100th Monkey Books

Celtic



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Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
John O'Donohue (1997)234pages

The Celtic understanding of friendship finds its inspiration and culmination in the sublime notion of the anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul; cara is the word for friend. So anam cara means soul friend. The anam cara was a person to whom you could reveal the hidden intimacies of your life. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul....The Celtic imagination loved the circle. It recognized how the rhythm of experience, nature, and divinity followed a circular pattern. In acknowledgment to this, the structure of this book follows a circular rhythm. It begins with a treatment of friendship as awakening, then explores the senses as immediate and creative thresholds. This builds the ground for a positive evaluation of solitude, which in turn seeks expression in the external world of work and action. As our outer energy diminishes, we are faced with the task of aging and dying. This structure follows the circle of life as it spirals toward death and attempts to illuminate the profound invitation it offers. These chapters circle around a hidden, silent seventh chapter, which embraces the ancient namelessness at the heart of the human self. Here resides the unsayable, the ineffable. In essence, this book attempts a phenomenology of friendship in a lyrical-speculative form. - from the author's Prologue (Cliff Street Books / HarperCollins)



Celtic Mysteries: The Ancient Religion
John Sharkey (1975/1992) 96pages US$15.95 C$20.95

The last tribal culture in Europe was that of the Celtic lands, whose landscape and traditions hold echoes of the ancient religion of nature and its symbols of death and rebirth. The Mysteries begin in the frenzy of battle, where the hero is transfigured and the god appears; or in a ghostly circle of stones left by an unknown people; or in the mystic centre of the Celtic cross; or in the stone heads of Gaul and Ireland, which face both ways; or in the illusive in-between place of mist and twilight. A title in the Art and Imagination series, with 117 illustrations, 24 in colour. (Thames & Hudson)



The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year
Caitlin Matthews (1999) 398pages US$14 C$20

Each meditation can be seen as a tree in the sacred grove of the year, a place of reflection under which the reader can seek sanctuary, peace, and restoration of spirit. Meditation is simply making a place of time wherein our souls can be purposely engaged and focused....As you read each day's meditation, actively enable the words to go beyond the page by interacting with the subject. Regard each meditation as an extension of your own meditation space, so that it can become your own sacred grove. - from the author's "How To Use This Book" (HarperSanFrancisco)


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