inner worlds, fellow travelers, destinations, your place or mine, going nowhere being everywhere, and road hazards. There are also three appendices: notes for the tour guides, guidance systems, and journeys to find allies. Each section follows logically from the previous one so that it works as an instruction manual or can be used as a reference by skipping to the section needed.
    This is an excellent book for those who wish to begin using trance and journey techniques and have no practical experience, but it is also useful for people who do have experience. The author does a thorough job of explaining the principles behind this type of spiritual work, but what makes this book such a good resource for practitioners of all levels is the practical advice. The book touches on common problems people face, includes cautions and protection ideas, as well as how to connect to Otherwordly spirits and deities, and what to expect. The tone of the book is very practical and full of anecdotal advice that illustrates the points in ways that are easier to understand than simple dry facts would be. I also really liked that while Diana's own approach is largely Norse the book is intentionally aimed at a general audience and can be applied to almost any spiritual path; a seidhr-worker should get as much out of this as someone coming from an Irish (or Celtic) view, or a modern neopagan.
   I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in beginning this type of work; this book will give the reader a firm foundation to work from. It includes suggestions for how to do trance work and also what to do trance work for, which was nice, as it includes ideas that might be new perspectives for some readers. Trance work is more than just wandering around the Otherworlds for personal enlightenment or seeking answers to questions and the book provides some good suggestions for other uses. I also very much liked the way the author encourages people to be safe and to use discernment both in the Journey and with anything gained form the Journey, as this can be an area that beginners fall into bad habits with.
    Overall I think this book is essential reading for anyone who does spiritual journey work, both as a great place to start and also as a good refresher for more experienced people. It is certainly the first book I recommend to those asking where to start and also one I re-read whenever I feel I need to. There isn't anything else on the market that is quite like this book.

book review - The Nature of Asatru

 Time for another book review. This time I decided to update and share a review I did 5 years ago in the journal Idunna for a book by Mark Puryear called "The Nature of Asatru". If you have read and liked this book don't even bother reading this review, because I can summarize it concisely by saying that I feel this is the Asatru equivalent of the 21 Lessons of Merlin.
   Looking at the back of the book it seems like it should be an ideal beginner's book; Puryear has almost 20 years experience in Asatru and is a member of a group, the Asatru Nation, which is an American offshoot of Australia's Odinic Rite. The book is touted as an  introduction to the core values of Asatru, yet it quickly becomes apparent when reading the text that instead of describing widely held universal beliefs of Asatru the book is actually focused exclusively on the beliefs of Puryear's particular group, which are not in any way universal. Exactly the opposite in fact - the book is full of controversial theories, misinformation, and foreign elements. The author is also insistent that Asatru has no subgroups or denominations, despite the wide range of modern practices, and lumps all Asatruar in with the Asatru Nation/Odinic Rite. This by itself is a serious problem.
   The book's tone is both racist and homophobic, reinforcing the stereotype that Asatruar are all like this. Puryear blends a bizarre sort of political correctness in with his bigotry, encouraging tolerance of other people's choices while strongly condemning miscegeny and homosexuality. He describes children with mixed heritage as having no ancestral roots and miscegeny as genocide and stops just short of encouraging people of Northern European descent to breed together to save their "race". He does flatly state that the "white race" is failing due to being outbred and not keeping the bloodlines pure. The attempts to make this more palatable with politically correct buzz words fails, at least with me. Personally as someone of mixed heritage I found it repugnant and offensive, and his wife's essay in the appendices about a woman's place compounded it by adding misogyny into the mix, albeit cleverly disguised.
   The book includes many elements that seem to me to be foreign to Asatru, although I profess a very minimal knowledge of the Odinic Rite; it is possible that this is the norm for that group. Puryear says that the gods meet daily to judge the souls of the dead and assign them a place in the afterlife; not something I've heard anyone else supporting. He also very strongly divides Norse magic into "good" galdr and "evil" seidhr, going so far as to say that Gullveg was burned by the Aesir as a punishment for teaching evil seidhr to humanity. (Apperantly he ignores Freya teaching seidhr to Odin). He describes Helheim as a land of bliss. He adds nine vices to the accepted 9 noble virtues and these vices appear to be an odd mix of the Christian 10 commandments and deadly sins. He describes the Aesir and Vanir as nearly-archetypal deities of goodness, with Loki as the opposing force of pure evil He also inaccurately claims that there are no modern followers or cults to Loki. The author's ideas about orlag seem to me to be closer to the Wiccan concept of the law of 3 than the common heathen views, with his belief that orlag is about what we put out coming back to us. He also divides offerings into four catagories based on the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water, which struck me as being very odd.
   The book's mythology was heavily influenced by the writings of Viktor Rydburg, who attempted to homogenize all Norse and Germanic mythology into a single system, with predictable results. Rydburg is not widely accepted in mainstream heathenry, yet the book presents his theories as facts without any explanation of the source material or normal views. Puryear describes Frigga as the sister of Njordh and mother of Freya, Frey, and 8 others with him, for example, which is not a widely held belief in heathenry. He equates Gullveg to Angrboda and lists Gullveg as the mother of Loki's children; in turn he says that Hel is not Loki's daughter but rather that Urd rules Helheim with Loki's daughter, named Leiken, as a minor servant. He describes Baldr as the most popular heathen god and relegates Tyr to the role of warrior and son of Odin, while denying his role as god of justice and god of the Thing which are the widely accepted views of Tyr. He describes Skadi, who is normally viewed as giantess who married into the Aesir, as the daughter of Volund (the smith) and Idunna. In his book Sunna and Mani are alfs and their mother is Nott (or Nat) who he claims is actually Ostara. I could go on, but hopefully that is enough to demonstrate the odd material presented on the gods, the majority of which is not widely accepted by the larger community. I think presenting it as if it were fact or accepted lore does a great disservice to beginners who will not realize that these are not popular beliefs.
    Facts that should have been easily checked are wrong, such as the authors assertion that the most common modern and ancient method of humane animal sacrifice is beheading the animal - this statement is followed by a rambling discussion of the guillotine. The book itself is inly 127 pages long, follwed by an equally long appendices which include an essay by the author's wife about a heathen woman's place (in the home caring for her family) and a cobbled-together version of the Havamal.
    In short this book is the last thing a beginner should read as it is often off-putting, offensive, confusing, and factually incorrect. While it is always best to start with the myths themselves - the poetic and prose Eddas are generally recommended - both volumes of Our Troth and Diana Paxson's book Essential Asatru would also be good for those just developing an interest in Asatru.
   

Book Review: The World of the Druids

  I haven't done a book review since last month so I thought it was about time to do another. This review will look at Miranda Green's book The World of the Druids, which was published in 1997. The book is divided into 10 sections that cover everything from what we know about ancient Druids to the Druidic revival and modern Druids. Of particular interest may be the sections on Celtic cosmology and theology, female Druids, and evidence of ritual sacrifice. At 192 pages the book is fairly short and very easy to read, with an impressive selection of images (291 to be exact) that support the text.
    Green's strength is archeology so it should come as no surprise that she spends more time discussing archeological evidence than many other similar books do. This is something of a catch-22 in a book on Druidism as there is very little definitvely "Druidic" material that can be identified from ancient sites, leaving much up to guess and supposition. The advantage to the reader however is the material covered that relates more broadly to Celtic culture and can provide insight into dress, jewelry, and lifestyle as well as religion (broadly) while remaining in an easily accessible format. Unlike books that are intended to focus on archeological evidence this book largely avoids being dry or overly complicated, and is fairly easy to read and follow.
     I also liked that Green is very clear about the difficulty with many of the sources, including archeology, before offering that material. She doesn't downplay the issues that we have with the sources available to us that provide the only real information we have about the Druids. She is also clear that even defining who was and wasn't "Celtic" historically is complicated, saying, "...defining the world of the ancient Celts depends upon three categories of evidence, all of which need to be used cautiously because they are incomplete and sometimes ambiguous." (Green, p 11, 1997). She does provide a solid amount of literary references from Greek and Roman writers, as well as native Celtic myth.
     Green approaches defining the historic Druids by establishing who the Celts were at that time and what their beliefs were, and then uses that context to describe the Druids and their role in soceity. She uses archeology, Greek and Roman writings, and Welsh and Irish myths to do this. I can appreciate the value of this approach as context is vital to understanding any group functioning within a larger society, such as the Druids. The book is honestly worth reading just for the insight into Celtic culture that Green provides, but she does do a fair job of explaining the Druids' place as well.
    The book finishes up with chapters on the Druid revivial and modern Druidism, both of which are fascinating. Although not nearly as in depth as other works, of course, it does provide a good overview of more recent Druidic history and would serve as a good introduction to the topic. The focus here is on Druids in England specifically, so anyone looking for information about the Druid revivals in other areas will have to look elsewhere.
     I think that as a book on Druids this one is of moderate value, but is a better resource on Celtic culture. I can think of other books on historical and modern Druids that I would recommend first, but this one is nice in its brevity and inclusion of both historic and modern practices. I would, however, recommend it more highly as an introduction to ancient Celtic culture and religion, which is more of the book's strength than strictly Druidism. For someone just venturing into this area of study this book is a good place to start.

Book Review: Through the Faerie Glass

  Yesterday I read Through the Faerie Glass by Kenny Klein, a book I had high hopes for and very much wanted to like. Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations. I decided to review it here to share my thoughts on it with everyone.
   This book is a truly mixed bag, with good material and points side by side with bad. One of the most frustrating things when reading it is that the author often states information without any references of sources, leaving the reader unable to track down how factual something is, or what an idea is based on. His bibliography is extensive but random, with everything from the Rees's Celtic Heritage and Yeats to the Bible and modern fiction novels. It is also difficult at many points to follow what the author is saying as he will make one statement at one point and then a contradictory statement later; he goes around and around about the Fey being human folk memories of people meeting more primitive peoples, or being Gods, or being supernatural, for example, intermixing theories together and stating them each on their own. He is particularly set on the Faeries being the ancient Picts who were driven into the hills, he says, by the Celts and their iron technology, although he also says the Picts themselves may be Otherworldly, magical, shamanic, etc.,. This theory was a pet one of Gerald Gardner and featured in the novel The Mists of Avalon but there is absolutely no evidence, archaeological or folkloric, to support the idea.
  Looking at the good points first the book starts with a warning against the Victorian view of faeries, and advises that the Fey are more complex and potentially dangerous than little garden sprites. The book also includes excerpts of many traditional pieces including the Ballad of True Thomas, Tam Lin, and other traditional folk songs or poems about faeries. The book also includes some good genuine folklore and belief that can often be ignored in other modern books, like the Selkies marrying human husbands or the Fey stealing children and brides.
  Now intermixed within the good we see the bad. I've already mentioned his belief that the Picts were the Faeries and this becomes the crux of several problematic points. He says the words fairies and pixies are directly from the term Picts, which is just not etymologically sound. Pict is from the Latin for painted; pixie is of unknown origin, and fairy is from the Latin for fate.He states that the Irish word Sidhe means mound dweller (it means fairy hill) and is derived from the name for the Picts who lived, he claims, in underground homes. He states that iron is a good protection against faeiries (true) but he says its because the Picts would have feared the strange new metal or else associated it with death and warfare. He also claims that the reported time difference between our world and Fairyland comes from Celts who visited with the Picts and ingested psychogenic plants that distorted their sense of time, creating a false sense of being in another world; because, he says, the Picts were shamans who used psychotropic plants and apparently gave them out to untrained visitors.
   Getting away from the Pictish nonsense, he also is very fond of the idea that Gods are actually fairies, a reverse of what many fairy faith and Celtic pagans believe. So instead of the gods being reduced into fairies, or put into the category of the aos sidhe, he says that the gods are fairies themselves along the lines of traditional pixies, selkies, etc., He says that  Rhiannon is an underworld horse fairy. Cerridwen is a bird fairy because in her myth she turns into a bird twice, and the Sumerian/Hebrew goddess Lilith is an owl fairy. Surprisingly Llew is not a bird fairy, but a Sun God, so maybe its especially goddesses? Although he does say Odin is a fairy (and that Tyr is Odin), so, I don't know. Which sums up a lot of this book.
   His section on Samhain is comic, with a very interesting discussion about how the Celts believed that Death (capital D) was wandering around on Samhain and could freely take anyone It felt like. So, he says, the Celts dressed up as ghosts to trick Death into thinking they'd already kicked it, and they placed lit turnips in front of their homes to signal that Death had already been there. Because apparently he thinks that Death leaves a glowing turnip as a "Death was here" marker; I assume so that It isn't wasting It's time going back to the same houses It's already been to. I found this extremely funny.
   The author also mixes in a lot of Middle Eastern and Hebrew material with the Celtic and talks a lot about Greek Nymphs and Dryads in a Celtic context which I thought was a bit odd, but neither good nor bad. Alright the bit about Druids sleeping by streams to receive inspiration from naiads was bad, and that bit about "Cailleach bheara" being the title of the banshee when she takes the form of a deer...um, yeah, that was kind of painful.
  Anyway, I wouldn't recommend it. There are good points but not nearly enough to outweigh the awful. I'm not going to bother with the second book about Fairy Tale rituals. I'm kind of surprised there is a second book, but I guess people who don't know better can't discern the quality of the material. Or they just don't care.

Book Review - the Druid's Primer

   There are many books on the market that aim to introduce the seeker to the basics of Druidism, but The Druid's Primer by Luke Eastwood is perhaps the single best introduction book I have read. It's greatest strength is that it manages to present a great deal of modern Druidic material fairly and with clear references to the sources. The author has done a great deal of research into the historic material, which is also presented well and in an easily accessible manner.
   The book begins with a chapter that summerizes the historic material. This was very well done, with the material being covered thoroughly but concisely. This section touches on everything from the early Celtic period and what we have from seocndary sources such as Pliny and Caesar up to the modern era revival. Although not gone into as deeply as in other books the single chapter effectively summerizes the highlights and is more than enough to get a beginner started or serve as a basic refresher for a more experienced person.
   The next chapter tackles possibly the most complex subject in modern Druidism, defining what a Druid is. The book does an excellent job of presenting the different current theories fairly, including the possible etymologies of the word "druid" itself. The different historical sources are once again drawn upon including Irish mythology and the later Barddas, which the text acknowledges as a well known forgery but also influencial on the revivalist period. The author also discusses his own view of what a Druid does and who a Druid is, creating a fascinating and complex picture of the modern Druid.
   From here the next 7 chapters discuss: Gods & Goddesses, Myth & Legend, Elemental Forces, Cosmology, Inspiration, Imramma, and Animism & Animal Worship. Each chapter is a blend of well-researched history and modern application that manages to offer a balanced view of modern Druidism without favoring any one particular path or focus. In most cases multiple views are offered for the reader to consider with sources given so that the reader may further pursue anything of interest.
   This is followed by a section, Cycles of the Sun, Moon and Earth, that looks at the historic and modern way that Druids would honor the passing of time and holy days. The author discusses a system of lunar rituals based on Alexei Kondratiev's book the Apple Branch that could be used by modern Druids seeking to connect to the moon. This is followed by a discussion of the solar year and it's holidays, including all of the eight holidays of the modern pagan wheel of the year.
   Next is a section on tools, which looks at the tools historically attributed to the Druids. It begins by discussing clothing, rather in depth, including the colors likely worn and the Irish legal texts refering to dress and color. Sickles, wands, staffs, the Druid egg, cauldron/chalice, magical branch, musical instruments, the crane bag, and sword are discussed. The four treasures of the Tuatha de Danann are also mentioned in a modern context as tools that Druids today may choose to use, although they have no historic basis in that context.
   The final four chapters look at divination, the Ogham, medicine & healing, and justice & wisdom. Each of these was important in some way to the historic Druids and so each chapter looks at how the subject relates to historic Druidism and how these can relate to modern practice.
    Overall this book is more than worth the money and certainly the best book to begin with if one is interested in learning about the path of Druidism. It is full of the history of Druidism and also shows the wide array of modern possibilities that are open to new seekers. For more experienced Druids this book will serve as a great refresher or reference.

Book review - Witta

You would think that when a horribly inaccurate book goes out of print that eventually it would just fade into obscurity...yet in the last week I have heard several different groups as well as people talking about Edain McCoy and her book Witta, which may be the single worst book on Irish paganism ever written. Ever. So I have decided to write a blog book review of it - although I will only be able to touch on the highlights of the errors in the book, as to address every single issue would take almost another book's worth of writing to do.

 The cover of the book itself should be the first clue that something is wrong, since dancing the Maypole is not an Irish tradition but rather an English one. Also the name itself, Witta, is not an Irish word and furthermore could not possibly be an Irish word because it defies Irish grammar rules on several fronts. And unlike McCoy's claims in the book this made up word has no connection to the Irish words for witch (cailleach or draiodoir mna) or wise (crionna). So just looking at the cover we see big red flags...
   Now moving on to the actual text, we encounter the first problem on the second page of the introduction where the author comments on the difficulty of reconstructing a faith that as she says "was forced underground and kept alive by small, secretive pockets of believers". This plays into the idea that paganism became the hidden faith that survived to modern times and is just waiting to be found by dedicated seekers - Margaret Murray would have loved this, but the reality is that this idea has been pretty well disproven. Traces of pagan belief and practice have survived as folk belief, and revivals began several hundred years ago with the upsurge in interest in the occult and paganism but there is no unbroken pagan line from the pre-Christian past until now.
  Next, also in the introduction, the author explains her passionate dislike of the Patriarchy - readers of the book may want to make a note of this, because you'll be seeing the word a lot as well as the author's opinion about how it ruined everything. Because apparently Irish Celts had a perfectly wonderful, peaceful, Great Mother Goddess worshipping matriarchy until the Druids and then the Roman Christians came along...but wait! you're saying, How could the Irish Celts have had a religion prior to the Druids, since we know that the Druids were the priestly class of the Celts and would have come to Ireland with Celtic culture? Good question. As McCoy explains it the Celts were the main ethnic group in Ireland up until the 2nd century BCE practicing Witta. Then in the 2nd century BCE the Druids came to power and ruled until the 4th century CE, except she then says that the Christians took over in the 2nd century CE.  Good luck working out how any of that makes sense. The reality is that the neolithic people of Ireland certainly did have a religion, but we have no real record of what it was or how it was practied, only the barest hints that can be gleaned from studying the dolmens and other stone structures left behind. When Celtic culture migrated to Ireland, likely starting in the 5th century BCE, it mingled with and influenced the existing culture; eventually the Celtic culture came to be dominant, but it is impossible to say what the neolithic culture was like or what role the Druids played in the blending of the cultures. Ireland remained effectively pagan until about the 5th century when dominance shifted to the Christian church, so instead of the 400 years of Druids that McCoy claims it was more likely close to a millenia, and possibly longer since we don't know with certainty when the Druids finally ceased existing totally.
  McCoy really doesn't like the Druids and the book discusses at several points how the Druids ruined the Matriarchy and paved the way for Christianity. She also blames the Druids for first starting to drive Witta underground as the Druids sought power by cutting the people off from the gods (more on the gods later) and trying to control all knowledge. Of course she also claims the Druids were a secret society and I still haven't worked out how she thinks they could have been a secret society and a powerful priestly class at the same time - it's kind of like saying Roman Catholic priests are a secret society, or Jewish Rabbis, or for that matter like saying that modern doctors or lawyers are part of a secret society. The reality is that the Druids were a powerful class in Celtic society and they did act as priests, doctors, lawyers, and teachers but anyone could seek training as a Druid (according to Caesar) so it was hardly a secret society. She also mistakenly refers to female Druids as "Dryads" and claims they were named so after the Irish tree spirits. In reality the Old Irish for a male druid is drui and a female is bandrui (modern draoi and bandraoi) while Dryad is strictly a Greek word for a type of tree spirit.  To further her evils-of-patriarchy theory she asserts that male Druids were supported and trained full time but the poor female Druids were forced to support themselves while training and take whatever instruction they could manage to fit in. She also claims that the Druids conjured the spirits of the dead in magical circles, used a form of divination based on their 13 month tree calendar, taught that to kill a snake was bad luck, and used the 4 classical elements, which is all non-sense. There is no evidence of the Druids using modern ceremonial magic style workings to talk to the dead and it's been pretty thoroughly proven that Robert Graves created the 13 month tree calendar and assigned each tree to it. There haven't been snakes in Ireland since before the last ice age, so it's impossible for Irish Druids to have kept them as totem animals or to prohibited killing them in Ireland. And while the Irish likely did have a system of elements it didn't involve the number 4.
   The vast majority of the religion contained in the book is basic Wicca: a black handled ritual knife, a wand - although she suggests replacing it with a staff which she calls a shillelagh - a pentagram. All the 8 Wiccan sabbats, the 4 elements, circle casting, etc., sometimes with a twist to make it a little different, sometimes pretty basically Wiccan, but none of it reflecting any kind of genuine Celtic or Irish beliefs.
   Now when it comes to gods McCoy gets very odd throughout the book. She does, of course, claim that Wittans believed in the maiden-mother-crone goddess (another Graves invention from 1948) but she assigns the maiden spot, apparently, to Danu, mother to Brigid (although she also says Danu and Brigid are names of the same goddess) and crone to Badb, who she later calls both Macha and the Cailleach. The god of Witta is the horned god called Cernunnos, which McCoy claims is a Greek name, although in reality it is Romano-Gaulish. She also mentions Lugh as the archetypal Wiccan son-lover-consort god to her Wittan goddess. Now at least so far she has referenced actual deities, even if she gets creative with who they are to fit them into her system. Where it gets really fun is when she starts making up gods. For example she talks about the ancient Irish goddess Kele-De, a goddess worshipped by women in opposition to the Church. And she also talks about the god Beltene, a god of death who was worshipped at Beltane. I'm sure everyone reading this knows that neither of those deities exists outside of the pages of this book. It's possible that her goddess Kele-De may be a bizarre twist on the Celtic Ceili-De or Culdee tradition, but how she got from one to the other totally baffles me.The name Ceili De means spouse or companion of God and was a Celtic monastic order of  Christians, as I understand it, which doesn't translate well to an alleged pagan goddess. I did find an obscure reference by a Victorian anthropologist to the god Beltene, written in the late 18th century, which is obviously purely speculative and based on the antiquated idea that if Samhain was ruled by the -also fictitious - death god Samhain then the corresponding holiday of Beltane must also be ruled by a similarly named death god. I can't find the original but it is referenced here in the text under Beltane - the original was much more entertaining.
  As if this wasn't enough to make the books quality clear McCoy also suggests under her tools for Witta that a shillelagh be used in place of a wand (as I mentioned earlier) leaving me to assume she has never seen a shillelagh before. She also says that most Irish Wittans were too poor to own chalices or cauldrons but loved candle magic, telling me she has no idea how precious and expensive disposable wax candles were compared to re-usable metal cups and bowls. She claims that the Irish word sidhe comes from the Indian word siddhi which she says mean "spirit that controls the elements", mistranslating sidhe to mean fairy when it actually means fairy hill. She talks about the danger to ancient Wittans of owning a Ouija board in medieval Ireland (Ouija boards were invented in the middle of the 19th century). She says that the holiday of Lughnasa may be associated with the Roman goddess Luna...I could go on, but the point here is that it is hard to turn a single page of this book without tripping over something that is so inaccurate and so frighteningly wrong that it is hard to fight the urge to fling the book across the room. I may have actually flung the book several times, and it isn't even very aerodynamic...
  Seriously. This book could not be worse if someone were intentionally trying to parody Wicca with an Irish twist. If you are drawn to a modern style of Irish paganism or to Irish flavored Wicca read Jane Raeburn's book Celtic Wicca or Lora O'Brien's Irish Witchcraft from an Irish Witch because both are better researched and written than this and could be used in modern practice. If you see Witta available for sale, buy it to keep it away from anyone who may read it and believe any of it and need deprogramming later. The Great Wittan Irish Potato Goddess will thank you for it.

The Lebor Feasa Runda Should Go Through a Woodchipper: a book review

   Too often we simply avoid bad books without ever knowing why they are bad and to be avoided, but relying on friend's opinions or word of mouth reviews. I have read other reviews of this book, Akins' Lebor Feasa Runda, which took a highly scholastic approach and were very valuable, but I think that by arguing semantics of language and nuances of source material many readers may get lost in the details. So here I offer my simplified book review, an Idiot's Guide to Why This Book is Awful, if you will.
    To begin with Akin's appeals to people's curiosity and desire for genuine material to lure an audience in and draw interest for his book by claiming it is a translation of a previously unknown ancient book of Druidic teaching, which he has exclusively gained access to but cannot produce for others to view. In reality his book is nothing but a badly written version of commonly known Irish mythology followed by his own personal ideas and a generous amount of uncredited plagiarized material from known traditional sources.
    The psuedo-archaic writing style is painful to read, rather reminiscent of the King James Bible, and I can see no point to it beyond making the work look somehow either older or more prestigious. There is no reason for a text he claims to have translated himself to be written in this way except for effect.  Beyond that there is a lot of non-Celtic material mixed in which clashes with extant Celtic sources, and the clear threads of Celtic material are not credited. He invents a system of aligning the days of the week with different planets and gods which is exactly like any Ceremonial Magic compendium with Sunday ruled by the sun and Monday by the moon, etc.,. He also uses the Greco-Roman ideas about four elements, instead of a more authentic Celtic view, to give a few samples of the foreign ideas in the book that are passed off as Irish.
   Particularly troublesome to me is the use of charms and prayers from the first two volumes of the Carmina Gadelica slightly re-written to be pagan without any acknowledgement of the true source of the material which could not possibly be a "secret" manuscript that would predate the Gadelica by almost three thousand years. It is beyond belief that nearly three millenia later the charms and prayers would have translated the same from Scottish to English as they allegedly did from Irish to German to English in this book. Akin's alleged personal translation from German is word for word identical to Carmichael's from 1900. To give a sample of this on page 148 of the Lebor Feasa Runda "The wicked who would do me harm / May his throat be diseased / Globularly, spirally, circularly / Fluxy, pellety, horny-grim" now compare that to the opening lines of charm 193 from volume 2 of the Carmina Gadelica printed in 1900, page 155, "The wicked who would do me harm / May he take the throat disease / Globularly, spirally, circularly / Fluxy, pellety, horny-grim.". This clear, obvious, plagierism cannot be defended, and this is only a small sample of the many such occurances throughout this book. I might not care about the poor writing or random nature of the work if Akins had simply published this as his own personal inspiration with credit to his sources, but I think plaigerism is simply wrong and cannot be justified away with appeals to spiritual inspiration. A core Druidic principle is Truth.
   I also find it disturbing that in his recipe for "oil of enlightenment" he repeats a medieval witches flying ointement that includes toxic ingredients like Hemlock, Aconite and Belladonna. Were anyone to follow his recipe for this oil and use it they could easily poison themselves, yet at no point does Akins mention that any of these plants are poisonous or require special handling.
    In short the book is clearly a mish-mash of plagierized sources Frankenstiened together. A beginner who reads this first will find information that is both wrong, misleading, and in at least the one case potentially dangerous.
 Other reviews:
https://wildhunt.org/2008/11/lost-racist-book-of-ancient-celtic.html
http://cr-r.livejournal.com/318578.html

Book review - Heathen Gods

  I'm doing my weekly book review on Thursday this week...
  I have a new book to add to my recommended reading for new heathens: Heathen Gods by Mark Ludwig Stinson. This book is a great way for anyone to get a feel for what heathenry is and not only learn the basics of it but get some good advice about starting out as a new heathen, starting a group, and living as a heathen.
  The book itself is a collection of short essays, each of which has a different topic. It is broken into roughly 7 sections: Essays for new heathens, Building a kindred or tribe, Maintaining a kindred or tribe, Living a heathen life, Personal and miscellaneous essays, Iceland trip journal, and Poetry by the author. It also includes a good recommended reading list at the back. Each of the first 4 sections contains around a dozen individual essays that fall under the larger section topic, such as "What is a Heathen?", "Differing Views within the Heathen Community", "Why Start a Kindred", and "Wyrd and Worth", to name but a few. The final three sections are much more personal to the author's life and experiences, including personal anecdotes and reflections as well as his journal about a trip to Iceland and provide a look at one person's journey living as a heathen.
  One of the main strengths of this book for me was the way that it touches lightly on many important topics without overwhelming the reader or getting bogged down in details or history. The writing style is engaging and interesting while still being informative and the author tackles difficult topics in a way that encourages the reader to think about the issues. It manages to present a workable modern heathenry in a way that is both understandable and often unflinching to the realities that people in community-based faith face, such as jump-starting spiritual practice and dealing with bad experiences in the community.
   Another thing that I really like about the book is the essay-based format. I admit initially I was unsure about it because I wasn't sure how all the short essays would flow together, but I found that it was perfect for reading a few a day, or skipping around to whatever essay seemed most appropriate each day. It made referencing specific ideas much easier and having the material organized the way it is actually does flow very well.
  All in all a good addition to any heathen's library and definitely a good starting place for a new heathen looking for a better understanding of what modern heathen practice is.