Celtic Women's Spirituality: Accessing the Cauldron of Life

I think that this book is a great book for any woman who feels connected with Celtic spirituality. This book gives insight on the different celtic goddesses, the triple goddess, and several other aspects. The rituals and guided meditation is great. She poses questions that will truly have you thinking about yourself as a woman. I give it five stars because I have read one of McCoy's books before and I think that this is definitely one of the best celtic books I have read.

I believe this is a great book. Everyone should read it not just women. It is a great conversation piece as well. I bought the book due to intrest in the celtic traditions because of family history and found it most excellent. I had trouble putting it down so I could sleep at night.

....I found it to be a beautiful, inspiring book. First, it pleasantly surprised me by assuming a working knowledge of "Wicca 101" and didn't spend the first five chapters rehashing "How to Cast a Circle." If you need that information, you can find it in the appendices; if you have already read some of the gazillions of Wicca 101 books on the market, you can just start at the beginning of the book and jump right into the new material. Reading on, it was chock-full of suggestions on how to incorporate ancient Celtic ideas into a modern spirituality that can be meaningful to women today, including guided meditations, rituals, folk spells, a neo-pagan calendar of Celtic women's festivals, and an absolutely tear-jerking "soul-friend" bonding ritual..... I see nothing in the book to indicate that McCoy is trying to pass this material off as ancient. On the contrary, whenever she discusses a concept that has no known basis in ancient Celtic history, she says so. It is important to preserve all the history we can, as a basis for our spirituality; it is also important to build upon that history, adapting and creating new rituals to make the ancient concepts more meaningful to us today. We need to look to both the past and the future. This book is not intended to be a book of history, but a book of dreams, designed to inspire modern women in their quest for meaningful new rituals. So, I say, read historical works on the Celts, and read this too. It's also been said that McCoy is lumping together very different Celtic cultures into one homogeneous culture that never really existed. Actually, the only place where that generalization is used is in the title. She comes straight out and says that the Celts were nowhere near as unified as we sometimes think, and whenever she mentions a specific Goddess, she says "So-and-so, an Irish/Cornish/Welsh/Continental/etc. Goddess", not "Celtic Goddess." She is concerned with the common threads that the cultures _did_ have in common, but she keeps her pantheons straight.My only gripe: There were a few errors that could have been caught in editing. For example, the name Cormac was used for Conchobar a couple of times. However, a reader with a working knowledge of the myths can easily mentally correct these arrors and read on.

*Merry Meet* It's unbelievable how a great, simple book on women's neopagan sprituality can be misunderstood & misconstrued. Reading the reviews below, I take it that some folks(mostly fundamentalist euro-trads) don't understand the term NEOPAGAN. Yes, this book is NOT your early historical account on 'Celtic' lore but IT IS a progressive, updated, if you will; VIEW on the Celtic mythos. I have found this book to be a useful & a richly rewarding read. I can however, understand the current backlash against NeoCeltic ANYthing, especially from the authentic(?) descendants & historians of Celtic studies; but this book is about putting theory into practice. It deals w/ Ameri-Centric women's fantasies. Myth in action is what I call it:) I like this book for what it is. It doesn't scream dogma & rules. Personally, I feel that you either like Edain's writing style or you don't. I do. I gave this book 5 Stars because I GOT something from reading this book. BTW, check out Edain's other book Lady of the Night. Talk about useful!B~~*B~~*Aradia )O(

This book was not only educational about the Celtic woman's way of life, but also explored how this history can change a modern woman's way of life for the better. I think that this book has a lot to offer any woman who is interested in her own spiritual development, whether she is pagan, or just open minded. I found this book to be very inspiring. There are very few books that combine Celtic and woman's spirituality, and I would love to see more. I think Edain McCoy did a fantastic job of exploring this new and exciting topic.