Reddit reviews The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom

I learned quite a bit from the Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom by Caitlin and John Matthews.

Well muffins you’re right. I saw someone else mention it so I thought there was (on mobile so can’t see it directly)

Here’s a general list. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3421.The_Best_Pagan_Books

For something beyond 101, you might like http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/michael-lloyd/bull-of-heaven-the-mythic-life-of-eddie-buczynski-and-the-rise-of-the-new-york-pagan/paperback/product-20287061.html. A friend wrote this and spent over a decade interviewing people and gathering information. It’s beefy but if you’re curious about the NY pagan scene and gay culture in the 70s and 80s it’s definitely worth checking.

I’m into Celtic stuff, if you are too you may dig The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom. I’ve read a few books by Caitlin and/or John Matthews, and I dig their scholarship.

I would also suggest going super old school and seek out sources of myth. If you’re into Celtic/Welsh seek out books that deal with 11-13 century myth. Some stuff was being rewritten with Christian themes around then but you can still find interesting symbolism and nuggets to meditate on. You can find copies of The Mabinogion and Lady Gregory's Complete Irish Mythology is also good to start on. Also don’t forget to check poetry. W.B. Yates touched on lots of pagan themes and so did his contemporaries

For reading material in general you may find you’ll have to look more and more into other sections of literature than the pagan section. The modern movement didn’t really get going since the 70s, and with so much to cover there’s just not a whole heck of a lot of books out there that go deep beyond the 101 stuff

Oh and one more thing. This is more of a hint. Get your favorite pagan books and look who they source. You’ll find lots of reading material that way.

I hope that helps

Ronald Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe

Really anything by Philip Carr-Gomm

A often-overlooked author, John Matthews. He has lots of books on Celtic shamanism and Druidry. A Celtic Reader, Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom, The Bardic Source Book, The Druid Source Book, and The Song of Taliesin: Stories and Poems from the Book of Broceliande just to name a few.

Also, if you haven't, you should read The Mabinogion for it's worth of Welsh mythology. I like the Jeffrey Gantz translation, but it's missing what I consider a crucial story prevalent to modern Druidry, the story of Ceridwen and Taliesin. You can find it in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation though, which is the original translation from Welsh to English.

Oh, and Joanna van der Hoeven's The Awen Alone. and I haven't read this one yet, but I read the author's other book, Zen Druidry. Both are short books packed with a ton of information, and the former is about practicing Druidry solitarily, something with which many of us here (and maybe especially you at the moment) can connect.