Entering the grove…
Curated Reading
The Greenwood Library
Recommended reading for anyone drawn to the ancient landscape, sacred traditions, and the wisdom of the land. Curated reviews, reading orders, and difficulty levels.
Archaeology
3 books
intermediate
Stonehenge: Exploring the Greatest Stone Age Mystery
Mike Parker Pearson (2012)
The definitive archaeological account of Stonehenge by the man who led the Stonehenge Riverside Project, transforming our understanding of the monument. Parker Pearson argues convincingly that Stonehenge was a place of the dead, linked by the River Avon to Durrington Walls, a place of the living. The book is rich with excavation detail, stratigraphic analysis, and bold interpretive leaps grounded in decades of fieldwork. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what we actually know about Stonehenge, as opposed to what we imagine.
ISBN 978-0857207326Find on Amazon
intermediate
The Avebury Cycle
Michael Dames (1977)
A visionary interpretation of the Avebury landscape as a unified ceremonial complex aligned to the agricultural year and the cycles of the Great Goddess. Dames reads Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow, the Avebury circle, and the Sanctuary as stations in an annual ritual journey through sowing, harvest, death, and rebirth. While mainstream archaeology has moved away from some of his conclusions, the book remains a powerful and imaginative engagement with the Neolithic landscape. Its influence on modern paganism and landscape mythology is considerable.
ISBN 978-0500272312Find on Amazon
beginner
Megalith: Studies in Stone
Hugh Newman (2018)
A richly illustrated exploration of megalithic monuments around the world, drawing connections between ancient sites across cultures and continents. Hugh Newman examines the engineering, astronomy, geometry, and possible energetic properties of stone circles, dolmens, and standing stones from Britain to Easter Island. The book takes a broad and speculative approach, weaving together mainstream archaeology with alternative theories about ley lines, earth energies, and acoustic properties of stone. Lavishly photographed, it is a visual feast that invites the reader to consider the stones from multiple perspectives.
ISBN 978-1635573152Find on Amazon
Folklore
3 books
advanced
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
W.Y. Evans-Wentz (1911)
A monumental work of folklore scholarship, originally a doctoral thesis at Oxford, in which Evans-Wentz travelled through Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, and the Isle of Man collecting first-hand testimony about the fairy faith from rural people who still held to the old beliefs. The book combines meticulous fieldwork with a comparative analysis drawing on theosophy, psychology, and Celtic religion. Its central argument -- that the fairy tradition preserves genuine memories of pre-Christian spiritual experience -- remains provocative and influential. An indispensable primary source for anyone studying Celtic folk belief.
ISBN 978-0486425221Find on Amazon
beginner
British Folk Tales: New Versions
Kevin Crossley-Holland (1987)
A superb collection of fifty-five folk tales from across Britain, retold with literary grace by the poet and novelist Kevin Crossley-Holland. The stories range from well-known Arthurian and fairy tales to obscure local legends of bogies, changelings, and cunning women. Crossley-Holland retells each tale in vigorous modern prose while preserving the cadences and strangeness of the oral tradition. The collection is organised thematically rather than geographically, revealing deep structural patterns that connect tales from Cornwall to the Highlands. An ideal introduction to the folk imagination of the British Isles.
ISBN 978-0531057339Find on Amazon
advanced
The White Goddess
Robert Graves (1948)
Robert Graves's extraordinary, maddening, brilliant exploration of poetic myth and the figure of the Triple Goddess as the original muse of all true poetry. Part literary criticism, part mythological detective story, part visionary polemic, The White Goddess traces the worship of the Moon Goddess through Celtic, Greek, and Near Eastern mythology. The book's scholarship has been challenged, but its influence on modern paganism, nature practice, and the goddess movement is immeasurable. Essential, difficult, and endlessly rewarding reading for anyone drawn to the mythic roots of British landscape.
ISBN 978-0374289331Find on Amazon
Sacred Geometry
3 books
intermediate
Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice
Robert Lawlor (1982)
The classic introduction to sacred geometry, presenting the subject not as mere mathematics but as a philosophical tradition rooted in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Islamic thought. Robert Lawlor guides the reader through the construction of fundamental geometric forms -- the vesica piscis, the golden ratio, the Platonic solids -- using only compass and straightedge. The book is richly illustrated with diagrams and photographs showing sacred geometry in nature, art, and architecture. It is both a practical manual and a meditation on the meaning of form itself.
ISBN 978-0500810309Find on Amazon
beginner
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe
Michael S. Schneider (1994)
A joyful, accessible journey through the mathematical archetypes of nature, from the monad to the decad. Schneider shows how each number from one to ten manifests as a geometric principle visible in the natural world -- the circle of unity, the line of polarity, the triangle of structure, the square of matter. The book is packed with hands-on exercises, inviting the reader to discover these patterns through drawing and observation. It makes the deep connections between geometry, nature, and ancient symbolism available to readers with no mathematical background whatsoever.
ISBN 978-0060926717Find on Amazon
intermediate
How the World Is Made: The Story of Creation According to Sacred Geometry
John Michell & Allan Brown (2009)
John Michell's final work on sacred geometry, completed with Allan Brown, is a systematic exploration of the geometric and numerical canon that Michell believed underpinned ancient temple design from Stonehenge to the Parthenon. The book covers the twelve-tone musical scale, the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, and the New Jerusalem diagram with Michell's characteristic blend of rigorous number work and visionary interpretation. Beautifully illustrated with geometric constructions, it represents the culmination of a lifetime of research into the ancient science of number and proportion.
ISBN 978-1594773242Find on Amazon
Nature Practice
3 books
beginner
The Nature Practice Handbook: Spiritual Practice Rooted in the Living Earth
John Michael Greer (2006)
A comprehensive and practical guide to modern nature practice as a living spiritual path. Greer covers the history of the practitioner revival, the three grades of bard, ovate, and practitioner, the eightfold wheel of the year, tree lore, meditation practices, and ritual forms. The book is grounded, unsentimental, and deeply respectful of the tradition it presents. It is particularly strong on the ecological and philosophical dimensions of nature practice, treating it not as a historical reconstruction but as a contemporary nature spirituality with deep roots.
ISBN 978-1578633548Find on Amazon
intermediate
The Book of Nature Practice
Ross Nichols (1990)
The posthumously published masterwork of Ross Nichols, founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Practitioners, edited and introduced by Philip Carr-Gomm. Nichols draws on a lifetime of study to present nature practice as a coherent philosophical and spiritual system encompassing cosmology, ethics, seasonal ritual, and the bardic arts. The book ranges across archaeology, mythology, and comparative religion with an erudition that reflects Nichols's Cambridge education and decades of practice. Though dense in places, it rewards careful reading and remains one of the most intellectually serious treatments of the practitioner tradition.
ISBN 978-1855381674Find on Amazon
beginner
The Practitioner Way
Philip Carr-Gomm (1993)
A personal and practical introduction to modern nature practice by the former head of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Practitioners. Carr-Gomm structures the book around a journey through the Sussex Downs, visiting sacred sites and reflecting on the meaning of the practitioner tradition at each stop. The writing is warm, grounded, and undogmatic -- an invitation rather than an instruction manual. Suitable for those curious about nature practice as well as those already walking the path.
ISBN 978-1870450621Find on Amazon
Nature Writing
3 books
beginner
The Wild Places
Robert Macfarlane (2007)
Robert Macfarlane sets out to discover what wildness means in the densely inhabited landscapes of Britain and Ireland, journeying to moors, mountains, forests, and coasts in search of places where the human presence has been absorbed back into the land. The writing is luminous, precise, and deeply attentive to geology, ecology, and the history of each place. Macfarlane argues that wildness is not confined to pristine wilderness but can be found in the margins, the overlooked, and the ancient. A transformative book for anyone who walks the landscape with open eyes.
ISBN 978-0143113935Find on Amazon
beginner
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)
A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer weaves together indigenous plant knowledge and Western scientific training into a vision of reciprocity between humans and the living world. Though rooted in North American ecology, the book's central themes -- gratitude, gift economy, the personhood of plants, and the responsibilities of belonging to a landscape -- resonate deeply with the animist and earth-centred traditions of these islands. Beautifully written and profoundly moving, it has become one of the most important nature books of the twenty-first century.
ISBN 978-1571313560Find on Amazon
beginner
Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees
Roger Deakin (2007)
Roger Deakin's posthumously published meditation on trees and woodland, a companion piece to his celebrated Waterlog. The book's heart lies in the English countryside -- in coppiced hazel, pollarded willows, and the ancient oaks of the wildwood. His writing is intimate, precise, and deeply attentive to the non-human world. Wildwood is a love letter to trees and to the craft traditions -- hurdle-making, charcoal-burning, bodging -- that connect us to the living forest.
ISBN 978-0141025827Find on Amazon
History
3 books
beginner
Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland Before the Romans
Francis Pryor (2003)
Francis Pryor, the archaeologist who discovered the Bronze Age timber post alignment at Flag Fen, tells the story of Britain from the end of the last Ice Age to the Roman invasion. Pryor writes with infectious enthusiasm and a contrarian streak, challenging the conventional narrative of prehistoric Britain as a primitive backwater. He argues for a sophisticated, well-organised society with extensive trade networks, monumental architecture, and a rich spiritual life centred on the landscape. An accessible and opinionated introduction to British prehistory that brings the deep past vividly to life.
ISBN 978-0007126934Find on Amazon
intermediate
The Making of the British Landscape
Nicholas Crane (2016)
A sweeping history of the British landscape from the last Ice Age to the present day, tracing how human activity has shaped every acre of these islands. Nicholas Crane follows the landscape through clearance, enclosure, urbanisation, and industrialisation, revealing how the apparently natural countryside is in fact a palimpsest of human intention and ecological response. The book draws on archaeology, geography, ecology, and economic history to tell a story that is both encyclopaedic in scope and richly detailed in its local observations. An essential companion for understanding the land beneath your feet.
ISBN 978-0753868799Find on Amazon
intermediate
A Land
Jacquetta Hawkes (1951)
A luminous meditation on the relationship between the British landscape and the human consciousness that has shaped and been shaped by it. Jacquetta Hawkes -- archaeologist, poet, and visionary -- traces the geological and human history of Britain from the formation of its rocks to the present day, weaving together deep time with personal experience in a style that is at once scientific and deeply poetic. Hawkes writes of chalk and flint, of ice sheets and river valleys, of Neolithic farmers and Roman roads, with a sensibility that sees landscape as a living, feeling presence. Groundbreaking when published and undiminished in power.
ISBN 978-0007457465Find on Amazon