‘Mrs Darley’s Pagan Rites of Passage’ by Carole Carlton
Carole Carlton has been enchanting and enlightening the Priestess of Cerridwen training with her talk and demonstration of the power of essential oils for the last few years. Carole’s ‘Mrs Darley’ series of books has also been very popular with priestesses in our exploration of Cerridwen in her aspects of healer, wise woman, witch.
Priestess Flora reviews her latest book on rites of passage. As Priestesses of Cerridwen, offering ceremonies, rituals and rites of passage is a key part of our service to our communities.
‘Mrs Darley’s Pagan Rites of Passage – Honouring and Celebrating the Sacred Journey of Life’
Author Carole Carlton
Published by Amazon 2022
ISBN – 9798441518109
Many of us have enjoyed Carole’s informative and entertaining books, woven around tales of the wonderful Mrs Darley and friends and this latest volume will not disappoint. Carole has a unique style of intertwining well-researched facts, and illustrating them with stories of her time living on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Mrs Darley was Carole’s neighbour and it was she who introduced Carole to the Pagan path, along with a group of Mrs Darley’s friends and neighbours, becoming the inspiration for Carole’s books.
In ‘Mrs Darley’s Pagan Rites of Passage’, Carole introduces the reader to the concept of rites of passage with a thorough explanation of what this means. She then follows this by taking us through the key points in a person’s life which we may choose to honour with a Rite of Passage. What I like about Carole is that there is nothing prescriptive about her factual information, she is well researched and inclusive of not only the pagan paths but also the more common and well known rites of passage in the Abrahmic religions. It’s good to know this basic information and how we got to where we are today in modern Paganism.
An understanding of rites of passage and why we mark them is essential to a modern day celebrant, and although Carole may suggest a few ideas for how rites of passage may be celebrated, she leaves that door open for the celebrant and the celebree to make their own choices in how this is done. This, in my opinion, is essential. There may be comfort in prescriptive writing, but we are all different with different needs which is an important consideration when marking a rite of passage.
Throughout all this factual information is woven stories from the community of Mrs Darley and Bodmin moor. These stories illustrate the information Carole is giving us, they show the humanness in each stage of life’s journey, how it becomes part of our process of living and how these stages may be marked in both a formal and informal way. Plus it’s a good story that will have you skipping through to find out the next bit, just remember to go back to the information too.
If I had one criticism to say about this book, it’s that I would have liked a reference section at the back. Carole mentions some sources of her research and it would be helpful to have those together for personal reference and further exploration.
Mrs Darley’s Pagan Rites of Passage is available from Amazon via the author’s website arcanus.co.uk.
Happy reading.
Review by Flora, Priestess of Cerridwen
Stockport, Northwest UK
I’m a grandmother and I’m retired, living in the Northwest of England. After Goddess my first love is my art.
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