Walking the Maze: The Enduring Presence of Celtic Spirit Book

A vivid description of the fierce and free Celtic spirit as it has been sustained through history, and a vision for living that spirit in the present. * Equates Celtic customs with Native American traditions and rituals. * Presents a vision of the ancient Celtic path as it can be lived today. In a country populated by immigrants, slaves, and their descendants we are all displaced people, searching for roots and a sense of belonging. Americans often eschew the ways of our cultural heritage in favor of Buddhist or Native American practices, yet the bloodlines from which we were born have traditions and rituals every bit as rich and profound. With the perspective of a passionate historian and the clarity of a modern-day medicine woman, Loren Cruden presents to us a vision of ancient Celtic spirit as it can be lived today. In Walking the Maze she explores Celtic culture both in comparison to Native American ways of life and in its own light and strength, examining the attributes that define and sustain the vitality of the Celtic spirit. Four aspects of traditional Celtic life common to both Celtic and Native American cultures are kinship consciousness, a high regard for women as part of a general commitment to freedom, a fluid perspective of reality, and a primal spiritual engagement with the land. For the Celts this crafted rugged, land-loving individualists, fierce and free in their expression, gracious to all, answerable directly to Spirit but responsible for the entire community. This vision of Celtic spirit informs the vision of how we may live in the present, renewing a cultural integrity that is inseparable from personal wholeness and ecological consciousness.Read More