Customer Reviews

The 21 Lessons of Merlyn: A Study in Druid Magic and Lore

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(63)

 

 

As a modern-day student of Druidry, I cannot recommend this book, it is full of gross inaccuracies; to name two: (1) Monroe states that pumpkins were a "sacred plant" of the Druids, however pumpkins are indigenous to North America and were utterly unknown to the ancient Celts; (2) he recommends the ingestion of mistletoe -- mistletoe is a very toxic plant, and should *NOT!* be ingested in any form. I would recommend "The Apple Branch" by Alexei Kondratiev, also on this site, and books in its bibliography for those interested.

"The 21 lessons of Merlyn" tells a good story, but is historically inaccurate. For starters, the Druids came from Ireland in 1000BC...not from Atlantis in 400BC. Easter and the Yule Log are Germanic, not Pagan AND the kissing under the mistletoe tradition is Scandinavian. Also Ogham is not a symbolic magical alphabet. The druids did not practice celibacy to achieve new heights. There were many powerful beings (Mohammad), who had many wives and children.

The fact the many people see this book as a genuine resource on druidism is what bothers me the most. This book is based on the works of Iolo Morganwg (The Book of Pheryllt) which are proven forgeries. To those people, I must say...read more reliable books. There are many books available at Amazon.com that give a more accurate view on the history of the druids and Celtic lore. Look for resources that do not refer to the book of Pheryllt or "The Lost works of the Druids". Such things don't exist. Druids wrote very little about themselves. They didn't beleive in writing down their beleifs (especially magick spells and medicine).

The authors view of women is also very disturbing. Yes, women were druids AND female druids could achieve just as much as male druids. The author puts female Celts in a negative view.

I neglected to give this book 1 star because the author tells a very creative fictional story of Merlyn and Author. Monroe managed to keep this book interesting throughout. He just needs to find more reliable resources. I hear his second book "The Lost Books of Merlyn" makes up for this one by being more historically accurate, however, I make no claims since I have not read it.

I can not recommend this book because it is sexist content and inaccurate views of druidism.

I'll keep this brief and simple: Douglas Monroe is grossly ignorant about almost everything he discusses in his books. What he knows of genuine history, mythology, Celtic languages and customs, herbalism, treelore, archeology, etc. wouldn't fill a thimble. I'm not talking about someone making an occasional mistake here. Monroe gets almost everything he says about the ancient Druids wrong!

Yes, he plants a few lovely fantasies in the manure pile. Yes, he proves once again that almost *anything* can be used to generate magical energy (which is often mistaken by beginners for a spiritual experience) if people really believe in it. But Monroe's books are gynophobic, dishonest, New Age nonsense -- not "authentic Druid spirituality." The ancient Druids *were* the intellectuals of their tribes and they would not have accepted the idea that scholarship "doesn't matter."

Readers wanting details can see the earlier reviews here by myself, Ian Corrigan, and other scholars. Or visit the websites of "adf.org," "keltria.org," "druidry.org," or "summerlands.com." You'll see that we often disagree with each other about details, but are united in our contempt for this con artist.

Monroe has tried to pass off invention and falacy as tradition. References are made to New World plants in the Old World before communication bewtween the continents. He incorporates misogyny in a field where there is no room for it. Read this book for the fun of finding its failures.

21 Lessons Of Merlin is the biggest hindance to the revival of Celtic Paganism and Druidry out there today. The book is historically inaccurate in almost every detail, and spiritually innacurate in ways that make it a real danger to honest students. Once you've read a half-dozen good books on celtic ways you might want to give this a look. The author *does* manage to craft some interesting rituals, but the basis for them, and the theology behind them, is just horrid.

Ian

Really. This is not even good fiction. The writing is poor, the manuscript is a fake, the "spells" are based on the creation of a Berkeley Linguistics graduate student, hired as a researcher for the film Excalibur. Here are just some of the problems with this book. The manuscript Monroe refers to is a fake--an obvious fake, if you know Welsh at all, which Monroe doesn't, and he certainly doesn't know either medieval Welsh or medieval Irish, which means even if he had a genuine manuscript he couldn't understand it. Much of his "information" is false, in that he refers to practices that couldn't have been engaged in by ancient druids since they didn't have access to the plants. Some of his "recipes" are in fact dangerous. There were female druids, described as druids, and functioning as druids--we have some of their charms in Gaulish, as well as their names, and in Irish texts, even stories about them. Personally, I find his slavering over prepubescent little boys more than a little distasteful. This is not, in any way, an authentic source for information about ancient or modern druidry. There are some good, authentic sources about genuine, ancient Celts, including actual spells, charms and curses--use those sources (look for Powell, Cunliffe, Nagy, Ford, Eska, Mallory, Koch and Carey) and there's good Arthurian literature, if you want that, like Mary Stewart's Merlin quartet, which is not only much better fiction, it's a darned sight more accurate historically.

I have a copy of this book as well as it's sequel. I keep them for the express purpose of showing them to people and warning them not to buy them. There are plenty of reviews that explain why, but I will touch on the main themes and their fallacies.
1. The author claims that only men may be druids. (any quick skimming of Irish or Welsh mythology will produce at least one druidess.)
2. The druids were vegetarians. (a documented ritual called the tarb-feis is performed by eating the flesh of a freshly slain bull and sleeping on it's hide, not to mention the overwhelming presence of archaeological evidence of animal sacrifice and feasting)
3. Druids were celibate. (again, a quick skim of Celtic mythology reveals many sons and daughters of druids)
I won't get into the multitude of other lies that are in this book, as they have been covered elsewhere. I will end by saying that one value we do know that the druids held was Truth. Monroe has this right, at least. However, he has shamed me and my ancestors by claiming this drivel to be truth. Perhaps this book was all a free-energy scheme for Monroe; after all, my forefathers are spinning in their graves fast enough to generate electricity.

This book, while certainly amusing, does not border on the "truth" of anything, be it historical druidic practices, modern druidism, or even spiritual enlightenment. For instance, if Monroe is so enlightened, why does he claim that women are less spiritually evolved than men? If he's so enlightened, why does he spend so much time criticizing the Christian faith? Certainly, some one who was *truly* spiritually advanced needn't spend so much time bashing other people's faiths. Monroe's knowledge of other topics is also sadly lacking. He advocates the ingesting of mistletoe (eating one berry has been known to cause fatalities among children, and the oil of mistletoe is even more potent still). Also, if you put wormwood (which can cause miscarriage in pregnant women, though he neglects to mention that) in vodka, it creates a substance known as "absinthe" which can get you jailed for a few years *for merely OWNING,* let alone drinking, the substance.

All in all, I found this book to be a highly misinformed work, both historically, medicinally, and spiritually. If you're looking for some good works on the Druids, try reading a work from the historical section, or at the very least, *do not* read this book. Unless, of course, you're not looking for any amount of intelligence in the books you read.

This book is terribly innacurate and makes the Druid path out to be something it definitely is not. Unfortunately this book, and its equally bad sequel somehow seem to make their ways into the bookstores as some of very few, if not the only books available on Druids and Druidry among a sea of books on Wicca and Witchcraft. As a result, unknowing people interested in Druidry buy the books, and read this twisted tale which has women not being permitted to be Druids, nor anyone who is not white with blond hair and blue eyes. The list of inaccuracies goes on and on.

I was once given a copy of this as a gift, and I read it through, and found myself disgusted with it, especially as a girl, being told that I could not be a Druid (when historically there were female Druids, and of course there are female neo-Pagan Druids). I hung on to the book for a long, long time, thinking that I'd eventually write a review on it for some site or other, and would need it to pull quotes from. Just recently though, I was cleaning my bookshelves and decided it was time to get rid of the book. Other books I had decided to get rid of were set aside in a pile to give away to the library or to charity, but this book went straight into the recycle bin. At least the paper is good for something.

Boy, was this an awful book. I chose to ignore the bad reviews, figuring those people were just grumps anyways, but man I should have listened. Why do so many people give this book a good review? After reading it, I can find no merit in the lies told in the text, and it is clear that the author is just out to make money.