Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World

Superb read lovely tranquil and peaceful time out with it great Author would read again and again you always see more in it it certainly touches your heart and soul

Great book superbly written

I could write a long. review but I wont. If you love words you will love this work. It has a place in the heart of every reader and a place in one library.

excellent book.

As a Pranic Healing student, I'm very choosy on the subject of spirituality, having learnt teachings that totally resonate with me and are pretty leading edge. But Anam Cara did not disappoint. The many references to nature brought me a whole new viewpoint and for the most part - aside from a few contrasting beliefs - this book was very touching.

Bought as a Christmas gift. My friend really loves it.

I'd heard of John O'Donohue and knew he had spoken regularly at a festival I attended every year - but never took the time to hear him. Now he's gone, and I wish I had. This, his best known book is full of spiritual wisdom, and coming at a hard time in my life it was just right for me. And having it on the Kindle meant I could easily carry it in my handbag and read it in cafés in bite sized chunks. Lots of soul food on issues like identity, relationship, ageing and death. Started it just before my mother became ill and finished it before she died. Highly recommended for a deeper look at spiritual questions than is sometimes provided by the noisiest Christians.

This is one of the most poetic and beautiful reflections on soul I have come across. Incredible - and I don't leave reviews - but this I am compelled to share . I am very grateful my friend recommended this to me.

É um livro com uma linguagem simples, porém profunda. Fala bastante sobre os sentimentos, principalmente, aqueles que os antigos celtas cultivavam.

Very good book. Wish I could know more and more on Celtic cultures. Makes me want to go back to celtic times.

I just discovered John O'Donohue and I am fascinated by his wisdom. This book is the best I have ever read about Friendship - the divine gift. John talks to your soul and touches it! Lucia

Remarkable insights expressed in gentle term to fundamental questions of who we are and what we are doing here in this dimensionThis book leaves a lasting feeling of gratitude for the wisdom of the celts

John O’Donohue was an Irish poet, priest and philosopher, a proponent of a specific kind of Celtic spirituality which formed the lens through which his philosophy could be seen. His first and best known work is ‘Anam Cara’, published in 1997. ‘Anam cara’ is the Celtic phrase for ‘soul friend’.In a sense, this book is review proof. To anyone who has read my other reviews on fiction and non-fiction this may be seen as a departure. Personal philosophical contemplation of the big issues—life, death, eternity, etc.—are so subjective that to apply the same kind of critical analysis to them that I would apply to a novel misses the meat of the matter and becomes a stab in the air of Intellect. Just as all books are not created alike, so all reviews of those various books should also not be alike.The anam cara can be found in another person although, whether one finds THE anam cara or AN anam cara in another person or not, there is the presence that travels with the individual from birth to death. An individual’s life span, like the seasons, is a cycle. O’Donohue traces the phases of the cycle throughout the book in explorations of solitude, friendship, love and death. These are all big abstract concepts but O’Donohue brings them inside our eyelids with his intimate, poetic language.Donohue’s contemplation of the large themes is as intimate as poetry and as spiritual as any church service and yet this former priest never preaches. His pleasure in the novelties of creation and his meditations on the threshold of conscious and unconscious existence are contagious. He brought to my awareness a few insights that seem obvious except that I never thought to articulate them but here he has presented them to me.Consider what he says about the human face:“The human face carries mystery and is the exposure of the mystery of the individual life. It is where the private, inner world of a person protrudes into the anonymous world. While the rest of the body is covered, the face is naked. The vulnerability of this nakedness issues a profound invitation for understanding and compassion. The human face is a meeting place of two unknowns: the infinity of the outer world and the unchartered, inner world to which each individual alone has access…Your feet bring your private clay in touch with the ancient, mother clay from which you first emerged. Consequently, your face being at the top of your body signifies the ascent of your clay-life into intimacy and selfhood.”He invokes the cyclical view of life repeatedly. It is inherent in the fact that he was born and died a Celt:“The Celtic mind was never drawn to the single line; it avoided ways of seeing and being that seek satisfaction in certainty. The Celtic mind has a wonderful respect for the mystery of the circle and the spiral. The circle is one of the oldest and most powerful symbols. The world is a circle; the sun and moon are too. Even time itself has a circular nature; the day and the year build to a circle. At its most intimate level so is the life of the individual. The circle never gives itself completely to the eye or to the mind but offers a trusting hospitality to that which is complex and mysterious; it embraces depth and height together. The circle never reduces the mystery to a single direction or preference.”Generally, O’Donohue’s imagery and metaphor is fresh and vibrant although he does use a phrase such as ‘neon consciousness’ or ‘neon awareness’ a bit too frequently for my taste. Once was fresh; more than that the impact is diluted. He also quotes people without citation. He will write, “Dostoevsky said…” or “Goethe said” without providing the specific source of the quote. I don’t doubt O’Donohue; I believe in his integrity. I would just like to read the original for myself to see the context in which the quote appeared.Those are relatively minor quibbles. One of O’Donohue’s great achievements is to shed a fresh light on things we either take for granted or have never articulated. He presents them to us in a novel context, which is really what the best writers do for us.The chapter on death is worth the price of the book for me. It provides the wisest, most consoling, most clear-eyed outlook toward death that I have encountered. He describes the Irish mourning tradition in which women keen and provide a sad liturgy, a ritual for externalizing the loss of the departed. This is followed by the wake:“Its ritual affords the soul plenty of time to take its leave. The soul does not leave the body abruptly; this is a slow leave-taking.”He provides a calm reassurance that assuages any fear of dying that touches me more than most anything else I’ve read about death. He died unexpectedly in his sleep in 2008. The cause of death was not disclosed outside the family. Reading his calming words, I could imagine them echoing through his consciousness in his last moments. His cycle was complete.