A Spring Hamper

This year the blossom and so many flowers have appeared all at once. The garden here is groaning with pink and white and blue. It is just perfect!

The same thing seems to be happening with friends’ creativity: suddenly a crop of fabulous new books have arrived here from friends far and wide. Each one deserves a full review and fulsome praise, but I’m off to Germany on Friday for 12 days so for the moment I just want to mention each of them, in gratitude for having been sent them, and in recognition for the authors’ hard work. May they all be immensely successful!

In order of arrival:

Karen Sawyer’s Soul Companions, published by O Books, is like a great basket of fruit – a gathering of interviews with dozens of spiritual teachers and facilitators who talk about their inner life – and in particular their experiences with guides and other figures in the ‘Otherworld’. Karen roped me in to talk about some of my experiences and has organized a weekend with a number contributors in Wales in September. Details here.

Order member Adele Nozedar’s The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols. In almost 700 pages Adele manages to survey a vast amount of subjects. Other members have contributed to this series of Element, including John Matthews who wrote the Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures and John Michael Greer’s Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History. They are all compendia that contain well researched information invaluable to readers who want to know more about these subjects. Adele’s Secret Language of Birds was wonderful – I’m sure her new book is too!

Lindsay Halton is the only person to have slept in our Wendy House before we turned it into a sauna. That was years ago. He is an architect who has been exploring Feng Shui, Sacred architecture, and what it means to ‘be at home’ in its deepest sense. He’s come up with a method of working with this using the ‘Homesouls’ oracle and a book, The Secret of Home – A Guide to Abundant Living, which has just been published by O Books. I read it in draft and loved it, and its great to see it finally out.

O Books has also published the last book of this Spring crop – Emma Restall Orr’s Living with Honour – A Pagan Ethics. At last a study of ethics within the Pagan tradition! Ethics has been a somewhat neglected subject for Druids, Wiccans, and non-affiliated Pagans of all kinds, but I think we can call 2008 the Year of Ethics – certainly for Druidry, with the publication of Emma’s book, which will be followed soon by Brendan Myers’ book (also published by ‘O’) on the Virtue Ethic. Brendan has also just submitted his paper for the Order’s Mount Haemus Award which he modestly entitles: ‘How Beautiful Are They—
Some thoughts on Ethics in Celtic and European Mythology. ‘ They may be ‘some thoughts’ – but they are very good ones, and they demonstrate the contribution a Druidic/Celtic perspective on ethics can offer to the world. Emma’s book promises to do the same – I’m very much looking forward to reading it.