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Liturgies of the Wild: Myths that Make Us
Brought to you by Penguin
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.
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.
9 pages, Audiobook
First published February 3, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 138 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
June 13, 2026
Okay, I see you New York Times - worthy of a bestseller for sure.
June 2, 2026
If I could give this book 6 stars I would. Every Chapter has an innumerable amount of lines that just causes one to want to sit and be present to them. The last chapter on praise is something really breathtaking. This has been one of the best spiritual books I’ve read in many years. I know I’ll be going back to it regularly and I encourage others to read it.
Read
May 14, 2026Audiobook read by author. Do not listen to chapter 4 while driving because you will cry and have to merge in traffic while crying. But he is an excellent story teller and otherwise it’s a great listen. 👂
May 23, 2026
"We are being prepared for eternity every time we behold beauty."
It was fun listening to this book narrated by the author. He has a great British accent. Some chapters were so much better than others and I thought the book could be half as long as it was. It was still a great reminder that we are physical and spiritual creatures. The created world is good and is meant to be a reflection of the eternal. The more we remove ourselves from creation, the more removed we become from the Author of Life. Touch grass.
It was fun listening to this book narrated by the author. He has a great British accent. Some chapters were so much better than others and I thought the book could be half as long as it was. It was still a great reminder that we are physical and spiritual creatures. The created world is good and is meant to be a reflection of the eternal. The more we remove ourselves from creation, the more removed we become from the Author of Life. Touch grass.
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.
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.
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 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.
February 17, 2026
‼️DROP EVERYTHING TO READ ‼️
June 15, 2026
Stories alone are not the answer. The author displays his ignorance in the pages of this book. Stories do not always tell the truth, they can be used to make us believe lies if they are told well enough.
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.
June 1, 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.
June 4, 2026
I read this book on "dinner breaks" while working the night shift in a public high school. I was installing fire alarm wire in each and every classroom, giving me the chance to observe, read, and ponder all of the different posters, banners, slogans, quotations, and other decorations the educators are using to environmentally supplement their teaching. Some of it was wonderful, some just nuts, some rather scary. Lonely nights rummaging in the bones of an old school, left to study the inscriptions of a foreign culture as if I were some sort of Dr. Jones (minus all the grave robbing).
I say all this to remember the impression Dr. Shaw's book had on me. He is all over the place in his writing to the point where I wondered why they even tried put his sayings into paragraphs. It's like seeing a dog wearing pajamas...he is an oral storyteller, and when you try to dress him up for the page he just doesn't come across the same. Reading him was like wandering the halls of this school, reading random sayings, pondering anime posters, and trying to assemble a common theme in each room that somehow told you what the kids were supposed to be learning there, regardless of what the subject said on the outside of the door. His chapter headings were like that. You step into a class on biology, only to find yourself thinking endlessly about why the dog chases its own tail in all the old stories, never learning new tricks...and is this what's happening to you, as you're connecting dots with red fire alarm wire alone in the middle of the night.
Basically, oddly appealing, but with the sustenance of a strawberry...at least on the lips. It's amazing what the mind can do with a strawberry.
I say all this to remember the impression Dr. Shaw's book had on me. He is all over the place in his writing to the point where I wondered why they even tried put his sayings into paragraphs. It's like seeing a dog wearing pajamas...he is an oral storyteller, and when you try to dress him up for the page he just doesn't come across the same. Reading him was like wandering the halls of this school, reading random sayings, pondering anime posters, and trying to assemble a common theme in each room that somehow told you what the kids were supposed to be learning there, regardless of what the subject said on the outside of the door. His chapter headings were like that. You step into a class on biology, only to find yourself thinking endlessly about why the dog chases its own tail in all the old stories, never learning new tricks...and is this what's happening to you, as you're connecting dots with red fire alarm wire alone in the middle of the night.
Basically, oddly appealing, but with the sustenance of a strawberry...at least on the lips. It's amazing what the mind can do with a strawberry.
June 11, 2026
I don't have words to describe how good the book is...so here are some excerpts:
"In an adolescent culture, discernment is the first thing to take a hit. We start to think perpetual drama is somehow prompting us to wisdom. Maybe not the case. Maybe if there was any wisdom present, we wouldn't eternally be caught in such exhausting theatre."
"Getting made involves understanding two things at once. Things end and miracles happen. It's naïve to assume either can be influenced except by the divine...Because we struggle with grieving we don't know how to collectively approach the thought that this will all end, and because we are cynical we don't know how to stay open to magical surprises. We cover all of this up with a thin yellowed trail of sarcasm and a click for our next purchase. We're really damaged in this way. Somehow, underneath, we know this."
"In an adolescent culture, discernment is the first thing to take a hit. We start to think perpetual drama is somehow prompting us to wisdom. Maybe not the case. Maybe if there was any wisdom present, we wouldn't eternally be caught in such exhausting theatre."
"Getting made involves understanding two things at once. Things end and miracles happen. It's naïve to assume either can be influenced except by the divine...Because we struggle with grieving we don't know how to collectively approach the thought that this will all end, and because we are cynical we don't know how to stay open to magical surprises. We cover all of this up with a thin yellowed trail of sarcasm and a click for our next purchase. We're really damaged in this way. Somehow, underneath, we know this."
June 18, 2026
This book is not written by a theologian and it would be unfair to judge it by those standards. However, at points it sounds a little panentheistic. Martin Shaw is drawn to myth and mystery, as well as a desire for an enchanted world. I think he speaks for a great deal of others in expressing these desires. He also encourages a more rooted existence of life lived in the same place, shaped my one’s place, land, and history. In our increasingly digital age (with the rise of AI), we would do well to heed him on this. Spending more time in the garden and less time scrolling through AI slop would be a good for our souls. Overall, I’m giving the book three stars for its insightfulness but lack of theological precision.
May 13, 2026
I’ll need to let this one settle in order to be able to share more formed thoughts but wow was this what I needed, when I needed it. So much of the content on myths and stories and spirituality and meaning-making that was familiar here already for me, and yet composed in such a WHOLE way I have never before encountered. Listened on my Libby app and will be purchasing a bound copy.
May 27, 2026
I can’t believe I accidentally read a self-help book.
This book commits a particular pet peeve of mine - creating normative frameworks and then doing nothing with them. For example, spiritual maturity can be understood as ‘red’, ‘white’ and ‘black’ phases. Does this come up much? No. It seems to simply exist to mimic structure and depth.
This book commits a particular pet peeve of mine - creating normative frameworks and then doing nothing with them. For example, spiritual maturity can be understood as ‘red’, ‘white’ and ‘black’ phases. Does this come up much? No. It seems to simply exist to mimic structure and depth.
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
June 2, 2026
One of the best Christian books I’ve read. Formational and foundational. Barely a page in this book without some sort of underline or scribbling in the margins. For all mystics and mythmakers, and for those who think such things are hogwash.
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.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 138 reviews