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Druid Magic : The Practice of Celtic Wisdom

by Maya Magee Sutton, Nicholas R. Mann, Philip Carr-Gomm

 

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Paperback - 331 pages 1 Ed edition (March 2000) Llewellyn Publications; ISBN: 1567184812 ;

Dimensions (in inches): 0.99 x 9.11 x 7.53

 

Editorial Reviews

The author, Maya Magee Sutton, Ph.D., and Nicholas R. Mann , April 12, 2000

How we can practice Druid Magic today From Dr. Maya Magee Sutton: The main purpose of "Druid Magic" is to awaken Druid power in readers, so you can apply the magical principles in daily life. If you are looking for a book that will teach you how to become a Druid, there is only one. That's right, it's "Druid Magic, the Practice of Celtic Wisdom."

Our book is not ABOUT Druidry, because that would leave the readers on the outside looking in. Instead, we explain the essentials of Druidry, demystify them, and show you how they can be immediately applied. You will know what you are doing, where the power comes from, and how to use Druid magic today - and that's the point, isn't it? If you'd like to write to us, in care of the publisher, we'd like to hear how you came to Druidry. For me, this path took a while.

A dozen years ago an intuitive friend called me a Druid Princess. I laughed, though I liked the idea. About the same time, a female rabbi who was a guest speaker in a class I was teaching at the university told me: "go to your roots." As though some force was leading me, I was drawn to the wonderworld of the Celts. Suddenly my whole way of living got turned around. I had to know more, travel there, dig deeper. The genealogy of my own family took hold of me. The grandfather who had helped raise me was born in Co. Meath, Ireland. I learned where all my great-grandparents had come from -- Celts everywhere I looked. Emerging alongside this research was my fascination with Druidry.

For several years I had been teaching Celtic mythology at the university. Every retelling of the myths, all the delving I did to bring the meanings alive, the brilliant insights of my students - these things reached their pinnacle in studying the intellectual and magical domains of Druidry. I wanted to be on the inside of such wisdom. You can be too. In writing "Druid Magic," Nicholas and I discovered two new things that haven't been clarified before.

The first concerns the Otherworlds you hear about. We found there are two distinct realms that are often confused. One is the world of Faerie, or the Land of the Sidhe. This is a parallel universe of spirits who can take on visible form, often as wee folk. Their world is enticing, like paradise, and time stands still there. Faeries can choose to help humans (I've learned to elicit their aid from time to time) or hinder and be a nuisance. The other realm is the Land of the Living, sometimes called Tir na nOg, where souls go after departing their physical bodies and before rebirth. The second discovery we made concerns the highest principle of the Druids: to live one's truth. The sovereignty of the Self is paramount. All power and magic stems from living in your fullest honor, courage, strength and talents. It isn't easy. People ask us what Druid magic consists of. Readers will learn how to find things that are lost or missing. They will be able to magically protect themselves, other people, and places. They will know which Celtic goddesses and gods to call on for specific abilities. They will find out how to make magical tools and to do divination using the trees. There is a popular chapter on sacred sexuality, built on the Celtic love of the verbal, the sensual, and the ecstatic aspects of connecting with each other. One of the most profound skills is learning to reach the ever-flowing streambed of creativity that the Celtic bards knew about. From there you can begin to compose through inspiration, with no writer's block! We hope you embrace the richness of Druidry in your life as we have done. Enjoy - or as the Irish say - "Bain sult as leat!"

From Nicholas R. Mann: I grew up in Britain. People there had concocted fantasies about the Druids from the 18th century on. Men put on false beards, made up a costume of white robes, danced around inside Stonehenge, and called themselves Druids. That type of confusion makes it difficult to get at what is authentic.

Maya and I, however, discovered there is a source of early Celtic material that can tell us about the Druids. This source is Irish and Welsh mythology and legend. We ignored the romantic hogwash, put the biased Greek and Roman writings to one side, and relied on what the Celts said about themselves. It was like uncovering an iceberg! We knew that an enormous body of knowledge was there below the surface. But how could we put it together from the few parts that were visible?

Well, it took a lot of detective work. We spent years analyzing the mythology, to uncover what the Druids themselves apparently thought and taught. We learned to think with the Celtic mindset, which is very different from the way we are taught in school. Then we had to organize our findings because the pieces of the iceberg are only random fragments that have survived and been written down; a tremendous amount has been lost. We looked for themes and central principles of Druidry. Here is one of them: the Druids taught that we are on a constant journey from one incarnation to another, in plant, animal or human form. So the whole of the universe is alive with the presence of incarnating life. Since the Druids were intimate with nature, their teachings arose from observing the natural world.

That's why trees are so central to understanding their wisdom. Far from having "lost" the wisdom of the Celtic Druids, we still have their teachers with us in the form of trees, birds, fertility, cycles of animals and seasons of the year. From the Druids we have inherited a refreshingly new view of life, yet one that is grounded in thousands of years of tradition.