On Liturgies Of The Wild:
Martin Shaw is our greatest living storyteller and here he offers an enraptured validation of all that is awe-inspiring and profoundly implicit in a world where we are cabined, cribbed, confined by the explicit and banal.
Iain McGilchrist
This is easily my book of the year. It is heartfelt, poetic and tender, yet immensely challenging and utterly real.
Justin Brierley
Liturgies defamiliarises the well-worn pathways of religion … here be dragons, but also grace in almost indecently extravagant abundance.
Catherine Coldstream
Shaw is blessed with turns of phrase only the masters possess. Once you fall into this world of a wild God and bush prophets, you realise you’d follow him anywhere. Liturgies of the Wild is a journey of heart-expanding magic and redemption.
Glen Hansard
Liturgies of the Wild will be released on both sides of the Atlantic, February 2026 :
Hello friends, I’m going to talk about this here first.
I’ve been labouring on this book for three years and it’s finally time to start talking about it. Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us is a big and rather urgent book about the need for myth to actually help us grow into real human beings. At its core is the story of a kind of falling-into-God that began for me five years ago in an ancient Dartmoor forest. You of all people will have a sense of that story and the seeking of a Liturgy of the Wild that led from it – indeed some of that investigation has happened right here at Beast & Vines. Thank you for travelling with me.
Please help
One of the things I didn’t know about until this endeavour was the importance of pre-orders. It turns out in this mechanised, algorithmed world that pre-orders are the thing that can most help a book have a chance of having any real reach. I would dearly love for some reach for this book, for some joyful noise, for some striking of cymbals. There’s thirty years of spiritual investigation packed between these pages. If you put your ears to said pages you may detect distant hoots, thunderstorms, and unexpected peals of laughter. There’s some kind of medieval party going on in the depths of a forest. We have a seat just for you.
These are harrowing times, even if we manage to distract ourselves. We need the most ancient technologies to come to our aid. You don’t defeat the wicked by focusing entirely on it, but by turning to its opposite. As the description states, Liturgies is a counsel of resistance and delight in the face of many modern monsters.
Please let your friends, communities and animals know. Something unruly is coming.
Pre-order your copy and help spread the word
US and international readers: Liturgies of the Wild, Martin Shaw
UK readers: Liturgies of the Wild, Martin Shaw
Ok, thanks for reading. Let’s get on with the main dish of the day. (Today’s audio begins here otherwise this would be a very, very long recording).
Here’s last week’s section of The Singing Bone as a quick refresher (and link to the audio of Part One below). Next week we will be in Ireland (literally) with tales of the mythic feminine in all its nuance and strange charismas.