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Liturgies of the Wild

Myths that Make Us
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Liturgies of the Wild

By: Martin Shaw
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

From “one of the greatest storytellers we have” (Robert Bly), an urgent invitation to allow the oldest stories — and the Greatest Story — to reshape our own.

There’s an old Irish belief that if you aren’t wrapped in a cloak of story you will be unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent at just the moment a culture worth its salt requires you to become a real, grown, human being.

In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller and Christian thinker Martin Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age and that such poverty has left us vulnerable to stories that may not wish us well. Drawing on the “ancient technologies” of myths and initiatory rites, Shaw provides a road to wholeness, maturity and connection. He teaches us to read a myth the way it wants to be read; provides vivid retellings of tales powerful enough to carry you through life’s travails; and shows you how to gather and reshape your own thrown-away stories. Most vividly, he shares how these ancient technologies led him—unexpectedly—to Christ, “the True Myth,” by way of a thirty-year journey and a 101-night vigil in a Dartmoor forest.

Combining scholarly erudition with nimble storytelling in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Liturgies of the Wild is a thrilling counsel of resistance and delight in the face of many modern monsters.

© Martin Shaw 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Christian Living Christianity Customs & Traditions Social Sciences

Critic Reviews

From one of the master storytellers of our time, here is a rosary of soaring myth, gripping narrative and deep wisdom, all told with breathtaking verve that enchants and sweeps us along, from first word to last. A superb, inspiring read.
“With potent, lyrical language and a profound knowledge of storytelling, Shaw encourages and illuminates the mythic in our own lives. He is a modern-day bard.”
It is only in myth, and through its counterpart in liturgy, that the true depth of meaning in our world can be brought forth. 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. I celebrate the message of this wonderful book.
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. It’s written with the mastery of the great storytellers.

This is easily my book of the year.

It is heartfelt, poetic and tender, yet immensely challenging and utterly real. Martin Shaw has written a book that will help seekers, doubters and believers alike appreciate faith anew, not by reinventing Christianity, but by re-telling its story through the experience of a thousand other stories. Nothing is wasted. Every word is crafted with a seasoned storyteller's skill. In the process Shaw plumbs the forgotten depths of faith and brings back precious jewels. This is a call to life in all its fullness - untamed, honest and free. A living faith in the company of a wild God. Read it... then read it again. It will do your soul so much good.
Martin Shaw is the lost Inkling. He clears the path to God by (paradoxically) re-wilding the Way that has, alas, become so familiar that we have lost sight of its deep magic.
Shaw is at home with the strangeness of the natural world as much as with the far stranger world of spirit, collapsing the distinction between the two, illuminating grit and earthiness with shafts of light. I loved this tender, honest book for the way it defamiliarizes the well-worn pathways of religion, bringing to life the power within and compelling the reader to take note: here be dragons, but also grace in almost indecently extravagant abundance. I read of Shaw’s midlife baptism and wept. I hope you will do too.
Liturgies is astonishing: a journey from the shallow scoffing of the post-modern to the deep wisdom of the primal, from the transactional to the communal, and back to the rediscovery of the outer world as entirely enchanted, drenched with meaning, at once wild, inviting, and transformative. Shaw has traversed this very journey. Martin is a harbinger, a sign of the shift in consciousness that all of us, trapped in our techno-bubbles, so desperately need.
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