The Path of the Blue Raven [Paperback]

Mark Townsend is a priest at the edge! The place where new ideas and new understandings are formed is always at the edge. It is a place that institutions, because they demand conformity to the institution, cannot go. But it is always there, out on the edges that new thinking, new imaginings, new dreams happen. --Revd. Peter Owen-Jones, Presenter of BBC s Around the World in 80 Faiths Bottom of the Pond.)

Enjoyed it very much! --Cherie Blair

I started this book expecting to skim it and found myself reading every page. It is a wonderful quest romance, a story about the nature of religion, magic, England, modernity and many other things as well. --Professor Ronald E Hutton

"The Path of The Blue Raven" is the story of a struggling man who all his life has wrestled with questions, searched for meaning and discovered it in unexpected places. Although representing the beginning of a new adventure in one man's life, this book is not just his story for it also offers a beautiful and breath-taking collection of real-life stories of others who walked a similar path and have found great healing and blessing through nature based spirituality. To many cultures, the raven was and is a symbol of initiation into a new path. In sharing his own journey, the author introduces readers to a world of like-minded people who have stepped off the mainstream path onto the path of personal magic. As the ex-Catholic monk Thomas Moore says, 'The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for regular excursions into enchantment. It requires them like the body needs food and the mind needs thought.' This book offers pilgrims (of any path) a way back to the rich and deep inner magic of childhood dreams.

Mark Townsend is a priest of the Church of England, a member of the Magic Circle and a Bard within a worldwide Drudic organisation.