Celtic Myth & Magic
by Edain McCoy.
Llewellyn 1995, ISBN 1567186610

Reviewed by Ceridwen

This was the first book I ever bought on Pagan anything! At the time I was looking for a book to give me a flavour of Pagan, Celtic...whatever. Being an impatient sort I did not want to read endless different books on traditions and magic; I was only curious at this stage. As I browsed around the bookshelves of one particular shop this book kept 'winking' at me. So I bought it!

It was stuffed of information and do I mean stuffed! There was all kinds of details crammed onto the pages; everything from the Celts as a people, traditions, clothes, jewellery, poetry, even a breakdown of the different labels attached to parts of the tradition. The Pagan year with explanations and associations of the Wheel of the Year, symbols used within Paganism, animal associations, how to invoke, spells, pathworkings, not to mention the dictionary of Gods, Goddesses and Heroes, and that's not the half of it. To carry on listing the contents would bore you to ribbons! What I will say is that, at the time, I was curious to know anything, with lots of questions, and this book managed to answer all of the questions that I had, and gave me a lot more information that I had not even thought about.

It is a gentle introduction to energy work - nothing scary or complex - and c ertainly not 'high brow'.
The dictionary has been well used and is comprehensive. I thought the pathworkings were a little too detailed for my liking. But on the whole the contents are plentiful, but concise, and easy to absorb (for the easily put off).
If you were a curious, impatient sort then you could do worse than give this book a chance. It would give you a basic overview of the Pagan, Celtic, whatever-you-call-it tradition.