The Arthurian Quest: Living the Legends of Camelot (Llewellyn's Celtic Wisdom Series)

Rating:
Summary: Amber Wolfe is ignorant of medieval history.
Review: Amber Wolfe is ignorant of medieval history. As an historian whose focus is the middle ages, I can state unequivocally that Amber Wolfe is completely ignorant of medieval history. She is so obsessed with discrediting the medieval church that one wonders whether her historical blunders are intentional or not. The book is a complete waste of money.

Rating:
Summary: Magick not History
Review: As a student of mysticism and the occult myself I am consistantly astounded by the western mind's inability to integrate the use of the creative, mythic and dynamic imagination with the intellectual capacity to reason.

Those who have given this book a poor review, in my opinion, haven't one whit of experience in magick or pathworking. Pathworking requires trust in subjective expeirence while at the same time taking cues from history and "myth". It isn't one or the other. To make it only imaginal is akin to a daydream while to make one's journeys purely historic is to lose the symbolism and meaning of the "essense" of the material.

The Arthurian Quest by Amber Wolfe is quite good and is a pathworking and magickal system, NOT A HISTORICAL, ACADEMIC WORK! It contains valuable and insightful uses for the myth cycle in a shamanic and magickal manner and merely provides tools, doorways in a manner or speaking, to contacting the currents or powers behind the symbols and stories.

The power of the Arthurian tales (pre-christian celtic) is in the messages and power between the words and what is gained from the pathworking or ritual experience. Without the validation of experience and commitment to the work, the tales are just tales and useful for nothing more than a good story on a cold evening.

There are plenty of speculative "historical" works on the Legends of Arthur and Camelot, but the fact is that they are all speculative. Keep this in mind. Enjoy the tales, do the pathworkings, rituals and visualizations with the mind of a mage or even an Archmage and they won't only make sense, they will get profound results.

In Light and Love.

Rating:
Summary: Where Joseph Campbell left off . . . Uniquely useful.
Review: This is a very useful book. Where Campbell and others have described the factual details and mythical implications of the Celtic Arthurian traditions, "Arthurian Quest" is an organized and descriptive war chest of related tactical tools. The uses for these tools for enhancing one's traditions and psyche, as well as their derivation and historical background, are included and well written.

The book makes no pretence that it contains ancient, secret, mystical information. The historical and mythological data within is well established. The ideas put forth are based on common sense folk wisdom crafted with modern psychology and sociology. It is clearly up to the readers to apply these tools strategically and intelligently to achieve their personal or group goals.