Walking the Maze: The Enduring Presence of Celtic Spirit

Excerpts & Samples

By Loren Cruden

Publisher : Inner Traditions/Bear & Company

ABOUT Loren Cruden

Loren Cruden
Loren Cruden, midwife and herbal healer, lives on a mountain in Washington State in a house that she and her son built. Following spiritual studies in Europe, Asia, and Africa, her six years of work with Lewis Sawaquat, a Potawatomie pipe carrier, deepened her engagement with the spiritual More...

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Description

 
A vivid description of the fierce and free Celtic spirit as it has been sustained through history, and a vision for living that spirit in the present 


• Equates Celtic customs with Native American traditions and rituals 


• Presents a vision of the ancient Celtic path as it can be lived today 


With the perspective of a passionate historian and the clarity of a modern-day medicine woman, Loren Cruden presents to us a vision of ancient Celtic spirit as it can be lived today. In Walking the Maze she explores Celtic culture both in comparison to Native American ways of life and in its own light and strength, examining the attributes that define and sustain the vitality of the Celtic spirit. Four aspects of traditional Celtic life common to both Celtic and Native American cultures are kinship consciousness, a high regard for women as part of a general commitment to freedom, a fluid perspective of reality, and a primal spiritual engagement with the land. For the Celts this crafted rugged, land-loving individualists, fierce and free in their expression, gracious to all, answerable directly to Spirit but responsible for the entire community. This vision of Celtic spirit informs the vision of how we may live in the present, renewing a cultural integrity that is inseparable from personal wholeness and ecological consciousness.

"[T]his book is the first and only one so far that places the Celts where they are today. Too many books treat the Celts as an extinct Noble Savage. Cruden gets right down to the core of the spirit that has persisted to modern times. She knows these people and their hearts. . . . Her narrative blends historical data, mythology, and her own journeys and experiences in a compelling tale of discovery. . . . The lessons taught in Walking The Maze--the recognition of what true spirituality is--will stay with me for a long time. . . . I cannot recommend this book highly enough. This is more than a mere "read;" this is an experience!"
Muninn the Changeling, Nemeton, Jan 2006