Ireland Books

A good range of resources were used in this study. The author goes beyond the' them and us' stereotype of relationships in nineteenth century Ireland i.e. Protestant landlord v Catholic tenant, and explores the realities of life for people living on Otway estate in Templederry, Co.Tipperary

Miriam Lambe captures the activities and history of the life on the Castle Otway Estate from 1750-1853 in a manner rarely achieved by Historians.

The book is highly recommended if your ancestors came from Tipperary. The book gives a rare insight of life under the English landlord on an Irish Estate.

Miriam Lambe captures the activities and history of the life on the Castle Otway Estate from 1750-1853 in a manner rarely achieved by Historians.

The book is highly recommended if your ancestors came from Tipperary. The book gives a rare insight of life under the English landlord on an Irish Estate.

THis was a favorite of my daughter's. Especially the recipe for Baklava! IT was delicious. I purchased both as support material for our study of Ancient Rome and Greece and enjoyed them volumes. The information was presented well and the activities were worthwhile. Highly recommend!

What a great resource to stimulate young minds! I've got girls in 5th and 7th grades, and have had a hard time finding reference material that interests and challenges them. This book does both. I wish there were more like it.

What a nifty book! Not only do kids learn about the inventions of the Greeks, but how those discoveries help us today. Kids learn about Greek gods, philosophy, architecture, science, math, medicine, art, and even about the start of the Olympics. The "words to know" (ie: Sparta and acropolis) and the quiz questions (ie: What were the three uses of olive oil in ancient Greece?) sprinkled throughout the book invite dialogue, and the 15 activities bring the book's information alive. My favorites? Make your own baklava and write a letter in Greek. This book is interesting, well written, and engaging. A must-read for any kid (or adult!) wanting to immerse themselves in Greek history.

I read this book cover-to-cover before, during, and after a recent trip to Venice. I have to say that more than any of the other books about Venice that I looked at, this one had the most profound and positive impact on my trip and understanding of the city. No, it certainly won't tell you where to stay or eat, and you probably won't find yourself looking up churches and museums in it like you might in the Blue Guide or some other book. But the centuries of travelers' observations compiled in its pages will bring color and life to the city and its monuments and public spaces in a way that no single guide or history could. The passages in this book are not merely informative; they are also highly engaging and range from touchingly serious to laugh-out-loud funny. If you are going to Venice, or if you merely want to travel there from your armchair, get this book before you even consider getting any other!

I bought this anthology in the months prior to a trip to Venice, after reading editor John Julius Norwich's excellent "A History of Venice", to which it makes a terrific companion volume. These first-hand historical accounts present a colorful review of divergent viewpoints on "La Serinissima", from its distant origins in the Dark Ages up through the 20th century.

Though billed as a "traveller's companion", this is not a guide book in any sense of the phrase; rather, it serves to give one a sense of the history and character of the city and its most prominent features through letters, journals, and essays spanning the nearly 1400 years of its existence. Amongst the commentators are humorists like Mark Twain, great eccentrics like Thomas Coryat, litterateurs such as Henry James and aesthetes like John Ruskin -- and their contrasting views create a multifaceted portrait of this unique city, full of surprises and compulsively readable.

For those who want a sense of the hidden history and culture under the dazzling surface of Venice, who want to more deeply appreciate the city and its sights while experiencing them, this collection is highly recommended.

Lord Norwich is a consumate storyteller with an incredible ability to weave various sources of information into a compelling narrative--or in this case, a series of anecdotes. I can hardly recommend this highly enough. His choices of material are brilliant, his narration masterful, and the overall sense of place perfectly fitted to the Most Serene Republic.

Also not to miss is his A History of Venice and Paradise of Cities: Venice In the 19th Century. The letters written by Euphemia Ruskin inspired several characters in my second novel!

Venice for Pleasure is useful for the traveler or writer, as well, as is Jan Morris' The World of Venice.

Another excellent book by John Fine.

Treasures of the Spanish Main: Shipwrecked Galleons in the New World tells of gold, treasure, and fleets which promised riches to divers who would unearth them. It's a history of the ships who sailed the 'Golden Highway' laden with gold - and it uses both historical record and the diving explorations of modern treasure hunters to spice its story of pirates, wrecks, and history. An excellent adventure evolves.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I live in Nevada, which if it were a country would be the third largest producer of gold in the world. Each year Nevada produces a bit more than 7,000,000 ounces of gold. Mr. Fine has looked at the Spanish records and in the years between 1493 and 1780 103,246,510 ounces of gold were produced and sent back to Spain in approximately 17,000 voyages. Some estimates are that 10% of those voyages never made it back to Spain. That's ten million ounces of gold at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. There are also emeralds, silver and other treasures.

Unfortunately, finding and then recovering anything of value is no simple matter. This book goes into detail about seven treasure ships that sunk and were then subsequently found and from which treasure has been removed. The sunken ships, the men who found them, and the results brought to the surface are discussed.

This is a beautifully printed, well illustrated, and written with a great understanding of the challenges faced by the salvagers.

Elizabeth Hamby Carlson's Trip To Ireland takes two classic quilt patterns - Irish Chain and Trip around the World - and combines them for impact and innovation. From Irish Squares to an easy Irish Trip, this is filled with colorful photos and examples of blends.

This book is extremely helpful. Everything is spelled out clearly and simply - right down to pressing instructions (which are extremely important with these quilts).

The quilts in this book are breathtakingly beautiful with using only squares. If you're sick of dealing with half-square triangles (I sure am!) you're sure to find something you like in this book. It's not in print anymore, but I bought it used through Amazon and was very pleased with the perfect condition (and price) of the book.

Bergen's well researched and tightly written account of one German sect, the _The German Christians_ , offers a sobering account of the political consequences of a Christianity turned anti-doctrinal, anti-hierarchical, anti-Roman, people-centered, and focused on "feelings" rather than objective reality. This movement, self-designated as "The People's Church," celebrated its uniquely German form of Christianity in emotion-charged liturgies cleansed of traditional rituals and language. Stripped of long-established ritual, rules, tradition,theology, and foreign co-religionists, this wholly-German sect pressed its reconfigured notions of Christianity into the service of Nazism.

Trend spotters will note ominous parallels to developments in contemporary (increasingly horizontal forms of) American Christianity. Bergen offers evidence that tinkering with religious language, liturgy, rules and doctrine can have profound socio- political consequences.

Must read for all German history buffs as well as readers interested in Christian liturgy and theology. A complete copy of my review of _Twisted Cross_ appears in the September 1998 issue of Adoremus Bulletin.

Adherents of the German Christian movement of the 1930's and 1940's saw Nazism and Christianity as movements with shared values and a common agenda. They were given official support by the Nazi party for a time and the first and only Protestant Reich Bishop, Ludwig Mueller, was nominated from among their ranks. While traditional church historians have sought to minimize this movement as an aberration, Bergen provides evidence to support the thesis that it remained a popular mass movement throughout the years of Nazi rule. The evidence she presents further demonstrates that this Protestant sect blended together Nazi and Christian doctrine not out of expediency but out of faith. She analyzes the views not only of the leaders of the movement but also of its rank and file in order to capture a sense of their religious as well as psychological and political motivations. For most of the book, her focus is on understanding how the at once nationalist and anti-doctrinal theology of the church evolved under the pressures of the Nazi regime. In this regard, her account of their escalating struggle to purge Christianity of its Jewish roots is of particular interest. The last chapter, Postwar Echoes, gives and interesting account of the way in which German Christians tried to reconcile their old allegiances in the post war period and the way in which other Protestant sects used the high-visibility collaboration of the German Christians to avoid thorough de-Nazification at the end of the war. Hard to find documentary photographs showing the widespread blending of Christian and Nazi symbolism in church life enhance the overall value of the work.

The two previous reviews may be well-intended, but are not quite accurate from what I read in the book. The book is an excellent indictment of Christian anti-semitism fully realized on a national level, revealing the inherent hatred of Jews so easily supported by the Christian Bible. I highly recommend this book to every Christian as a tool for some soul-searching concerning the true nature of their faith.

The German Christians were not a sect. They were not a separate entity from Christian churches in Germany. It was a movement *within* typical German churches with large numbers of supporters and great influence on all Protestant Christians in Germany.

In Germany at the time, and "In July 1933 Protestant church elections across Germany filled a range of positions from parish representatives to senior consistory councillors. Representatives of the German Christian movement won two thirds of the votes cast. Hitler himself had urged election of German Christians, who, he claimed in a radio address, represented the "new" in the church. Affirmed by the biggest voter turnout ever in a Protestant church election and soon ensconced in the bishops' seats of all but three of Germany's Protestant regional churches, in 1933 the movement seemed unstoppable." (pg. 7)

Protestant refers to Lutheran, Reformed,and united churches in the category of Evangelical churches (not quite the same as used here in the US today).(pg. 5) SO the German Christians were not a relative few, a sect, a cult, or the "not true" Christians but instead a vast number of the Christian population---all devoted to the elimination of Jews from culture, from the nation, and physically from the land of the living. How proud their Aryan Jesus (descended from Viking tribes in Galilee!!!) must be of Christianity in Germany!

This book documents the driving Christian force in Christian churches of Nazi Germany, and exposes the complicity of Christianity in the Holocaust. The everyday Germans did not sanctimoniously sit in the pews unaware of what was going on in the streets, ghettoes and camps. Jew hatred was a national endeavor taught from the pulpits, the teacher's lectern, and recited by the children of that Christian nation. Christians made up the armies, execution squads, and camp staffs who murdered men, women, children, and infants for their Nazi Christ and fatherland.

This book also reveals some of the religio-social mechanics that allow such failures in humanity. It can happen here.

Jesus taught repentence. Admission of guilt precedes correction and rejection of sin and evil. Christian? Read this book and start the process.

You can read about the Potato Famine in history books and think you understand it but Marita Conlon-McKenna really makes you feel like you're there and you're experiencing it for yourself.
An excellent book for anyone with Irish ancestry or just an interest in Ireland. I'd highly recommend this one for kids in late elementary school on up. Even adults will get a lot out of this book as well as the rest of the books in the series.
In Ireland schools, this book is used in their curriculums.

This book brought the horrors of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland to life. 12 year old Eily and her younger brother, Michael, who is 9, and sister Peggy, who is 7, live in Ireland with their parents during the famine. Their father left to find work and never came back so their mother goes to look for him. But she never returns, either. So the three children set out to find their two great aunts who live in a village that's a long journey away. But can they survive the journey and find their great aunts?

Having just written a thesis on Irish Nationalists' administration of the Poor Law, I was very interested to read Conlon McKenna's book, which seemed quite honest in its depiction of the fragmentation of the local social fabric in the Irish countryside during the Famine. As a children's book, it combined the required optimism with some very perceptive social comment. It was a very entertaining read and I'd certainly recommend it for children, and adults too!

This was a very enjoyable book for me on several levels. First off, I feel fortunate to know the author. I have known him to be a wonderful family man, kind and spiritual. But what was fun for me was that I learned through his story-telling that he has a "spit-fire" nature as well.
Secondly, being of Irish decent, I too have a desire to visit Ireland. However, I did not grow up with such strong emotional tales of family history. Through Kurt's stories I felt transported along with him back to a place I hope to one day venture as well. There were times that I felt as if I were right there sitting next to him, taking in the beauty of the land and the mysteries of history.
Finally, through his book I learned more about his efforts along with others in his church to help our community. I am reminded through their efforts that there are many ways in which we can and should help.
Kurt, Thank you for sharing your pilgrimage through "Urban Iona"

Kurt Neilson is my one younger brother. We are from a family of six sons. I thought I knew all there was to know about him, until I read Urban Iona. I was privileged to spend a weekend with him in Ireland during his pilgrammage and learned so much from and about him there. I learned more reading his book. On one level it is the search for part of our heritage, but more importantly it chronicles the process by which he and the members of his parish took this experience and applied it in a personal and community way. There are many sound bites (my copy is filled with "yellow stickees" marking the pages) but its strength lies in the coherent message of applied, inclusive Christianity being lived by him, his family and his parish family. I am so proud of him for having the courage to bare his soul in such a public way.

And the members of Saints Peter and Paul have done their namesakes proud. When we hear the phrase "team work" most of us picture a long pass in a stadium filled with people. Perhaps, after reading Urban Iona, we will picture the good people of Saints Peter and Paul and those from neighboring parishes who have joined them. Reference the mobile dental lab. Applied Christianity with a capital "C".

This is a book to be read and digested, not devoured. There is a message for us all here. Take the time to listen to it, and as I have done, listen again. You will be amazed at how loud the silence can be. It is inspirational in a very, very personal way. I believe there is more to come from Father/brother Kurt. I, for one, can't wait.

This book is a "winner"! Fr. Kurt Neilson is the Rector of the Episcopal Church I attend in Portland, OR. As a member of his congregation, I've been priveleged to hear magic in his 'sermons' that make deep, lasting impressions in his parishinors hearts and leave us spell-bound. By reading "URBAN IONA", I've discovered that Father Kurt, in addition to having a 'verbal' talent for 'story-telling' with the 'gift of the gab', is also an accomplished author. I highly recommend it to people of all faiths, and readers who have an interest in Celtic History of Religions and Mythology. IT'S A GOOD READ!
Urban Iona: Celtic Hospitality in the CityUrban Iona: Celtic Hospitality in the City

Readers of this book should be prepared to study. Yeats knowledge of mysticism is deep. He was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn and had experience in conjuring in the British Museums with Assyrian artifacts. This book is based on a form of astrology, but not of the modern day "what's your sign " superficiality. Again readers must be prepared to do additional study, in the Vedas, the Gita, and Buddhist classics (start with DT Suzuki). This book ranks with Freud for its magnitude . Yeats has not been given the credit he deserves.

Yeats's "A Vision" gives an esoteric and occult view of the nature of reality and is the product of years of collaboration between the poet, W. B. Yeats, and his wife, George, in automatic writing, followed by years of synthesis and research to work it into book form. The system presented here views everything as subject to a cycle of changes, "gyres", and the stages of the cycle are symbolised by the phases of the Moon. This cycle and its phases apply to human incarnations, the process of the soul's after-lives, and to the broad sweep of history. It is a difficult and coherent system, which has elements in common with other esoteric systems but is also different from them all.
The work exists in two versions: the 1925 version, "A Vision A", and the more final 1937 version, "A Vision B". Large blocks of the 1925 version remained unchanged in the 1937 one -- the descriptions of characters for each phase of the moon and the outline of history -- but the explanations of the processes and mechanisms involved were completely rewritten. If you are coming to "A Vision" for the first time, then you should probably go to the 1937 version first. Also, if your primary interest is the ideas, then the 1937 version is the more considered and mature treatment of the material. The 1925 version is, however, invaluable for students of Yeats, especially the later writings, since it represents a stage in his understanding of the material, which informs much of his poetry, as well as his plays and prose. Although it is generally less well organized than the 1937 version, some areas are dealt with more satisfactorily, including the relationship of human and Daimon. The fictional material, with which Yeats prefaces the exposition of the ideas, is also significantly different in the two versions.

The Kessinger reprint sometimes gives the date "1925" on the cover, but the actual text "A Vision B" (1937 version, corrected, 1962). This confusion is the result of taking the 1925 and 1937 versions as conventional first and second editions.

The following comments apply specifically to "A Critical Edition of 'A Vision' (1925)", edited by G. M. Harper and W. K. Hood, and will not apply to other editions. This edition is a facsimile of one of the 600 copies of this book which Yeats had printed privately in 1925, so it is not a Critical Edition in the normal sense. It does, however, include a very full introduction to the work and its genesis, as well as good notes. George Mills Harper has gone on to publish most of the preparatory material and automatic writing in "The Making of Yeats's 'Vision'" and "Yeats's Vision Papers", but the introduction here is still one of the best summaries of how the book came into being. The notes and index can be slightly thin at times, but are still very useful.

Note: the description of the contents given above by Amazon applies only to the 1937 version, "A Vision B" (normally 305 pp.). For "A Vision A" (xxiii + 256 pp) or the "Critical Edition of 'A Vision' (1925)" (L + xxiii + 256 + 108 pp), the contents should be:
[Editorial Introduction] A Vision: Dedication to Vestigia; Introduction by Owen Aherne; Book 1: What the Caliph Partly Learned; Book 2: What the Caliph Refused to Learn; Book 3: Dove or Swan; Book 4: The Gates of Pluto. [Notes; Bibliography; Index].

One of the most remarkable channeled documents of the past century is Nobel Prize-winning poet William Butler Yeats' A Vision. Yeats explains how he obtained A Vision as follows: "On the afternoon of October 24th, 1917, four days after my marriage, my wife surprised me by attempting automatic writing. What came in disjointed sentences, in almost illegible writing, was so exciting, sometimes so profound, that I persuaded her to give an hour or two day after day to the unknown writer, and after some half dozen such hours offered to spend what remained of life explaining and piecing together those scattered sentences." Yeats spent the next twenty years on this project, and in the end produced a masterpiece which contains an all-encompassing system of symbolism which has geometrical, astrological, psychological, metaphysical, and historical components - a model of the entire universe: "all thought, all history and the difference between man and man."

Yeats' theory of reincarnation as described in A Vision represents a novel view of the subject: that reincarnation does not take place within a matrix of linear time. It's not as if e.g. you had a life in ancient Greece and then you died; then you had a life in ancient Rome and then you died; then you had a life in the Middle Ages and then you died; etc. Rather, all of your past and future lives are going on at once, in an eternal Now moment. The linearity of time is an illusion, a falsehood, which Yeats termed Deception (and which Eastern philosophers term maya or samsara). It is this Deception, the false appearance that there is such a thing as an objective reality out there which is unfolding in linear time, which animates the striving of all sentient beings and keeps the wheel of reincarnation, of life and death and rebirth, turning.

The basic geometrical symbol in A Vision represents the unraveling of time as two interpenetrating, rotating, heliacal cones (which Yeats terms gyres): "Incarnations and judgment alike implied cones or gyres, one within the other, turning in opposite directions." In Yeats' symbolism one of the rotating gyres represents Concord, or unity; the other gyre represents Discord, or desire. "Without this continual Discord through Deception there would be no conscience, no activity; Deception is a technical term of my teachers and may be substituted for `desire'". What is being symbolized by the two gyres is the driving force behind reincarnation - the descent into matter (Discord) and the return to spirit (Concord). By "Deception" Yeats means striving. Striving is not striving after something; desire is not desire for something. Rather striving and desire are movements, motions, for their own sake. It isn't really the objects of their desire which sentient beings seek but rather the hunger, the state of desire itself. The objects of desire - thought forms, the phenomenal world - don't have any objective existence. This is what is meant by the statement that "reality is but a symbol"; and this is the Deception. Another way of saying this is that waking consciousness is but a more highly evolved form of dreaming, but it is no more real than dreaming. The belief that what we do when we are awake is somehow "real" - more real than what we do when we are dreaming - is what motivates all our striving and traps us in the revolving wheel of birth and death.

In Yeats' symbolism the cone or gyre of Discord (which he also terms the "Antithetical tincture") is our imaginative, striving side, which separates man from man. The cone of Concord (also termed the "Primary tincture") is our detached, intellectual side, which brings us back to the mass where we began. That is to say, we need sobriety and detachment to truly perceive the nature of the universe. "The antithetical tincture is emotional and aesthetic whereas the primary tincture is reasonable and moral. Within these cones move what are called the Four Faculties: Will and Mask, Creative Mind and Body of Fate."

The Four Faculties are actually four levels of human memory. It has been pointed out that all of our past and future lives are occurring at once in an eternal Now moment. By "all of our past and future lives" is meant the memories which go all the way back to the very first cell from which all life on earth is descended. All life on earth evolved from one single, primordial cell; and one way of looking at it is that all life on earth is therefore one single organism, which merely has different ramifications. Each of us individual sentient beings on this earth are like different fingers on the same hand. And each of us individuals has a body of memory that goes all the way back to the beginning: one-celled memory, multi-celled memory, animal memory, vertebrate memory, mammalian memory, and human memory. All of this memory presses upon and shapes the present moment. Memory is the weight of the universe on the shoulders of each individual sentient being - the record of every decision that's ever been made. Of course, some lines of memory are more important to a given individual than others; some have a more direct bearing upon a given moment or a given lifetime than others. But it must be borne in mind that the entirety is weighing upon each individual human, animal, plant, cell all the time. And each individual organism selects a piece of the whole to emphasize, and that piece is everything the organism considers this lifetime. This is what Yeats termed the Faculty of Will - the memories of this present lifetime.

"The stage-manager, or Daimon, offers his actor an inherited scenario, the Body of Fate, and a Mask or role as unlike as possible to his natural ego or Will, and leaves him to improvise through his Creative Mind the dialogue and details of the plot." Daimon is Yeats' term for the person in his or her totality, "the ultimate self of man", or the Oversoul which is the sum of all of the person's lives in different realities. The human part of this totality, or memory inventory, can be arbitrarily divided into four categories, and these are the Four Faculties (excluded from this analysis is the part of memory which is above the human level - i.e. primate memory and mammal memory and vertebrate memory etc. all the way back).

Will is the socially conditioned person, the robot which is wholly governed by routines and knee-jerk responses; which has given up personal feelings and choices to do what is expected by others and to submit to the daily grind. Will is the Daimon's level of approval and approbation, of reflection in the eyes of other people. The 28 lunar phase types refer specifically to Will: the socialized person, the one who has asked no questions but has bought into society's ready-made solutions willy-nilly. Will manifests through a conviction of rectitude; hence it is completely self-centered and self-important. Decisions made on the level of Will usually do not take into account other people's viewpoints, or much sense of responsibility for ultimate consequences.

Body of Fate is the sum total of this present lifetime together with all of its probable realities. Probable realities are parallel lifetimes which branch off from this one at each point where a decision, large or small, is made. We believe that all we are is Will - a linear personal history, a series of events which began at birth and led up to where we are right now; and from here we will have a linear future. And there is one "me" who has had this personal history and who is going to have this personal future. In fact, there are infinite number of "me's" who had an infinite number of probable pasts, and there are an infinite number of "me's" who will have an infinite number of possible futures. The probable reality level of memory is Body of Fate. In everyday life Body of Fate is the person's wistful longings, ideals, and romance; his or her daydreams and fantasies. Body of Fate refers to openness to new experience, willingness to take into consideration hunches and intuitive guidance - echoes from other probable realities - and also other people's points of view. When Body of Fate predominates over Will people are willing to take risks and to fly with their impulses.

Mask is the sum total of all of a person's past and future life memories in all realities, which includes all the probable realities in all of those lifetimes. Note that each Faculty subsumes the previous ones: Body of Fate includes Will (the sum total of one's probable realities includes this present life history), and Mask includes Body of Fate (the sum total of one's past and future lives includes all the probable reality branches in those lives). The memories of the Mask are what we access in past life regressions. In quotidian life Mask is the Daimon's sense of personal significance: whatever dreams, hopes, ambitions the person holds in his or her heart of hearts Where Body of Fate operates on a level of mind, Mask operates more on a level of feeling; where Body of Fate connects the person to other people in individual relationships, Mask connects the person to other people in group relationships. Mask is what you discover when you run a lot of past life regressions and come to know the feel of who "you" are in your totality; of what you keep coming back in human form to accomplish; the overall mood which informs the totality of your past and future lives.

Creative Mind is what some philosophers have termed Gestalt or Collective Unconscious - all the racial memories which we share as humans, our collective knowledge, upon which we can each draw by virtue of our being human (in Yeats' system we are not interested in superhuman memories - e.g. anima and animus, our female and male sides, which all animals share; nor e.g. mammal, vertebrae, animal, multi-cellular, uni-cellular memory - but rather only the thought forms proper to human beings). Creative Mind is the same thing as the voices of our ancestors, which many human cultures (but not ours - which is why our society is presently destroying our planet) have revered from time immemorial. In societies which "worship" ancestors what is really going on is that shamans, or even individuals, actively channel the voices of their ancestors in making major decisions. These societies use the voices of their ancestors like we use television or the internet. But the people in these societies are attuned to a deeper current of collective wisdom than we Americans are.

The point is that a person's moment-to-moment decisions in any lifetime are made on one or the other of these four levels. For most people, 99.99% of decisions are made on the basis of Will, or socially-conditioned actions and reactions. But every now and then everyone has poignant moments, moments of conscientiousness or conscience or consciousness, when they sense that probable realities are branching off this way or that; or they feel echoes from other lifetimes and realities; or they hear voices from deep inside them. At these poignant moments people feel connected to something deeper than their usual everyday routines and habits; and that something is their true purpose in this life.

When a person is acting in accord with his or her true purpose in this life - their reason for incarnating, then they are said to be in-phase; and when they are just acting on a level of Will in mindless, knee-jerk reactivity, they are said to be out-of-phase. Yeats' life is a good example of what it means to be out-of-phase and in-phase. For most of his adult life Yeats dabbled in occultism, always seeking something of profound significance, but never finding it. And for most of this same period he was hopelessly in love with selfish, deceptive woman who completely trashed him emotionally. After thirty years of this frustrated romanticism something deep inside Yeats decided to stop chasing the fantasy woman and marry someone truly worthy. And four days later his new wife began channeling A Vision. In other words it was Yeats' decision to act on a deeper level than his illusions and daydreams that turned him from out-of-phase to in-phase - from only wishing and hoping to actually accomplishing his true purpose in incarnating in this life.

Everything that has been described thus far occupies only the first thirty pages of A Vision. The bulk of the book is concerned with a very complex system of astrological and historical symbolism based upon the phases of the moon; this system will only be summarized here. There are twenty-eight lunar phases, which represent the monthly cycle of the moon, viz: Phase 1 begins with the new moon; Phase 8 begins with the first quarter moon; Phase 15 begins with the full moon; and Phase 22 begins with the last quarter moon. The four lunar quarters consist of seven phases each, and each quarter is under the dominion of one of the Four Faculties. The 28 phases tell a little story of the Daimon's descent from unity (the cone of Concord, or primary tincture) at Phase 1 into material manifestation (the cone of Discord, or antithetical tincture) at Phase 15; and its return journey back again to Phase 1. Indeed, the circular nature of the cycle is emphasized by repeating Phase 1 (birth and rebirth) again after Phase 28 (death). Everyone is ruled by one of these 28 phases, depending upon the angle between the moon and the sun in the person's natal horoscope. In a sense it can be said that a person's natal phase symbolizes their purpose for incarnating in this present life.

The final part of A Vision describes a system of world history which divides historical periods of two thousand years into 28 phases. "The Christian Era, like the two thousand years, let us say, that went before it, is an entire wheel, and each half of it an entire wheel, that each half when it comes to its 28th Phase reaches the 15th Phase or the 1st Phase of the entire era." In this system the art, philosophy, and spirit of historical periods are shown to follow the rhythmic cycle of 28 phases from primary to antithetical and back again. Here's an example: "The period from 1005 to 1180 is attributed in the diagram to the first two gyres of our millennium, and what interests me in this period, which corresponds to the Homeric period some two thousand years before, is the creation of the Arthurian Tales and Romanesque architecture. ... I do not see in Gothic architecture, which is a character of the next gyre, that of Phases 5, 6 and 7, as did the nineteenth-century historians, ever looking for the image of their own age, the creation of a new communal freedom, but a creation of authority, a suppression of that freedom though with its consent ..."

I first read this book several years ago and have reread it since. Periodically, I dip into it and reread some of my favorite parts.

The most interesting character in this book is Kate Hamilton, a very intellectually gifted pastor's daughter who is deeply prejudiced against Catholics. She is also a very private, reserved person. Due to her intellectual bent and her private nature, she has acquired a reputation for being cold-hearted. In some ways, she's imprisoned by her prejudice, which itself is rooted in understandable fear, the cause of which is revealed fairly late in the book. Her father has shaped and reinforced her prejudice. In the course of the novel, Kate is fundamentally changed (for the better) by what seem to be the first meaningful friendships of her life. Three people are particularly instrumental in this change: (a)an old Catholic priest who is her literature professor and helps prepare her for grad school, (b) Deirdre McAvoy, a young woman who pursues Kate's friendship and (c) Jack, a man in his mid-twenties who is preparing to be a priest. Finally, she comes to realize (slowly at first, then in one fell swoop) that the fellow student whom she's almost worshipped has some pretty serious flaws; as he becomes more radical, she starts to see what he's really like and it's not a pretty picture.

Gibson does a great job of conveying the inner lives of her characters. The 3 characters mentioned above (Deirdre, Jack and Kate) all face major turning points in their lives. Here, I'll focus on Kate. Kate has to come to grips with her past and with her father's hold over her. She starts to see the value of other people's perspectives on faith. I think it's fair to say that at the beginning of the novel, Kate lacks a spiritual connection to God; her faith is highly intellectualized. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but focusing almost exclusively on theological doctrine can be a way of avoiding a deep spiritual relationship with the divine. Finally, Kate is awakened to her own unacknowledged romantic love for a fellow student (not the jerk whom she had fantasies of marrying).

Elizabeth Gibson's novel of Northern Ireland, "The Water Is Wide", is an exquisite piece of work, full of controversy, soul, faith, and the realization that we all have prejudices - and we all can change.

The book centers around the life of Katherine Hamilton, an English major at the New University of Ulster in Derry. The year is 1969, and Northern Ireland is in civil war. Katie, who was raised to believe that all Catholics are bad and that the North should always belong to the Queen, is thrown into the middle of the conflict along with many of her friends. Throughout this period of social unrest, the group struggles to find compassion, forgiveness, and hope in a land seemingly destined for bloodshed.

A beautiful gem written with grace, poise, and love, "The Water Is Wide" is a story that you won't be able to put down. As you travel through Katherine's journey of self-discovery, you will find yourself re-evaluating your own life - and finding that you, too, can change.

Touching look at a group of college students attending the New University of Ulster during the turbulent late 60s/early 70s. Follow Kate, Deirdre, Sheila, Roger, Liam and Jack as they struggle with what it means to be Catholic, Protestant, Irish, Christian, just and loving in a world that has, sadly, changed little since then.