Druid Priestess: An intimate journey through the pagan year Book

What is it actually like to be a druid? Forget all the weirdly dressed bearded characters doing strange things at Stonehenge; druidism is a day-to-day spiritual path, and one of the fastest growing in Britain. Emma Restall Orr's Druid Priestess is subtitled "an intimate journey through the pagan year", and that's exactly what it is. Orr is joint chief of the British Druid Order, so she knows what she's talking about; she's also a very poetic creative writer, which makes her book a joy to read. And this is a creative work, rather than any sort of manual on "how to be a druid". Chapter by chapter Orr steps through the eight festivals of the druid year, describing rituals with her group, and her own personal explorations. She's up front about the fact that she's merged events and characters, and the more visionary aspects of her story, including "becoming" the Bobcat of her druid name, are clearly subjective, guided visualisations. How much of this book is her imagination, then, and how much is fact? Quite honestly, it doesn't matter; Orr is a storyteller, and this book is about the experience of being a druid priestess; if she had stuck to hard objective facts, it wouldn't be the "intimate journey" it is. This is a beautiful, warming book, which demonstrates clearly the magic in a druid's life--and also the fact that druid priestesses are real people who get headaches like the rest of us/ One warning for anyone who already has any of Emma Restall Orr's books: Druid Priestess is actually a new edition of her earlier Spirits of the Sacred Grove.--David V BarrettRead More