The Celtic Shaman: A Practical Guide

by John Matthews

Probably the oldest known spiritual discipline, shamanism is the timeless art of living in harmony with creation, providing a universal system to work with today, whatever our religion or spiritual affiliation may be. A reflection of a living tradition with a supremely practical approach to life, it teaches skills for living and ways to utilize latent abilities which we all possess. Celtic Shamanism derives from the native traditions of North-West Europe. The shamanic contribution of the Celts and their predecessors has been overlooked until recently, and is one of the last shamanic traditions to be explored. While it shares common elements with American, Australian and Siberian teachings, it derives entirely from Celtic source material. The Celtic Shaman offers a varied and easily followed plan of self-tuition for anyone interested in Celtic mythology and the Western mysteries.

Genres: Spirituality, Nonfiction, Paganism, Reference, Occult, Religion, Magic

287 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

John Matthews is an historian, folklorist and author. He has been a full time writer since 1980 and has produced over ninety books on the Arthurian Legends and Grail Studies, as well as short stories and a volume of poetry. He has devoted much of the past thirty years to the study of Arthurian Traditions and myth in general. His best known and most widely read works are ‘Pirates’ (Carlton/Atheneum), No 1 children’s book on the New York Times Review best-seller list for 22 weeks in 2006, ‘The Grail, Quest for Eternal Life’ (Thames & Hudson, 1981) ‘The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom’ (Element, 1994) and ‘The Winter Solstice’ (Quest Books, 1999) which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for that year. His book ‘Celtic Warrior Chiefs’ was a New York Public Library recommended title for young people.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eh. I really don't like John Matthews. Yet I adore his wife's work. This book had nothing to offer me. Get his wife's Singing the Soul Back Home for lots of real exercises and information on shamanism and Celtic Heritage for a great start to understanding the Celts' world view and myths. This is not really pure Celtic or pure shamanism. It just seems like he threw together a bunch of stuff adding whatever he wanted from his imagination. This is neither scholarly nor inspirational.

[Andrine Morse · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an intellectual work about a cognitive system I can't believe writer has personal experience of - not at the time of writing anyways. As a 30 year traditionally trained fire keeper and lodge woman, I found this bordered on the ridiculous.

[Jade Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love this book, and the exercises given in here have helped me in my practices so much. Also love the list of other books in the back as well as the resources given.

[Raido D · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Matthews uses source materials from the vast bank of Celtic poetry and prose, be it the Voyage of Bran or the poems of Taliesin, he does so quite convincingly, in a way that rightly emphasises the metaphysical nature of many of these passages. The guided meditations contained within the book are well-written, too, although I have not tried to record myself reading them out loud and played back the recording as the author suggests I should. I have rated this book two stars out of five because some aspects of the pagan reconstructionism suggested by Matthews are simply too New Age for my liking. Yes, some aspects of shamanism are universal, but it is another thing entirely to suggest that it is effectively a uniform belief system shared by "primitive peoples" from Siberia to Lapland to Australia and North America. While parts of this book were good, the overall experience was osmotically tainted by the outlandish ideas about Celts using crystals for healing oozing out of other pages. Perhaps by expectations of the book were too high; I have now put it on the shelf next to the Shamanic Way of the Bee by Simon Buxton, a book that I also found entertaining but - especially after hearing of Buxton's shady status as a bit of a charlatan - little more than a work of fiction.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've got a couple of John Matthews' books and while he certainly seems passionate about his subjects, I'm not convinced of the actual content. I bought this, thinking it was going to be fairly in-depth. I do realise that there's scant actual knowledge of Druidry, as practised in ancient times, so I reckoned there would be a lot of speculation involved here.

Matthews offers loads of meditations, guides to power totems and the like. They're interesting, but unless you have the time to devote to honing these skills, ultimately you won't get much out of this book. The small print (at least in the edition I have) and Matthews' dense writing (at times) don't help in getting a full grasp of the topic. After the first few chapters, I found myself skimming through the instructions of the incantations and exercises.

I'd recommend this to hard-core Celtic devotees only - everyone else might find it a bit too daunting to get through. I may give it another go myself in a while, to see if I can absorb more of the message.

[Tommy /|\ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not exactly a riveting body of work. It certainly had the feeling of something that had been hastily cobbled together for publication. Some of the exercises in the book are nothing short of brilliant. However, that brilliance is overshadowed by exercises and material that are shoddily put together. Overall, I was quite disappointed, considering the reputation that Matthews has in literary circles.

[Toni-Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, this book was a really good introduction to Topic of Shamanistic Practices mixed with Celtic Cosmology as a whole for me. While I knew parts of this information from other books I had read, I really enjoyed the book as a whole.