Category: Reviews

Nancy Vedder-Shults’s The World Is Your Oracle is a beautiful, insightful, and compassionate guide to “divination” — listening to the sacred voice within to bring into consciousness the wisdom your soul already possesses. Our modern world teaches us to ignore the tremendous understanding and knowledge we all have about ourselves and each other and about how we should live our lives.

In several ways this book amazed me. First, I was blown away by Kathy Jones’ utter honesty about profoundly personal parts of her life: her deep fears, her screw-ups, her cancers, and her confusions about her own life, motivations and leadership abilities.

This anthology of poems and other works expresses Lynne’s own journey round the wheel of the year and her own growth into a Priestess Healer in so many ways – from Beginnings, which describes the feelings and re-membering as everyone comes together for the first time, to the final Invocation, calling in the Motherworld. Between these two are works that both evoke the call of the Goddess and praise Her. In Returning, we see the beauty of Her return to the land:

In her latest inspiring anthology on the Sacred Feminine, Rev. Dr. Karen Tate (author, speaker, radio show host and sacred activist) has curated a powerful, transformational and ultimately hopeful collection of voices for the Feminine Divine. From the core of sacred feminine liberation theology and the revolutionary work of Riane Eisler we find a moral compass for the years ahead.

“Venus” is the operative word here – the name was originally given to those figurines dating from the Palaeolithic, the vast majority of which portray women.  In the early days of such finds they were, perhaps ironically, named “Venuses”, as many would be considered most unattractive by more modern Western standards.  Or perhaps it was because of the often exaggerated sexual or fertility characteristics, but in either case the name tells us more about the archaeologists of the time than it does the figurines themselves, not to mention that the assumption seems to have been that the figurines were made by men, for their use and enjoyment, and certainly not by women, for their own purposes.

Goddess Pages readers will know Anna McKerrow as a poet (see her “Aphrodite”, and “Sea Mysteries”), and she has now written this exciting and magical novel for young adults.

Set in a disturbingly not-very far-distant future, Britain is suffering the effects of a worldwide lack of resources and energy, and is at war to try and secure supplies.  However, the south-west peninsula, basically Devon and Cornwall, has split off and is trying to be self-sufficient and non-polluting, in stark contrast to the rest of the country. 

Marlaina’s style of writing is friendly and approachable, assuming no prior knowledge or experience in the sacred feminine. She uses a conversational tone, which gives an aura of having her in the room with you as you read. This is much more than just a “how-to” book, it is an introductory guide that reads like a one to one conversation with a mentor. Each chapter is laid out clearly, and every section of reading has an interactive portion – be it a meditation, recipe or visualization. This is a book that wants you to stop reading it and to involve yourself in the learning process.