The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year [Paperback]

Caitlin Matthews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 30, 1998

Discover the Living Wisdom of the Ancient Celts

The ancient Celts and their spiritual mediators, the Druids believed in the communion of all living things and sought harmony between nature and the human soul. Now, with this inspiring book of day-by-day mediations, renowned Celtic scholar CaitlÍn Matthews shows you how to reawaken the power of this age-old spiritual inheritance.

Using poetry, myths, reflections, rituals, and visualizations, Matthews leads you on a yearlong pilgrimage that will help connect the cycles of your soul to the circle of the seasons. From the winter months of Samhain the summer months of Beltant, from mediations on the gifts and blessings of life to the insights and promises of the soul, she enables you to complete your own sacred circuit of the turning year.

Brimming with the legends and lore of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Britain, The Celtic Spirit is a brilliant introduction to the sacred wisdom of the Celtic path--and a potent resource for daily spiritual renewal.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Because the Celtic Spirit's simplicity and gentleness cut across boundaries, there's something here for almost everyone." -- --Rocky Mountain News

"Because the Celtic Spirit's simplicity and gentleness cut across boundaries, there's something here for almost everyone." -- --Rocky Mountain News

About the Author

Caitlin Matthews is a respected teacher of Celtic traditions, shamanism, British myths, and practical spirituality. The author of thirty-six books, she lives in Oxford, U.K.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1st edition (December 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062515381
• ISBN-13: 978-0062515384
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #144,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Earth-Based Religions > Celtic

More About the Author

Hello! I'm Caitlin Matthews. I live in Oxford, England with my partner, John Matthews and two warring white cats who, despite our best efforts, can't abide each other and live on different floors of our small house.

I'm primarily known for being the author of many books including Singing the Soul Back Home, Mabon and the Guardians of Celtic Britain, Psychic Shield, and Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom. I write in the fields of metaphysical non-fiction, poetry, fiction, folkstory and myth, as well as writing books for children. I'm known for my research into the Celtic and ancestral traditions, and the ways in which I provoke exploration of the creative metaphysical field, and how we can apply it to our spiritual path.

With John Matthews, I've written the Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom, the Arthurian Tarot and Walkers Between the Worlds. Our latest collaboration is the StoryWorld series of cards and books for storytellers of all ages, which started coming out in 2009 - many more titles to come in 2010.

Although I'm the author of over sixty books, most of my work is oral rather than written. As a teacher of ancestral, shamanic and metaphysical traditions, I go all over the world, working with communities and spiritual institutions. With John Matthews, and my dear colleague Felicity Wombwell, I co-founded The Foundation for Inspirational and Oracular Studies, which is dedicated to the mythic, oracular and sacred arts. Our FiOS shamanic training programme teaches students the ancestral wisdom and healing arts as living sacred traditions in which we still engage.

As a singer, I play Celtic & medieval harps, sruti and psaltery. My CDs include Deep Well in the Wild Wood: Songs from the Place Beyond and the latest, Earth's Own Heart: Songs from the Faery Hills appears in 2010. I was the Pictish language originator and song-writer of Song of the Exile for the 2004 Jerry Bruckheimer film King Arthur and I appear frequently on international radio and television.

For the last 20 years, I've had a shamanic practice in Oxford dedicated to healing soul sickness and ancestral fragmentation. I use my voice to help open the way between the worlds, to sing the soul's essential nature, tracking it through the client's story and bringing it homeward, with the help of spirit allies who have chosen to work with me.

I'm currently working on Rekindling Ancestral Hearths: a book to help us come into good relationship with our ancestors. I believe that being in commuinion with our ancestors and gifting spirits is essential for the wellbeing of our world, and lies at the root of war and peace.

If you want to know more about my courses, events and forthcoming books, you are cordially invited to visit www.hallowquest.org.uk.

For new readers of my work, there is no 'one book' that conveys all that I teach, but the following practical books may be a helpful guide for you to begin somewhere:

Walkers Between Worlds - for a grounding in where our spiritual traditions arose.
Singing the Soul Back Home - for a guide on how we come into come relationship with our gifting spirits
Celtic Devotional - for a post-denominational way of spiritually acknowledging each day and season
Psychic Shield - for those who need a friendly guide to how the universe and ourselves rub off each other and how we can do it more harmoniously

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author comment, November 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year (Paperback)

This book is written for all who would like a daily touchstone for their own spiritual musings. I originally entitled it 'Meditations on the Druid Path' but that was rejected as not being sufficiently marketable!!! However, most of it stems from my own walking of the Druid path. Drawing upon all aspects of the druidic tradition - from ancient to modern - each day has its own meditation and reader's interaction point where you make the material your own. One of the most important aspects of spiritual life is its habitual, daily patterns which create pathways for the soul's progress. This progress is not 'progressive' in the modern sense, but more eliptical, like Celtic tracery and knotwork which itself is a reflection of the soul's spiralling trajectory. The seasons which accompany our spiritual practice are our allies and companions. Even the most ordinary occurences are material for our meditations. The full sum of our personal experiences open up our soul's path and lead us to form our own philosophy of life. Where Celtic names and titles are mentioned, I have provided pronounciation guides.

57 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for daily meditation, but a little too "New Age"., August 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year (Paperback)

Caitlin Matthews has done an excellent job of creating a Celtic-inspired book of daily devotions, each page including a verse, a short "sermon", and a suggested activity or subject for personal meditiation. She has also done a good job of keeping the different Celtic tribes seperate by including countries of origin with each verse or myth. (As usual, though, I haven't come across anything about the silversmith Celts in the mountains of Spain, but I believe that is probably the fault of history and not Celtic researchers. In all fairness, though, I haven't finished the year of devotions included!)

However, several of the verses seem to be excerpts from her own poetry. Having studied formalism extensively, it's apparent she is a fine writer, but I would have liked to have seen more historical verse used. (That's just my personal taste-- and I didn't take that into account with my rating.)

I only gave it four stars because so far there seems to be a little too much "peace and love and be kind to animals" propaganda in it. I am a strict vegetarian, myself, but it seems to me that such things are out of place in Celtic Reconstructionism and are better left to Primitive Reconstructionists like Wiccans. These are, after all, the hunter/herder/warriors whose strength and intelligence frightened the bejesus out of Caesar's troops. There is also a mention of the "Three-Fold Law" which seems to be a way to bring in the Wiccan crowd.

However, if you've started turning to the "Celtic Spirit" because you seem to have lost your way, or you feel some sort of daily discipline will give your life more structure, you could probably benefit from purchasing this book and reading a passage every morning. And for those of you historical purists, the historical and mythological passages appear to be accurate, and they provide a good introduction to each. In spite of my misgivings about the "New Age" nature of the work, I have continued to use it daily and am still finding it quite enjoyable.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-Sculpted Daily Meditations, January 6, 2002

By 

Frank MacEowen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year (Paperback)

Celtic spirituality is a vast domain, one that cannot truly be pinned down to one expression. Aspects of the Celtic spirit are, no doubt, Pagan in form and essence--involving elements of Druidism, folk "shamanism" and faery lore, while other expressions draw upon the rich tradition of Celtic-Christian mysticism. Woven in and throughout, almost as a kind of binding glue to the traditions, are the bardic traditions of verse, word, and story. Caitlin has done a marvelous job in The Celtic Spirit of expressing a footing in all forms of Celtic spirituality. This little book is an invitation, through the mode of a bardic-contemplative tool, to slow down each day, to meditate on some feature of the vast Celtic spiritual traditions, giving the reader the unmistakable sense that the Celtic spirit is not quarantined to some ancient, inaccessible past, but rather a living stream of inspiration that survives today.