The Celtic Book of Living and Dying

Rating:
Summary: Skewed yet beautiful
Review: 'The Celtic Book of Living and Dying' features many beautiful full-color illustrations adorning every page, hearkening to illustrated manuscripts of medieval times. It also includes appropriately beautiful photographs of old places and buildings, lending it a sense of some of the places where the Celts once live. It synopsizes many popular Celtic myths, like that of Rhiannon and the tragic story of the Children of Lir, and refers often to Taliesin the Welsh bard.

However this book also is heavy-handed with western preconceptions which color the author's telling of supposed truths. To her credit, she mentions several times that the Celts passed down knowledge by oral traditions rather than written texts. There is a juxtaposition of many Christian ideals onto the Celtic history, including a rather stilted reference injected into the aforementioned 'Children of Lir' retelling. The setting for this myth was long before St. Patrick came to Ireland and reveals this to be a rather telling mistake. There is sufficient evidence to be found in studying Celtic history and lore that the Celts believed in reincarnation, a fact mentioned in a quote in this book attributed to Taliesin, however the conclusion is still drawn here that the Celts believed in a Judeo-Christian style of living their life to try to get into a good afterlife which would end their days incarnate.

These glaring cosmetic errors aside, I cannot divine the ultimate point of this book. The back cover text seems to indicate it is a collection of Celtic wisdom, which does not sit well with the interior flaps' comparison of this book with the Tibetan Book of the Dead -- a book illustrating the process believed by the Tibetan Buddhists to take place during and after death. The book glosses over the darker aspects of Celtic history and myth, and again displays a knack for making assumptions that have little basis in the work itself. It seems almost like fluff material, a simplified, mainstreamed version of the prettier and more 'acceptable' (by western standards) aspects of the Celtic culture. I was often baffled, frustrated, or provoked by the text. It is not a good place to glean accurate information from. I would recommend reading more serious texts such as Ward Rutherford's 'Celtic Lore.'

I cannot fault the graphics, though.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful
Review: I enjoyed the Celtic Book of Living and Dying very much. The art work was great. How I read the book was slow. I read passages the would Leave the book to ponder the words. I found this very satisfying.