Walking the Maze: The Enduring Presence of Celtic Spirit

CELTIC SPIRITUALITY 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 their cultural heritage for Buddhist or Native American practices, yet the bloodlines from which we were born have traditions and rituals every bit as rich and profound. In Walking the Maze Loren Cruden explores Celtic culture both in relationship to Native 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 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, coming from the deep loam of ancestry, informs the vision of how we may live in the present, renewing a cultural integrity that is inseparable from personal wholeness and ecological consciousness. What is it in Celtic ancestry that calls for reclamation? What vital aspects of Celtic cultural spirit and identity can nourish and enlighten our lives and the lives of our children? How can we make direct relationship with ancestry in the present? 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. LOREN CRUDEN, a midwife and herbal healer of Scottish descent, worked for many years with a Potawatomie medicine man to develop her personal spiritual practice. She leads workshops on indigenous spirituality throughout the United States and Britain. She is the author of The Spirit of Place, Compass of the Heart, Coyote’s Council Fire, and Medicine Grove: A Shamanic Herbal. She lives on First Thought Mountain in Washington state.