the three books about the Celts I've been reading, the others being sitelinkThe Cutthroat Celts and sitelinkThe Celts: A History, this is the one I'll be sending to my quite young nieces.
It has all the inadvertent, excessive farce of a hippy wouldbe artist producing something like sitelinkWhy Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics, but the fullcolour, fullpage photos of decidedly nonCeltic looking stone works gives solidity to its focus on the otherworldy.
I've read the end twice without remembering a single word, but any photo of ribbons around a wishing well can almost say it all,
The following claims are less believable than ever, There are close to a dozen examples where I just scrawled "What" next to the text, As I prepare to type these out, I would surmise that all the translated ancient Celt stories in total are just a little more than the total number of pages in this short book.
Why haven't I just read those old stories instead
"the oracle stone screamed, . . during the inauguration of a new king, "
"female fighters had equal status with men in the Celtic warrior class"
"the Celts had no pantheon of gods, . . but were at one with the elements and the Great Spirit" What Not true about their lack of gods, btw, and not sure they were Native American
The Celtic Otherworld,
called Sidh, "embody the halfway state between one world and the next, a vital theme of Celtic art and myth.
"
'Hag of the ford' a goddess of death which a doomed hero sees washing his bloodstained clothes,
"All sacred wells are protected by the threefold mother goddess"
"Twin circles represent the overlapping outer and inner worlds, " what
"In Greek legend, as in Celtic, the moon is identified with the triple goddess"
"Celtic burial, in which the possessions, dependents, and even family were ritually burned with the body of the dead chief.
"
"Celtic belief that human sacrifice was essential to promote human fertility, "
"As the giver and taker of life, the triple goddess presided over the birth, mating, and death of the king, her earthly consort"
"Hercules reappears in many guises in the art and legends of Celtic lands.
"
Irish tales have "hilarious descriptions of godly attributes in terms of food and sex, "
"The main body of stories, and the most interesting, centre around the warrior incarnation of the Celtic gods, "
The Dagda had his harp "that can play three airs, the sleep strain, the grief strain, and the laughter strain"
"A Celtic context, without the Christian need for a moral duality showing good and evil as separate forces.
"
'When they dine they often fall into an altercation and challenge each other to single combat they make nothing of death', "For once the Classical writers and the Irish poets had been to the same movie, "
"Many Celtic coins show a marked resemblance to the Uffington horse, "
"The famous Irish wakes and funeral games, which ritually reenacts parts of the ancient burial practices, have always been loud and humorous, with, . . elaborately mimed phallic rituals Our present day casual attitude to the death ceremony is probably unique in the history of the planet, and a sad comment upon our barbaric civilization, " HaHa
MORE TO BE ADDED
Just, where to start. Ill keep this brief. I hated it. The pros: good clear extant object photos, The end. The cons: it it written by someone trying to SOUND smart with very little to say, I didnt realize that this was written before I was born so they may indeed have had very little to say, In which case dont write a book, Lots of run on sentences that start with “we know, ” then a lot of information about cultures that are not the celts with a sentence ultimately never telling us what we know, WHAT DO WE KNOW!! Nothing evidently, This book should have been called we know a lot about other cultures let me tell you about those, Its like watching a football game and the commentator spends the whole game telling us why football is like basketball and ultimately talking more about the nuances of basketball than about the football game going on right in front of them.
Long rant short, dont waste a library check out on this, I am discovering that there are a few books which seem to have slipped off the goodreads radar two today, Maybe it is the link between the different editions that has become untied in the boo hiss amazon thing,
No cow on the ice swenglish term no real problem, nothing to get excited about, A repackaging of Sharkey's originalsurvey with gorgeous fullcolour illustrations and fullbleed design really a joy to experience, and a fine introduction to historicalanthropologicalculturaltheological Celtic concepts, Visually stunning I'd keep this on a desk or coffee table to flip through for inspiration easily,
The text would have benefitted from a thorough revision not because there was anything incorrect or wrong per se, but the text is nearlyyears old and there are several concepts Sharkey presents that are challenged by the contemporary archaeological record, or should be challenged by, in specific, gender, sexual, and feminist perspectives reflective of a republishing circa.
Being that this is part of Thames amp Hudson's "Art Imagination" series, broadly republishing or commissioning short introductory works on interesting cultural subjects with high visual impact, perhaps that expectation is too high, but the assumptions of privilege, particularly the white male gaze of academia, challenge the endorsement of material like this when presented for a new and contemporary audience.
Even so, there were images and photos I hadn't yet encountered, which is a particular delight of mine, so kudos to the design budget I suppose.
feverishly impassioned patchwork of ritual and fable introduces a rich annotated gallery of relics and recreations, I really enjoyed this very interesting book about the Celts and their ancient religion and rituals, burials, other things, I found the photos and illustrations so informative and good, Took me a long time to read but it was very interesting, The short, but true historical book which is full of images with artifacts and believers, It immerses us into the ancient world of magic rites and fury frays, The way to connect, feel and know European ancestors, This book has been sitting on my shelf for overyears and I challenged myself to finally read it, Over half of the pages are photos some color, mostly black and white, so think of this as a visual reference to Celtic stuff including statues, shields, sites and Sheilanagig.
The author wrote up a synopses of Celtic knowledge as of, publication date, which is interesting as an intro, I recommend How the Irish Saved Civilization as a much more thorough history for those who want to more, It's a short, shallow look into a massive panEuropean culture, As a starting point to begin a deeper delve, it's good enough, but it was like swinging a torch beam through the main gallery of a museum,
Looking forward to something meatier now, . . Explore a truly astonishing range of interests, philosophies, religions, and cultures from alchemy to angels, Buddhism to Hinduism, myth to magic, The distinguished authors bring a wealth of knowledge, visionary thinking, and accessible writing to each intriguing subject in these lavishly illustrated, largeformat paperback books, .