Pagan Book Reviews

Pagan Portals: Gwyn Ap Nudd — Wild God of Faerie, Guardian of Annwn
Danu Forest
Moon Books, 2017

Review by Anthony Rella.

A contribution to Moon Books’ Pagan Portals series, Danu Forest’s Gwyn Ap Nudd is a slender book that provides an accessible and welcoming path to Celtic mythology, Welsh divinities, and a nature-centered practice. At only 94 pages, one still has the foundational material to begin a rich journey into nature worship, connection to the Fae, and devotional practice with this powerful god of the old Britons.

Through each section, Forest provides overviews and discussion of various myths associated with Gwyn Ap Nudd — as guardian of the underworld, as king of the fae, as leader of the Wild Hunt, and as one who lives in the glass castle of Glastonbury Tor. With each facet of this complex and intriguing figure, Forest offers suggestive insights into how a modern-day connection with wildness, the forest, and the dark spaces provides a rich and revivifying journey of transformation.

Forest also provides guided pathworkings to help practitioners make contact with and build their own connections to the figures described therein. Along with these pathworkings, she utilizes prayers and images from Celtic tradition to offer readers foundational tools for space clearing, purification, and personal initiatory experiences with the gods. Along with herthoughtful and researched discussions of the material, Forest offers suggestive hints or questions that could lead the curious practitioner into their own explorations of practice and research to root more deeply into the mythology.

For those interested in Celtic history and practice, this book would serve as an excellent addition to one’s research shelf. For those who are brand new to the tradition or — like myself — struggle to fully understand the mythology and its language, this book provides a gentle introduction that helps one to begin to understand the core concepts that arise so often in these practices.

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