Sacred Feathers: The Power of One Feather to Change Your Life

Let me start off by stating my prejudice up front: I am not into New Age; I am a Christian of the liberal, but traditional, variety. I read this book because I was asked to review it by the author, and I obliged, not knowing that what I was getting was going to be something way different from my beliefs. So understand that, unlike the previous reviewers, I read this with a bit of skepticism. Perhaps, though, that is not a bad thing. Who knows?With that caveat in mind, I found the book interesting and full of nice little stories of people's spiritual, and sometimes miraculous, encounters with feathers. Interspersed are meditations and rituals the readers can try at home to bring the energy of feathers into their own lives. The book would certainly be a blessing for someone who is already sold on the idea that feathers have an energy and aura to bring to people's lives. What it did not do, however, was convince a skeptic like me that feathers are necessarily anything special, except perhaps in a symbolic way. This book is a great read for the converted, and it may convert some people to the magic of feathers, but, alas, it didn't do it for me. Still a good read, though.

Reading this book made me feel a connection to the authors who contributed their own personal stories about the power of feathers. I, too have had experiences with encountering feathers in my path and the messages they convey. When I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down eagerly anticipating the next story.

Sacred Feathers is rich with stories of inspiration, humor and hope. Crabtree captures the essence of these everyday objects. She includes exercises, fascinating facts and historical rites and rituals that feathers have been a part of. The stories are in bite-size reads, so when you need a quick lift or a shot of inspiration, pick up this beautiful book.

I just recieved a contributor's copy of this book, and although I'm not a big fan of inspirational books in the vein of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Sacred Feathers floats above its genre with contributions not only inspirational, but literary as well. Well worth the list price for contributions by novelist Linda Hogan (Solar Storms), Kenneth Ray Stubbs (The Essential Tantra), and Denise Linn (Sacred Space), the book includes over 60 stories, essays, meditations and poems that range in mood from uplifting (e.g., "Magpie Feather" by Paul Anderson) and humorous (Mary Lane Kamberg's "Fifty Things to Do With a Feather") to wise ("A Question of Style" by Rachel Naomi Remen) and touching ("A Special Gift" by Penny Wigglesworth). The pieces are arranged in four sections: The Mystery of Feathers: Mystical Messages from the Spirit; The Power of Feathers: Messages of Healing and Transformation; Light as a Feather: Messages of Freedom, Surrender and Letting Go; and Where There's a Quill, There's a Way: Messages of Love, Strength and Courage. In short, definitely the kind of book I'd buy for someone who needed a lift, whether they'd ever thought about feathers specifically before or not.