Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

John O'Donohue, poet, philosopher, and scholar, guides you through the spiritual landscape of the Irish imagination. In Anam Cara, Gaelic for "soul friend," the ancient teachings, stories, and blessings of Celtic wisdom provide such profound insights on the universal themes of friendship, solitude, love, and death as:

• Light is generous

• The human heart is never completely born

• Love as ancient recognition

• The body is the angel of the soul

• Solitude is luminous

• Beauty likes neglected places

• The passionate heart never ages

• To benatural is to be holy

• Silence is the sister of the divine

• Death as an invitation to freedom

I read most of this book on a flight back home to Ireland. I just couldn't put it down. As cynical and routine that life sometimes appears each of us has a yearning to break the mold, break the routine and deep down find our way, our reason for being on this earth. O'Donohue reminds us regardless of who we are and what the material world values us at - our soul has a yearning to belong and live life spontaneously and to avoid the clutter of routine and the depression of complacency.

There are important lessons in this book on the areas of love, death, belonging, depression etc. Finding your significant other for example is something that happens through fate. Death should be celebrated for the life that it gave an individual and the journey it now presents to the soul. Depression should be addressed not through constant interactions with pyschologists, who yes help, but confronting that which caused the depression in the first place and absorbing it as a strength rather than a weakness.

I was in Ireland for a funeral, which though a sad event, i left feeling happy - This book reminded me of what a great gift life really is.


Each sentence is a ponderable morsel.   May 10, 1998
Becky Flesher (Kennewick, WA)
42 out of 43 found this review helpful

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom is truly a work of art. Over the past three years, I have been working on discovering myself through self-help books, 12-step programs, religious study, and personal introspection. This book summed up everything I have learned (the hard way) during this time, and presented it in a beautiful package that was invigorating and thought-provoking to read. It was a pure joy. I began reading it in January, and have only just finished it last night, because each sentance was a ponderable morsel. Sometimes I would read a phrase five times over in order to fully grasp and apply it's meaning to my life. This is not a 70 mph trip through the McDonald's drive-thru, this is a seven course meal in Vienna, and every bite demands that you hold it in your mouth to savor it.

Anam Cara is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. I plan to read it again in a year or so, because I know I will get new things out of it. I am already loaning it to a friend, and have a couple of others in mind I'd like to loan it to. I can't keep this from the ones I love.


Colors are the wounds of light   February 16, 2002
David Starr-Glass (Jerusalem, Israel)
41 out of 42 found this review helpful

In the Prologue, the author describes this book as "a phenomenology of friendship in a lyrical-speculative form." That is exactly what it is. It is one of the most compelling and lyrical works that I have read. It describes the "soul-friend" but more significantly it actually suggested the possibility of me becoming my own soul's friend. It is a powerful book, weaving Celtic mystical thought with a very accessible form of approaching self and soul -- all done in a rich, poetic language. It reads very well and John O'Donohue's erudition, poetic language and abiding compassion radiate every page.

This book gave me strength and deep insight at a time when I was searching for both of these. I greatly appreciate this book's contribution to my own understanding of self and highly recommend it to you if, like me, you recognize that you are on a spiritual journey.


Hard to summarize, easy to read, challenging to ponder   October 12, 2004
John L Murphy (Los Angeles)
34 out of 35 found this review helpful

This book's best taken in small doses, a few paragraphs at a time. Each chapter's broken up into such sections, ideal for guiding meditation or inspiring reflection. It's a volume I gave away as a gift and re-purchased for myself after I read it, knowing that I'd return to its contents again and again. O'Donohue's learned much from those with whom he lives and talks and ministers, and his frequent interspersions of Celtic tradition and current Irish-language proverbs and observations attest to the continuity of the Gaelic worldview within the larger Anglo-American hegemony that dominates our lives.

One of the best recommendations for this guide is its refusal to romanticize the rural and rooted tradition's hardships as well as its comforts. The author comes from the people he writes about, and this grounding keeps his suggestions--however philosophical they may soar--concise, honest, and free of cant. The respect for the life lived under the radar and the flyover culture by those committed to the land energizes these stories. Mixing tales and legends and theology from the Irish perspective with contemporary analogies, incidents, and insights, this book somehow avoids touchy-feely simpering or wishful fairie musings.

It's appropriate for those of any faith, any skeptic, or any with spiritual longing. Written by a priest, but never limited to a Christian presentation, the transparent ecumenism of the author's approach speaks to any reader wondering about the Big Questions. Humbly, eloquently, and frankly, it's like having a personal confessor or soulmate with whom you can sit and listen companionably. There's no sloganeering, no ten steps to salvation in ten minutes a day, and no assurances of glib piety. With an open-hearted wonder, serious but never glum intelligence, and a generous capacity to listen to others and to nature, the wisdom distilled by the author here issues gradually, to be sipped rather than gulped. Antidotes for our fast-food generation, which will only work their healing power if we follow the prescriptions and elixirs gathered in its pages.


The Celts thru a Catholic's eyes   July 10, 2005
Stephanie Davy (Bayville, NY USA)
32 out of 47 found this review helpful

O'Donohue is a Catholic scholar. He finds many beauiful things in the Celtic philosophy; the love and bond with nature, the all-important light as the sun, and the soul within, the circular journey of life.
But the Celts were pagans, worshipping both the female and male elements in nature and the universe. O'Donohue leaves that part out.

The author writes that St. Patrick wore a Celtic "prayer" on his shield, but omits the Christians' usurping the Celtic seasonal celebrations for their own purposes.

Midwinter and Christmas coincide. The days began to lengthen, and promise spring, newborn life in the fields, and in Christianity-the Christ child.The Evergreen is a sign of eternal life to the Celts.

O'donohue doesn't talk as much about the truth of the ancient Celtic people, their symbols, art, mysticism,violence; not even the Celtic cross, found on artifacts from as early as 10,000 BC. The circle around the intersection of the of the two lines of the cross represents the moon goddess. Okay, I'll stop.

Anam Cara is a nice, sweet, though a bit gooey book that is more Christian that Celtic with some Irish thrown in for good measure.

A better book on Celtic symbols, texts, and with many pictures of early Celtic design, is "Celtic Inspiration," by Lyn Webster Wilde. Less Christians, more pagans.