Barry Goddard, in his easy style has made shamanism and the medicine wheel approachable. This book is full of practical information for anyone who desires to learn more about shamanism and the medicine wheel. I am placing it on my sacred shelf of reference texts, surely to revisit it often.

I am so happy to have been given a chance to review this title. There is so much within here that I am pacing myself to finish it. I am taking notes and highlighting....I am really enjoying it

This a very informative, eclectic approach to the concept of the medicine wheel. The author is very knowledgable and is able to pull relevant ideas from different places and traditions to create something very relevant to twenty-first century spirituality.

He deals very sensitively with the issue of cultural appropriation, continually referencing his Native American sources. He also references traditions such as Buddhism and I could detect several traditionally Pagan elements too. This book goes incredibly deeply into meanings and symbolisms of the four quarters of the circle and is definitely not a book to be read in one or two sittings as you would almost certainly suffer from information overload! Although content-dense, the book is written in an easy to read style and was a fascinating, enjoyable read.

Don’t be put off if you feel you are not interested in Native American culture, because this book has so much breadth and depth due to the fact that it incorporates other cultural ideas, all filtered through the well-informed lens of the author. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to go deeply into the four directions/elements/quarters - it will definitely enrich your practice and introduce you to new ideas and concepts. There is a lot of valuable content here.

With thanks to Netgalley and Moon Books for providing an advance review copy. All opinions in this review are my own.

I am familiar with the medicine wheel both from a ritual perspective and a historical one. Mr Goddard has written an interesting and comprehensive method to live life in a positive way. There an=re many components to this and not just Indigenous ones are discussed. Eastern influences and psychological ideas are interwoven into the thread of doing the work. This book IMO is meant to be used and its ideas tried in a real way as much as possible. When you do this you will become one of the people that live with the earth and on her surface. Part of the circle of life. Excellent story and practices abound in this by Barry Goddard.

0 stars.

This is absolutely atrocious.

When will the colonizers ever stop stealing from the Indigenous peoples of North America? So much incredible damage has already been done. So many lives lost, so much generational trauma, so much cultural appropriation - and still white men continue to steal from and profit off of traditional and spiritual Indigenous ways. I don't care how many years this author has studied this material - it is NOT his to make money off of by publishing this book. It is NOT his to dilute with western philosophy and personal opinions.

We are finally trying to enter into a space and time of reconciliation. And so very much needs to be accounted for. Thousands of Indigenous people continue to be marginalized, traumatized and also endure generational trauma. And still, this publisher and this author think that it is ok to publish a book and profit from sacred traditional ways that are not their own? Gross, disrespectful, and disgusting.

I fully believe that this book should be pulled immediately. No more copies should be sold, and any money made so far should absolutely be donated to the Indigenous communities where this author derived his knowledge from.

Utterly self centred, euro-centric babble. Very little self awareness regardless of all the "I" statements, and a massive case of the "me, me, me,s". Goddard embeds his pseudo-intellectual ramblings within a First Nations ideology but claims otherwise. There's a difference between being a teacher and being so inward looking you no longer see the sky. Readers should look to Thích Nhất Hạnh, Ram Dass, or Radhamatj Swami of they're searching for a teacher. Goddard is not a guru.