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Paganism
Sacred Britannia by Miranda Aldhouse-Green
£14.99
Two thousand years ago, the Romans sought to absorb into their empire what they regarded as a remote, almost mythical island on the very edge of the known world - Britain. The expeditions of Julius Caesar and the invasion of ad 43 brought fundamental and lasting changes to the island. Not least among these was a pantheon of new Classical deities and religious systems, along with a clutch of exotic eastern cults including Christianity.
But what of Britannia and her own home-grown deities? What cults and cosmologies did the Romans encounter and how did they in turn react to them? Under Roman rule, the old gods were challenged, adopted, adapted, absorbed and re-configured. In this fresh and innovative new account, Miranda Aldhouse-Green balances literary, archaeological and iconographic evidence (and scrutinizes their shortcomings and how we interpret them) to illuminate the complexity of religion and belief in Roman Britain, and the two-way traffic of cultural exchange and interplay between imported and indigenous cults. Despite the remoteness of this period, on the threshold between prehistory and history, many of the forces, tensions, ideologies and issues of identity at work are still relevant today, as Sacred Britannia skilfully draws out.
Paperback edition
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A Druid in Psychologist’s Clothing by Ian C. Edwards
£65.00
Limited hardback edition.
Imagine a man who influenced the likes of Alan Watts, was a friend of Krishnamurti, whose work was lauded by Henry Miller, and had the audacity to challenge the great psychiatrist, C.G. Jung, during one of Jung’s own seminars. Also imagine that this very same man who authored thirteen books and countless articles on the relationship between psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy, spiritual practice, and Druidry was left out of the history books, and pushed to the margins of obscurity. Who was this man? This man was the early 20th-century British psychologist and Druid, E. Graham Howe.
Howe was a master psychologist but even more so a Druid, whom he described as being, “masters of the art of living.” He was a Druid in psychologist’s clothing, a psychologist who used psychology and psychotherapy to convey his secret Druidic doctrine. Like C.G. Jung’s Gnostically influenced Liber Novus (The Red Book), which was the secret foundation for all of his psychological writings, Howe’s Druidry was the secret foundation for his own writings. Howe’s Druidry had one primary aim, which was to heal psychological suffering. Whether he was referencing psychology, philosophy, or spirituality, Howe pointed to the art of healing in them all.
E. Graham Howe was one of the first psychologists to integrate spiritual practice with psychotherapy. Because he did so during a time when psychoanalysis was being established as a dogma, Howe was marginalized and even anathematized by the various psychoanalytic schools. This book will situate Howe within the history of psychoanalysis, showing his work in relation to Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, and Alfred Adler just to name a few. It will also provide a summary and reading of his metaphysical psychology, illustrating his views on depression, love, time, war, self-knowledge, psychotherapy as a way of being, and more. The book will also present some Druidic foundations of Howe’ psychology, in the spirit of the 18th – 19th century Welsh poet, Iolo Morganwg, whose own Druidry, like Howe’s, was inspired, emphasizing more of the Druidic soul rather than blind allegiance to any tradition or belief system.
Included in this book are forewords by author and Druid, John Michael Greer, and Jungian analyst and author, Stanton Marlan.
Wolfs-Head (paperback) by Shani Oates
£26.99
Óðinn’s identity as the Ecstatic God of the Tethers of Law and Death, is least recognised through his Skin-Turning and Shape-shifting techniques as gifts of the highest craft he imparts to a shamanic warrior elite. Those themes are explored in this volume, alighting upon a wide range of magics and histories identified within the Óðinnic cultus. Medieval source materials yield a wealth of information relating to Totemism; Ritual Guising; the Berserkir and Úlfhéðnar as Óðinn’s True Wolf Warriors; Motifs of Magical Beasts in Battle; the Wælceasega as Carrion Host; the Law and Covenants relating to Wǽr-loga; Outlawry; She-Wulves; The Red Thread of Wyrd, Warding and Binding the Dead, Varðlo(k)kur - the call to spirit; Dragons, the Wyrm, and finally, to the malefic sorcery of the Dog Heads of War, The Zmei, The Roggenwolf and the Bukka, whose presence in the wheat, rye and barley knots of the blessed harvest grains, all wend a path through to the real St George, to Green George.
Enchanted thread, girdles, withies and staves, seiðr and the völur are woven through the time-honoured mysteries shared by Beowulf, Grendel and his brimwylf (‘sea-wolf’) mother. Nordic culture drew inspiration and influence from the magical and martial disciplines of the Sámi, Slavic, north-European and Eurasian peoples. Invoking the divine ecstasy of creation, Shamen priests and warriors, stand ‘outside’ time. Óðinn’s antinomian challenges generated considerable friction within societal ‘law.’ The dehumanisation of the skóggarmaðr (wild men of the forest) outlawed for following his rule, rendered them indistinct from the forest-wolf’s status, and were perceived as equal quarry. Transpersonal experiences shaped their realities, relating to identification through a clan totem, namely the wolf, and later the dragon, wyrm and raven, not merely as wild beasts of battle, but of ancestry, mind, of wit and wisdom. Couched in ambiguities, the role of the Valkyrjur,’ the ‘handmaidens of Óðinn is re-evaluated, leading to a new conclusion for their association with (battle) carnage and the ‘Cult of the Dead.’
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