Trance-Portation offered the student a sequence of skills that provide the basis for many other sorts of trancework. In The Way of the Oracle you will find one of the places the earlier book prepares you to go. The first part provides a historical and multi-cultural overview of oracles and oracular practice from all over the world, comparing their practices with the methods of those who are recovering the art of the oracle today. In the second part, you will find exercises and rituals to teach these techniques to those who are interested in learning oracular work themselves. The Way of the Oracle is the result of my over twenty years’ experience in developing, practicing, and teaching these techniques–amplified and supported by advice and stories from many other people who seek to know in order that they may serve…and seek to serve in order that they may know.
What Others are Saying:
“Diana Paxson helps priests and priestesses give voice to the spirits with confidence. Not only does she reveal what seers do and how, she also restores the ancient and honored role of oracle to a questioning world.”
–Caitlín Matthews, author of Celtic Visions: Seership, Omens and Dreams of the Otherworld
“Makes a complex subject accessible. It will help readers hear the winds rustling the leaves of the sacred oak at Dodona. More importantly, it will help to keep prophecy from becoming a lost art.”
–Eileen Holland, author of The Wicca Handbook and The Spellcaster’s Reference
“As ever, Diana Paxson continues to make strong contributions to the Neopagan enterprise, grounding her suggestions and methods in a broad base of research in numerous Western traditions, augmenting her approach to altered states and ancient oracular techniques with a healthy respect for current trends in depth psychology and the neurosciences. Ms. Paxson’s knowledge of myths, sagas, folk magic, and history is impressive, and well matched by her considerable skills as an entertaining teacher and writer.”
–Erik D. Goodwyn, MD, author of The Neurobiology of the Gods: How the Brain Shapes the Recurrent Imagery of Myth and Dreams
“Gerald Gardner is considered to be the father of modern witchcraft, Michael Harner the father of modern shamanism. Diana Paxson, with the publication of this book clearly places herself as the mother of modern trance-prophecy practice. With her other books on the subject it is an essential primer for anyone interested in following the practices of Seidr, the Delphic Sibyl, or trance-prophecy in general. It is a book we will be happy to recommend to all of our students who practice this tradition.”
–Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, authors of A Witches’ Bible, The Witches’ Goddess, and The Inner Mysteries
“Diana Paxson is a writer of historical fantasy novels as well as an experienced seeress, skilled in the oracular arts and practices of her Nordic and Celtic ancestors. In this book she gives a fascinating account of these traditional arts, covering both the Nordic and Greek realms. Her meticulous scholarship and practical experience testing and working with the methods of the ancient völvas make this book a unique guide to these practices, which have a wide range of applicability in healing, problem solving, and spiritual guidance.”
–Ralph Metzner, PhD, psychologist, author of The Well of Remembrance and Alchemical Divination
“Diana Paxson is a pioneer in recovering oracular divination. She has a remarkable ability to draw from ancient sources from around the world to describe what seers did and still make seeing accessible and viable for a modern world. Paxson also presents a vast body of experience exploring this mysterious process. I worked as a seer with Paxson’s Nordic seith group, her primary cultural focus. But I am also an academic folklorist, and an objective observer, and I am impressed with how she has used original sources, a deceptively simple method (trance and guided meditation), and her own lyrical poetry to weave a portal to another world where both the seer and seeker can discover knowledge to untangle the ordinary problems which confront us all. This is a wonderful introduction for the beginner, and a wealth of information for the trained oracle or scholar.”
–Dana Kramer-Rolls, social historian and folklorist, author of The Way of the Cat