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Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Here is a rosary of soaring myth, gripping narrative, and deep wisdom, all told with breathtaking verve that enchants and sweeps us along, from first word to last. A superb, inspiring read.” —GABOR MATÉ, author of The Myth of Normal
From "one of the greatest storytellers we have" (Robert Bly), an urgent invitation to allow the oldest stories—and the Greatest Story—to reshape our own.
There’s an old Irish belief that if you aren’t wrapped in a cloak of story you will be unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent at just the moment a culture worth its salt requires you to become a real, grown, human being.
In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller and Christian thinker Martin Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age and that such poverty has left us vulnerable to stories that may not wish us well. Drawing on the “ancient technologies” of myths and initiatory rites, Shaw provides a road to wholeness, maturity and connection. He teaches us to read a myth the way it wants to be read; provides vivid retellings of tales powerful enough to carry you through life’s travails; and shows you how to gather and reshape your own thrown-away stories. Most vividly, he shares how these ancient technologies led him—unexpectedly—to Christ, “the True Myth,” by way of a thirty-year journey and a 101-night vigil in a Dartmoor forest.
Combining scholarly erudition with nimble storytelling in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Liturgies of the Wild is a thrilling counsel of resistance and delight in the face of many modern monsters.
“Here is a rosary of soaring myth, gripping narrative, and deep wisdom, all told with breathtaking verve that enchants and sweeps us along, from first word to last. A superb, inspiring read.” —GABOR MATÉ, author of The Myth of Normal
From "one of the greatest storytellers we have" (Robert Bly), an urgent invitation to allow the oldest stories—and the Greatest Story—to reshape our own.
There’s an old Irish belief that if you aren’t wrapped in a cloak of story you will be unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent at just the moment a culture worth its salt requires you to become a real, grown, human being.
In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller and Christian thinker Martin Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age and that such poverty has left us vulnerable to stories that may not wish us well. Drawing on the “ancient technologies” of myths and initiatory rites, Shaw provides a road to wholeness, maturity and connection. He teaches us to read a myth the way it wants to be read; provides vivid retellings of tales powerful enough to carry you through life’s travails; and shows you how to gather and reshape your own thrown-away stories. Most vividly, he shares how these ancient technologies led him—unexpectedly—to Christ, “the True Myth,” by way of a thirty-year journey and a 101-night vigil in a Dartmoor forest.
Combining scholarly erudition with nimble storytelling in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Liturgies of the Wild is a thrilling counsel of resistance and delight in the face of many modern monsters.
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Published February 3, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
March 24, 2026
This will be in my top 10 books of 2026. Martin Shaw writes in a tone very similar to Paul Kingsnorth but focuses in on myth, our personal stories, and how to interpret out lives. Several chapters caused me stop in my tracks, analyze my pilgrimage in this world, and begin to make sense of the story God is writing. Shaw is the narrator of his own audiobook which takes it to the next level. He inspires me to desire a wilderness vigil someday soon.
February 10, 2026
I do not cry much—hardly ever. It’s not in my temperament, perhaps. But yesterday afternoon, after posting the first version of this review, I came close to tears twice. The first moment was watching Olympic figure skaters Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava, having just finished a miraculously beautiful pair routine, sink to the ice in an exhausted but triumphant embrace. Then they rose to their feet, each quietly making the sign of the cross.
The second moment came just a few hours later, as I absorbed word of the sudden, senseless, and violent death of a 15-year-old boy on the periphery of my acquaintance. Rising from my prayers that evening, I thought back, strangely, to this book, and realized that my perspective on it, and what it seeks to accomplish, had already deepened.
“Being made,” “getting grown,” finding the “Ancient Good,” is a matter of life and death. So terrible are the wounds of the world, so divine is the calling of human body and soul—the mysterious dynamic of the heart between these two realities will either destroy you or turn you into what Martin Shaw likes to call a “praise maker.” And we cannot find that path alone.
Original review follows.
* * *
There was once a boy who dwelt with his mother and father in a wide cultivated valley. Sometimes, his mother would take him beyond the green hills to his grandfather’s wilder kingdom by the sea, where he would wander in the mornings through misty forests, picking berries, and in the evenings play chess with his grandfather by the crackling hearth. Yet there was a nameless sadness in this boy, an unspoken fear, one his good parents, who gave him so much and shielded him from all outer darkness, could not understand, any more than the boy could himself. Then hard years came. The boy’s grandfather died, and exile followed: the boy’s father, seeing his livelihood among the fields of black and gold diminish and poverty threaten, sought a more secure fortune in a distant city, and the boy left his childhood home forever. Deep loneliness fell upon him in this new place, where the people were numerous, but all seemed busy in search of money and seats of power, things the boy little understood. Soon he found a book of stories, and his dreams grew bright with unseen lands as fair as those he had left, and almost more real to him than his waking life. But he also found a darkness in these worlds of imagination, a darkness that reflected his childish fear and grew in him silently. Some years later he left all to seek his own fortune, carrying away a small red stone that his mother had pressed into his hand. He studied under men and women wise in the world, and found success and praise in his every endeavor, but his dreams and darkness followed him. Yet in his studies, he also discovered the nature of the red stone from his mother: that it was, in fact, a seed of paradise. And a fresh hope blew into his life, that he might by this seed restore what he had long lost. So he planted it in the land of his exile. Not very well, for the soil was hard, and the boy knew almost nothing about gardening. For a long time, there was no sprout, and the boy spent his days hunched over that little bit of soil, his head often clouded with darkness. What did finally appear seemed a sorry plant indeed, and in it, the boy could see nothing of paradise. But he knew that this was his only hope, so he remained by it. As it grew slowly larger, as its branches began to reach outward, birds began to gather there. Around its stem he built a chapel, and he sang to the birds songs the wind had taught him, which he believed to come from his lost home. And he hoped that one day the tree would grow so tall that he could ascend by it, and leave the vaporous darkness behind, and find among the stars his own true country again.
What is the end of this story? I don’t know yet.
Martin Shaw advises us to tell such stories about ourselves, to take our dreams seriously, to let ourselves be “made” by the right myths. There are some readers who will dive into Liturgies of the Wild expecting an argument or manual of some kind, takeaways conducive to bullet-point format, and will end up frustrated. Shaw is not above a little preaching, but his approach to truth is typically allusive, wandering through personal anecdotes and ancient narratives that bleed freely into one another. His decades of meditation on life and story may have been brought into new focus by his self-startling conversion to Orthodox Christianity, but the “mossy face of Christ” he adores is a presence, not a thesis. And he wants us all to share in that presence. Boil away the rich Martin Shaw-ness of it all, and perhaps the residue is just religious truisms; but that approach would be to miss the point. This book is for people who want to take a journey with Martin, whose particular genius is to remind us, with the most charming whimsy, of what may we already know to be true but perhaps have not given due attention.
As I sit in my little study beneath a cheap reproduction of the Panagia Portaitissa, and under the bowed gaze of Charbel Makhlouf, I again ponder the image on the dust jacket of Liturgies of the Wild. I have often prayed in this study for a guiding star, for the peculiar path that will lead me most surely to the Ancient Good. Where are the wise elders in this day, the men and woman whole-formed and clear-sighted? Shaw would not claim any title like staretz or spiritual father for himself, and we too would be unwise to attribute it to him. Give him a decade or two in trail of the Cross. But what he suggests here is the possibility that we can deepen our lives and bring them into contact with Divine Ground by simply accepting our own littleness, by sinking our minds into the great silence of the heart and waiting for illumination. Some things “can’t be said with effect until they’re known, and God has his timing for that. How do we find something we were once gifted by grace? We can’t. We simply can’t. But we can take heart from the fairy tales….” The old stories teach us patterns of spiritual maturation; they give us metaphors to interpret our course into the trackless waters of the future. And there must be few more genial and gifted guides to those stories than Martin Shaw.
If I have a critique, it is that Shaw does not sufficiently consider what his own Orthodox tradition calls prelest, delusion. Much he says, especially in his chapter on evil, resonates with Evagrian psychology and the later tradition, but he dismisses the hesychastic suspicion of dreams and imagination with barely more than a hand-wave. He is clearly aware that “enchantment” can go bad, and as this issue goes to the core of his Romantic project, I wish he had devoted more space to marking spiritual pitfalls. How often are the stories we make of our lives fundamentally false and self-serving? But as the flame lit at his baptism licks over ever more of his life, perhaps he will have more to say on discrimination in future.
For now, there is much to be found in the affirmative path. It is a rich feast indeed to which Shaw beckons us.
The second moment came just a few hours later, as I absorbed word of the sudden, senseless, and violent death of a 15-year-old boy on the periphery of my acquaintance. Rising from my prayers that evening, I thought back, strangely, to this book, and realized that my perspective on it, and what it seeks to accomplish, had already deepened.
“Being made,” “getting grown,” finding the “Ancient Good,” is a matter of life and death. So terrible are the wounds of the world, so divine is the calling of human body and soul—the mysterious dynamic of the heart between these two realities will either destroy you or turn you into what Martin Shaw likes to call a “praise maker.” And we cannot find that path alone.
Original review follows.
* * *
There was once a boy who dwelt with his mother and father in a wide cultivated valley. Sometimes, his mother would take him beyond the green hills to his grandfather’s wilder kingdom by the sea, where he would wander in the mornings through misty forests, picking berries, and in the evenings play chess with his grandfather by the crackling hearth. Yet there was a nameless sadness in this boy, an unspoken fear, one his good parents, who gave him so much and shielded him from all outer darkness, could not understand, any more than the boy could himself. Then hard years came. The boy’s grandfather died, and exile followed: the boy’s father, seeing his livelihood among the fields of black and gold diminish and poverty threaten, sought a more secure fortune in a distant city, and the boy left his childhood home forever. Deep loneliness fell upon him in this new place, where the people were numerous, but all seemed busy in search of money and seats of power, things the boy little understood. Soon he found a book of stories, and his dreams grew bright with unseen lands as fair as those he had left, and almost more real to him than his waking life. But he also found a darkness in these worlds of imagination, a darkness that reflected his childish fear and grew in him silently. Some years later he left all to seek his own fortune, carrying away a small red stone that his mother had pressed into his hand. He studied under men and women wise in the world, and found success and praise in his every endeavor, but his dreams and darkness followed him. Yet in his studies, he also discovered the nature of the red stone from his mother: that it was, in fact, a seed of paradise. And a fresh hope blew into his life, that he might by this seed restore what he had long lost. So he planted it in the land of his exile. Not very well, for the soil was hard, and the boy knew almost nothing about gardening. For a long time, there was no sprout, and the boy spent his days hunched over that little bit of soil, his head often clouded with darkness. What did finally appear seemed a sorry plant indeed, and in it, the boy could see nothing of paradise. But he knew that this was his only hope, so he remained by it. As it grew slowly larger, as its branches began to reach outward, birds began to gather there. Around its stem he built a chapel, and he sang to the birds songs the wind had taught him, which he believed to come from his lost home. And he hoped that one day the tree would grow so tall that he could ascend by it, and leave the vaporous darkness behind, and find among the stars his own true country again.
What is the end of this story? I don’t know yet.
Martin Shaw advises us to tell such stories about ourselves, to take our dreams seriously, to let ourselves be “made” by the right myths. There are some readers who will dive into Liturgies of the Wild expecting an argument or manual of some kind, takeaways conducive to bullet-point format, and will end up frustrated. Shaw is not above a little preaching, but his approach to truth is typically allusive, wandering through personal anecdotes and ancient narratives that bleed freely into one another. His decades of meditation on life and story may have been brought into new focus by his self-startling conversion to Orthodox Christianity, but the “mossy face of Christ” he adores is a presence, not a thesis. And he wants us all to share in that presence. Boil away the rich Martin Shaw-ness of it all, and perhaps the residue is just religious truisms; but that approach would be to miss the point. This book is for people who want to take a journey with Martin, whose particular genius is to remind us, with the most charming whimsy, of what may we already know to be true but perhaps have not given due attention.
As I sit in my little study beneath a cheap reproduction of the Panagia Portaitissa, and under the bowed gaze of Charbel Makhlouf, I again ponder the image on the dust jacket of Liturgies of the Wild. I have often prayed in this study for a guiding star, for the peculiar path that will lead me most surely to the Ancient Good. Where are the wise elders in this day, the men and woman whole-formed and clear-sighted? Shaw would not claim any title like staretz or spiritual father for himself, and we too would be unwise to attribute it to him. Give him a decade or two in trail of the Cross. But what he suggests here is the possibility that we can deepen our lives and bring them into contact with Divine Ground by simply accepting our own littleness, by sinking our minds into the great silence of the heart and waiting for illumination. Some things “can’t be said with effect until they’re known, and God has his timing for that. How do we find something we were once gifted by grace? We can’t. We simply can’t. But we can take heart from the fairy tales….” The old stories teach us patterns of spiritual maturation; they give us metaphors to interpret our course into the trackless waters of the future. And there must be few more genial and gifted guides to those stories than Martin Shaw.
If I have a critique, it is that Shaw does not sufficiently consider what his own Orthodox tradition calls prelest, delusion. Much he says, especially in his chapter on evil, resonates with Evagrian psychology and the later tradition, but he dismisses the hesychastic suspicion of dreams and imagination with barely more than a hand-wave. He is clearly aware that “enchantment” can go bad, and as this issue goes to the core of his Romantic project, I wish he had devoted more space to marking spiritual pitfalls. How often are the stories we make of our lives fundamentally false and self-serving? But as the flame lit at his baptism licks over ever more of his life, perhaps he will have more to say on discrimination in future.
For now, there is much to be found in the affirmative path. It is a rich feast indeed to which Shaw beckons us.
February 6, 2026
Dear Martin,
I have been waiting for someone to write this book. I’m glad it was you.
Signed,
The Wolf
I have been waiting for someone to write this book. I’m glad it was you.
Signed,
The Wolf
April 10, 2026
Wonderful!
March 13, 2026
Liturgies of the Wild is a lovely, meditative read. Though I did not feel I was the target audience for this book--it seems to be written for people searching for more meaning and healing in their life--I still very much enjoyed reading Dr. Martin Shaw's latest book. At times his writing is cryptic and a little hard to follow, but at the same time, I recognize that is what makes his message poetic and perfectly mysterious, giving the reader space to reflect. There were several poignant paragraphs I came across and thought, I want more of this. I want a whole chapter or book on this. Near the end, I was most interested in his point that when the Christian church/denominations “abandons its saints and delicious eccentricities" they open the back door to "New Age woo-woo." I agree though I want to hear more from Dr. Shaw on this as I am still a bit turned off by some of Catholicism's devotions to relics, for example, even after converting many years ago. I was brought to tears on a few occasions, while other chapters didn't offer much for me, but definitely would for someone else. It's a very personal read. I also love the way he refers to Jesus as the Galilean Druid and the devil as Old Scratch - that was a freshness I didn't know I needed. Thank you, Dr. Shaw, for your contribution to our story-deprived, right brain-deprived culture, sharing myths that reach in and touch us to our core.
February 15, 2026
Audiobook read by author. Highly engrossing, yet dense. I already want to revisit it. May get a hard copy so I can take notes. Vital wisdom for our times.
February 17, 2026
‼️DROP EVERYTHING TO READ ‼️
April 15, 2026
Brilliant. Much needed theology — and mythology(?) — on Christianity that is sorely lacking in the Western church. Where’s our imagination? Where’s our chutzpah?? I needed to read this just as much as anyone else. I want to read some Russian fairy tales now too!! This one is definitely going in the toolbox.
April 15, 2026
I need to read this annually. So deep and rich. I love the way it helped me think of evil and evil people and reframe that trauma. I am grateful for the way the author expresses the value and importance of story and sharing story. The healing in nature, the value of “darn night of the soul” among other things!
February 28, 2026
This is a very interesting book. It is a story about stories. By that, I mean that the author tells us why stories are important and why it is important for us to have a story about why we are the way we are. What was interesting was that I can't say that I knew all of the stories that he retells, but they felt familiar at the same time. I suppose that proves his point somewhat. We are in a world that is in need of stories, and we are people that love stories. It is a little bit more mystical than what I usually read, but it is definitely worth a read.
February 27, 2026
I had to eventually bail on this one. What seemed like an interesting concept became a cascade of anecdotal nonsense that ultimately provided no real point or position.
If this is what serves for thoughtful analysis and argumentation these days, I’ll pass.
If this is what serves for thoughtful analysis and argumentation these days, I’ll pass.
April 7, 2026
I didn’t expect Liturgies of the Wild to feel so personal—but it did.
This isn’t a book you read for answers. It’s a book that unsettles you in the best way, quietly asking what it means to belong—to the land, to story, and to yourself.
If Braiding Sweetgrass felt like being gently taught how to listen, this felt like being led into the woods and told to remember.
Martin Shaw writes in myth, not instruction. The stories don’t explain themselves—they work on you. And if you let them, they begin to feel less like fiction and more like something you’ve always known but forgotten.
What struck me most was the idea that we’ve lost our rituals—our ways of marking grief, change, becoming. In their absence, we drift. This book doesn’t offer a neat solution, but it does offer something rarer: a language for the ache.
It reminded me why stories matter. Why the characters we love feel real. Why the wild—both in the world and in ourselves—can’t be ignored forever.
This isn’t an easy read, but it’s a meaningful one. The kind you sit with. The kind that lingers.
This isn’t a book you read for answers. It’s a book that unsettles you in the best way, quietly asking what it means to belong—to the land, to story, and to yourself.
If Braiding Sweetgrass felt like being gently taught how to listen, this felt like being led into the woods and told to remember.
Martin Shaw writes in myth, not instruction. The stories don’t explain themselves—they work on you. And if you let them, they begin to feel less like fiction and more like something you’ve always known but forgotten.
What struck me most was the idea that we’ve lost our rituals—our ways of marking grief, change, becoming. In their absence, we drift. This book doesn’t offer a neat solution, but it does offer something rarer: a language for the ache.
It reminded me why stories matter. Why the characters we love feel real. Why the wild—both in the world and in ourselves—can’t be ignored forever.
This isn’t an easy read, but it’s a meaningful one. The kind you sit with. The kind that lingers.
April 17, 2026
my goodness, this book has so many positive reviews here.
Take my words with a grain of salt because I couldn't even make it through half the book, but to me there was nothing truly deserving of the label "wild" in these pages. The writing style and content to me seemed more like that of a snake oil salesman than a storyteller.
Take my words with a grain of salt because I couldn't even make it through half the book, but to me there was nothing truly deserving of the label "wild" in these pages. The writing style and content to me seemed more like that of a snake oil salesman than a storyteller.
April 6, 2026
A beautiful story of becoming made as human, through nature and myths. Deeply personal without being sentimental, witty and profound. A book to return to. Read by the author, it was a captivating listening.
April 22, 2026
This book did inspire me in ways I did not expect, and though I enjoyed the writing style and much of the content (although calling Christ a “Druid” got a little shaky after the first mention), it was quite swirling and slightly repetitive.
Would still recommend tho
Would still recommend tho
February 15, 2026
Made me think through the stories surrounding me, both lived and intuited — how and where to find them, harvest them, live them.
March 20, 2026
"If God is mythopoeic, man must become mythopathic.”
Other than Tolkien, one of the best--if not the best since Tolkien--explorations in this relevant, ridiculous, often-overlooked reality.
Other than Tolkien, one of the best--if not the best since Tolkien--explorations in this relevant, ridiculous, often-overlooked reality.
March 26, 2026
Absolutely brilliant. Raw and not sentimental. Wisdom for our day and age as Shaw reminds us we all have mythologies and would do well to take some time to understand them.
April 2, 2026
I listened to this on audible and found myself bookmarking so often that I will be purchasing a copy for my shelves.
Read
April 11, 2026Loved every bit. Will read again. Maybe this year.
April 17, 2026
Not a perfect book, but one which moved me often. It is worth re-reading. Internalize mythic tales which will open the world and provide knowledge of the Way to participation in God by/through embodied participation in the movements of God in the earthly.
April 25, 2026
I don’t know if I lost the plot of he lost the plot but I don’t think I could tell you the plot. Still some helpful things to think about and some cool stories.
May 2, 2026
An encouragement to be more human!! Loved this a lot
April 4, 2026
Took some time with this one. Lots to chew on. It’s brilliant.
March 17, 2026
A lovely lovely book
February 6, 2026
I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book. I didn't know if I should prepare myself for a fairytale breakdown like we get in a lot of Shaw's other work like Smoke Hole or A Branch from the Lightning Tree, or if we were going to get another transcendental mind-melter like Bardskull. What this book turned out to be was a honing and distillation of all of Shaw's previous work and thinking (plus some new stuff). What we get here is every blessed thought and insight he has gleaned over the hard decades, now baptized into his new life as a Christian.
For those worried that he would chuck all of the old storytelling and give himself to some sort of tame, dishwater Christian Living book, don't be. This is Martin Shaw at is brightest and sharpest.
For those worried that he would chuck all of the old storytelling and give himself to some sort of tame, dishwater Christian Living book, don't be. This is Martin Shaw at is brightest and sharpest.
February 14, 2026
This is a book that sticks to your ribs. It is equal parts firm rock and ethereal wind. It gives a good place to hang your heart, in the middle of a mystery. I will be pondering it for days, and will definitely come back to it again.
March 1, 2026
Excellent book! But not as good as listening to him tell a story. That's his sweet spot.
February 14, 2026
Far and away my contender for book of the year. There is a clarity to Shaw's prose that communicates as well as it makes you think. "Blue feather language" indeed. This is not polemical at all, in fact it shows us a new way to make a case: through stories. I will read it again in a month or so, and many times after.
February 6, 2026
A beautiful book. An important book. It will take me some time to digest this, and many re-readings.
If you are interested in the intersection of myth and reality, religion and life, you must read this. A blessing.
If you are interested in the intersection of myth and reality, religion and life, you must read this. A blessing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews