Liturgies of the Wild

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.

Martin Shaw is a writer and teacher who lives on Dartmoor. Dr Shaw is author of the award-winning Mythteller trilogy: A Branch from the Lightning Tree, Snowy Tower and Scatterlings. Founder of the Oral Tradition and Living Myth courses at Stanford University, he is also director of the Westcountry School of Myth in the UK. He is Reader in Poetics at Dartington Arts School.

Recent books include Smoke Hole, Courting the Wild Twin, Wolferland, All Those Barbarians, The Night Wages, and his Lorca translations Courting the Dawn (with Stephan Harding). His conversation and essay on the artist Ai Weiwei, Life Cycle, was released by the Marciano Arts Foundation.

His translations of Gaelic poetry and folklore (with Tony Hoagland) have been published in Orion Magazine, Poetry International, Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine and the Mississippi Review; their collection of Celtic stories and poems, Cinderbiter will be released by Greywolf Press.

Shaw has spent twenty years as a wilderness rites of passage guide, working with returning veterans, at-risk youth and hundreds of others to establish a deep connection to nature through a four-day fast in a wild place. His book Wolf Milk is a reflection on this practice.

* PLEASE NOTE BELOW

To buy many other books of Shaw's, audio and learn more about his work please go to:

cistamystica.com | drmartinshaw.com | schoolofmyth.com

“A journey of heart-expanding magic and redemption.”
—GLEN HANSARD, singer-songwriter and Academy Award winner for Once

“From our greatest living storyteller, a validation of all that is awe-inspiring and implicit in a world where we are confined by the explicit and banal.”
—IAIN MCGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary

“A book that will help seekers, doubters, and believers alike appreciate faith anew, not by reinventing Christianity, but by retelling its story through the experience of a thousand other stories. Read it . . . then read it again. It will do your soul so much good.”
—JUSTIN BRIERLEY, author of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God

“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

“Shaw is a harbinger, a sign of the shift in consciousness that all of us, trapped in our techno-bubbles, so desperately need.”
—MALCOLM GUITE, author of Mariner: A Theological Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Decades of learning, practice, and refinement shine in every line.”
—MARK VERNON, author of Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination

“I loved this tender, honest book for the way it defamiliarizes the well-worn pathways of religion, bringing to life the power within and compelling the reader to take note: Here be dragons, but also grace in almost indecently extravagant abundance.”
—CATHERINE COLDSTREAM, author of Cloistered: My Years as a Nun