The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog


Book Description

When Patricia Monaghan traveled to Ireland seeking her roots, what she found was much more than her physical ancestors. This is the story of her journey and the legends, landmarks, and mystical lore she encountered. Her poetic stories elucidate the ways that myth reveals the truth of human experience as well as the contradictions that are embodied in women's lives. This book is an extensive exploration of goddess mythology in Ireland, from Brigit, the Celtic goddess of water, fire, and transformation, to the historical figure of Granueille, a pirate queen.




The Red-haired Girl from the Bog


Book Description

A woman's trip to Ireland becomes a journey through the mythical Celtic territory of goddesses, witches, hags, and spirited women. Maps.




She Is Everywhere! Volume 3


Book Description

She Is Everywhere! Volume 3 presents a bold, brave, and beautiful compilation of womanist/feminist essays, poems, and artwork showcasing work from an international community of women and men who honor the Sacred Female. The fifty contributors in this anthology-scholars, creative writers, and visual artists-share their vision for a world that reclaims the inviolability of the Divine Female in all Her many and varied manifestations. She Is Everywhere! Volume 3 is the latest edition of a leading-edge series which, like its predecessors, offers an invaluable contribution to women's spirituality, religion, philosophy, and women's studies. The contemporary voices contained within its pages echo an ancient clarion call to embrace the values of justice with compassion, equality for all people, and transformation. "We have a calling in this world-namely, to prevent the destruction from continuing." -Claudia von Werlhof "I am in the presence of a divine Mother, and She is fulfilling a deep longing inside of me." -Nicole Margiasso-Tran "She was, I am, my daughter is because we are all Her." -Etoyle McKee Just as dark matter (mother) in space shapes galaxies and holds them together, we are shaped and held by the African Dark Mother who has given us Her life force, and resides in the very depths of our being, where the macrocosm is literally reflected in the microcosm." -Leslene della-Madre Front cover: Black Madonna Cradles the Earth (c) 2010 Yvonne M. Lucia Back cover: Contemplate Creation (c) 2006 Sheila Marie Hennessy




The Thin Places


Book Description

In Irish Celtic lore, "thin places" are those locales where the veil between this world and the otherworld is porous, where there is mystery in the landscape. The earth takes on the hue of the sacred among peoples whose connection to place has remained unbroken through the ages. What happens, then, when a Celtic view of nature is brought home to a North American landscape in which many inhabitants' ancestral connections to place are surface-thin? In a quest to find a deeper spiritual landscape in his own home, Kevin Koch applies eight principles of a Celtic spiritual view of nature to places in Ireland and to the American Midwest's rugged Driftless Area, an unglaciated region of river bluffs, rock outcrops, and steeply wooded hills. The Thin Places brings onsite mountaineering guides, spiritual leaders, geologists, and archaeologists alongside scholars in the fields of Celtic studies, religion, and conservation. But the text never strays far from story, from a trek through the Wicklow Mountains and the bogs of Western Ireland or among ancient Native American burial mounds and abandoned nineteenth-century lead mines in the bluffs above the Mississippi River.




The Girl in the Bog


Book Description

Ancient heroes from Irish mythology and folklore come to life in the modern world in this dark, atmospheric story. At once a thrilling chase novel and a wry reimagining of Ireland’s oldest epic, it is sure to enthrall readers of Neil Gaiman and Cassandra Khaw. Everybody is after the girl in the bog. One morning in a field in Connemara, a farmer unearths the body of a young woman, two thousand years old, preserved under layers of peat. Later that evening, she awakens in unfamiliar modern Ireland, ripping a hole through space and time and setting awhirl old animosities and long-held grudges. Shadowy figures follow her from the pagan past, and each emerges with a claim on the girl from the bog. With help from a trio of wannabe teenage witches, she goes on the run. Joining in the chase is an American archaeologist who wants to keep the discovery for herself and two befuddled farmers trapped in the plot. Hosts of fairies out for the night work their magic and mischief, and in the blue hour before sunrise, the saga unfolds in a battle for the ages. Part fantasy, part mystery, part thriller, part send-up, this comic and poignant love song to Irish literature and the gift of gab does not merely bend genres; it braids them into Celtic knots.




Haunted Ground


Book Description

The dazzling, award-winning debut in a series that delivers mystery, romance, suspense, and fascinating forensic detail. When farmers cutting turf in an Irish peat bog make a grisly discovery—the perfectly preserved head of a young woman with long red hair—Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire and American pathologist Nora Gavin must use cutting-edge techniques to preserve ancient evidence. Because the bog’s watery, acidic environment prevents decay, it’s difficult to tell how long the red-haired girl has been buried—two years, two centuries, or even much longer. Who is she? The extraordinary find leads to even more disturbing puzzles. The red-haired girl is not the only enigma in this remote corner of Galway. Two years earlier, Mina Osborne, the wife of a local landowner, went for a walk with her young son and vanished without a trace. Could they, too, be hidden in the bog’s treacherous depths, only to be discovered centuries from now? Or did Hugh Osborne murder his family, as some villagers suspect? Bracklyn House, Osborne’s stately home, holds many secrets, and Nora and Cormac's inquiries threaten to expose them all.




Haunted Ground


Book Description

This fascinating and insightful tour through present-day meetings of Spiritualists, UFOlogists, and dowsers illuminates our obsession with the paranormal and challenges the misunderstanding of the paranormal as a marginal or inconsequential feature of America's religious landscape. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 75 percent of Americans believe in some form of paranormal activity. The United States has had a collective fascination with the paranormal since the mid-1800s, and it remains an integral part of our culture. Haunted Ground: Journeys through a Paranormal America examines three of the most vibrant paranormal gatherings in the United States—Lily Dale, a Spiritualist summer camp; the Roswell UFO Festival; and the American Society of Dowsers' annual convention of "water witches"—to explore and explain the reasons for our obsession with the paranormal. Both academically informed and thoroughly entertaining, this book takes readers on a "road trip" through our nation, guided by professor of American religion Darryl V. Caterine, PhD. The author interprets seemingly unrelated case studies of phantasmagoria collectively as an integral part of the modern discourse about "nature" as ultimate reality. Along the way, Dr. Caterine reveals how Americans' interest in the paranormal is rooted in their anxieties about cultural, political, and economic instability—and in a historic sense of alienation and homelessness.




Orange World and Other Stories


Book Description

From the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell’s extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination. Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In“Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. In the brilliant, hilarious title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant’s safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void—yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.




Bog Girl


Book Description

In this revelatory story about first love from Karen Russell’s Orange World, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. Through a darkly comic lens, Russell explores the vertigo of falling in and out of love, and the way that our shallow projections and fairytale fantasies can cover over the mysterious reality of another human being. A Vintage Short.




Heart of the Sun


Book Description

This anthology is an intriguing glimpse of Sekhmet's many guises as seen through the unique perspectives of her modern-day devotees. Through the writers' personal experiences shared here, a distinct picture of Sekhmet is revealed to each reader. In a day and age when Her strength, power, and healing are needed most, this book offers multiple ways of understanding and connecting to Her. "...a faithful tribute to Sekhmet, Egyptian goddess of 10,000 names. It is an invocation and guide for anyone in search of the feminine divine." - Ana Castillo, author of Goddes of the Americas/La Diosa de las Americas and the Guardians. "A feast! For those who love Sekhmet...this book is invaluable." - Michael York, author of Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion. "Anyone who loves Sekhmet will want to have this book on her shelf." - Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. author of Pagan Every Day, Finding New Goddesses, and Goddess Meditations.