Brendan Myers

Iron Age - Council of the Clans

A strategy game of power, honour, and democracy

In this social strategy game, players compete and co-operate with each other to build an Iron age community. The better you manage your village, and the better you manage your relations with other players, the more honour you will gain. And the more honour you gain, the better your position will be at a special democratic assembly called the Landsmoot, where one player will be elected the Chieftain.

Originally designed as a teaching tool for a college course in political science, the simple rules of Iron Age allow many strategic possibilities. From the “hard power” of the army to the “soft power” of trade and culture, just about every facet of politics in the real world can be represented here – all depending on how you play!
 

• Build farms, workshops, Great Halls, temples, and more!
• Recruit specialists like warriors, priests, and poets!
• Trade with other players to enrich your village, or put other players in your debt!
• Raise an army to protect your village, or to loot and pillage your neighbours!
• Build voting blocks, coalitions, and alliances!
• If you can get elected Chieftain of the Landsmoot often enough, and remain Chieftain long enough, you win the game!

Players: between 3 and 8

Ages: 15 and up!

Release:  March / November 2012. 

Available in print from CreateSpace for $9.95 (That's the illustrated print edition; and it includes my essay on "Soft Power Gaming".)

Or on Amazon Kindle for $1 (without illustrations). Don't have a Kindle? Download the free reader for your Mac or PC.

The 22 Relationships of a Spiritual Life and Culture ~ And Why They Need Protection.

You’ve heard of sacred places, writings, relics, and rituals, holy days and magical times of year. But these are actually representations of relationships that people have with each other and the elements of the world.

Some of these relationships environmental: they involve landscapes, animals, and the streets of your home town. Some are personal, such as families, friends, and elders. Some are public, involving musicians, storytellers, medical doctors, and even soldiers. This book studies twenty-two relationships, from a variety of traditions, and shows their place in ‘the good life’.

Yet these relations are always fragile, and threatened by fears, from the fear of loneliness, to the fear of the loss of personal or political freedom, to the fear of death. To escape from these fears, people often trap themselves into ways of life that are bad for everyone, including themselves. This book studies how that happens, and how to prevent it.

More than beliefs, laws, and teachings, our relationships are the true basis of spirituality, and freedom.

• Published by: Moon Books / an imprint of John Hunt International.
• Release Date: 30th March, 2012
• ISBN:  978-1-84694-745-2
• E-Book ISBN:  978-1-84694-746-9
• Paperback, 483 pages.

Purchase From:

• Amazon:  Canada / USA / Ireland & Britain / France / Germany
• Direct from the publisher: Moon Books
• Your local bricks-and-mortar bookstore!

A Study of the Sacred, Part One

Everyone experiences loneliness in their lives. Yet most people are secretly afraid of it, and will do nearly anything to avoid it. Few are willing to talk about it at all.

A recent study found that half of all Americans have only one close friend that they can confide in, and one-quarter of all Americans have no close friends at all. The last United States census found that 27.2 million households, one-fourth of the total, consisted in just one person. Half a century ago, that was the case for only one-tenth of all households. Research has also shown that popular self-help methods to cope with loneliness, such as reciting positive affirmations, often make people feel worse than they already do.

In these forty-five meditations, the author shows that loneliness is not simply a social phenomenon, nor a medical condition, nor a weakness of will. Rather, it is an existential condition of life; a part of the way things are in the world. So you can't turn to other people, or "true love", for a solution. Nor can you turn to God, for God is probably lonelier than you are! But loneliness is neither good nor evil. Indeed it can be a source of profound spiritual insight. Great religious heroes like Odin, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed made their most important spiritual discoveries in solitude.

Using a simple philosophical discourse, this book offers a new understanding of the idea of Revelation. It is available to everyone, not just to priests and prophets. It can push back the frontier of loneliness, and render life meaningful and beautiful and worthwhile. It has four simple but far-reaching principles: "I am here; this is what I am; and what I am is beautiful! Is anyone else out there?"

Where Our Virtues Came From, What They Really Mean, And Where They Might Be Taking Us

Using ancient heroic epics and sagas like Beowulf, the Illiad and Odyssey, the Eddas, the Tain Bo Cuailnge, and the works of the Renaissance and Romanticism, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling, this book explains the world-view that gave birth to our virtues.

The Celts, the old Norse and Germanic people, the Greeks of the time of Homer and Hesiod, and other ancient heroic societies are popularly believed to be tribal warrior cultures, where the light of civilisation had not yet dawned. In fact this is far from the case. Many of our own most fundamental ideas about politics, justice, friendship, true love, the good life, and especially the notion of Virtue itself, come from their world. To them, Virtue had nothing to do with purity, nor modesty, nor God-given laws, nor sin and guilt, nor with any Sunday-school pretentiousness. Rather, it originally meant 'excellence' and 'greatness of soul'. It was tied to more assertive qualities like strength and courage, and to social qualities like friendship. It was also connected to spiritual principles like the nature of the soul, the hope for immortality, and even the pursuit of happiness itself. In that world-view, life involves inevitable confrontations with inexplicable events like fortune, nature, other people, and death itself. However, the good life itself becomes possible when we face them and respond to them.

The Literary Heritage of the World's Oldest New Religion

Pagans often claim that their spiritual inspiration comes not from a written scripture but from personal experience and original creativity. While this is true, there are also many written works which constitute its "testament", or its central literary expressions of spiritual identity. Some of them are thousands of years old, such as the Descent of Ishtar, and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Others are more recent, such as the Charge of the Goddess. These written works have not been brought together, in the same book, since the movement began.

"A Pagan Testament" collects these original works, along with the poetry and prose that inspired the founders of Wicca when it all began. It also includes the largest collection of circle songs and wisdom teachings ever published: over 100 wisdom-teachings and 130 circle songs, contributed by almost two thousand people, from twelve different countries around the world! These together form something like the Pagan equivalent of the Biblical books of Psalms and Proverbs. They show that Paganism is continually growing and being contributed to. Finally, the book includes an original and valuable philosophical commentary and interpretation.

Celtic Mysticism, in Theory and Practice

The Druids were the mystics, philosophers, and magicians of the ancient Celtic world. Their spirituality was borne from the near-worship of poetry and music, warrior prowess, and the world of nature. This book describes this mystical romanticism as it was in ancient times, and offers various ways to bring it to life today in both private and social realms. The whole exploration of the Celtic spirit is guided by the basic impulse of all mysticism, which is to "Know Yourself". The book shows the many ways in which this impulse shines through Celtic tradition, principle, custom, and heritage.

Professionally-researched, provocative, and informative, the world of the Druids is brought to life by not only Celtic mythology and traditional storytelling, but also by stories of the author's own experiences of living and traveling in Ireland and visiting its sacred sites. This book combines a well-researched, high-quality "training manual" for modern spiritual Celts and Druids, with an original and thought-provoking philosophical account of the spiritual meaning of Druidry.

"The Island"

A collection of Brendan's folkish, myth-telling, and silly songs from pagan bardic circles over the last twenty years.

This title is not available anymore. (Basically, I ran out of CD's.)  I am in the process of joining SOCAN and making it available on various popular internet download sites.

"Brendan Myers is smarter than me."

- Isaac Bonewits, at the "Fire in the Hearth" conference, Ottawa, July 2009.

While Myers' ideas may not resonate with everyone, he should be commended for being at the forefront of an effort to write better Pagan books. He, along with some other authors of note, are writing those "advanced" books we all keep saying we want.

- Jason Pitzl-Waters, author of The Wild Hunt Blog (on 30th November 2008), the most read pagan blog on the internet.

Myers’ analysis confronts our very raison d’être against our uncertain times. He asks the questions that most prefer not to ask.

Michael York, Professor of Theology, Bath Spa University.

Our guest [Brendan Myers] is a man of letters, a man for the people, a man who respects Mother Earth, and all her children. In my mind he is the perfect role model and a true purveyor of ancient teaching with passion and integrity.

Yvonne Boyer, hostess of God Box Cafe podcast, in Episode 80 (6 November 2009).

We're not just a publishing imprint. We're the network of experienced professionals that every writer needs.

While working on "Clear and Present Thinking", I put together a great team of experienced and amazing people and together we produced a really good book. And now, what I did for myself, I want to do for others too. That's what "Northwest Passage Books" is all about.

We're editors, proofreaders, designers, artists and illustrators, marketing consultants, and critical analysts. We specialize in helping writers polish and perfect their work. Most of us are creative writers too, so we know what it's like, and we know what you need. And we want to help you get it done, and done well. Whether fiction or nonfiction, whether the project is big or small, whether you already know what you're doing or whether you don't know where to start, let me put you in touch with the people you need.

Contact me at bmyers3 (at) live.ca, and let's begin.

This page presents short explanations for concepts that appear in Bren's books, or explanations of how he sometimes uses familiar words in strange ways (which after all is a philosopher's perogative). As new books are published, new words will be added to the glossary. For a full treatment of the meaning of these terms, and the arguments in which they feature, it's best to read the books. :-)

Out Of Print Titles

My first book, "Dangerous Religion: Environmental Spirituality and its Activist Dimension" is now out of print. If you are interested in a used copy, try the Amazon.com marketplace, which may have a copy or two to spare. I will eventually re-release the book here on this web site, as a PDF download (although perhaps with a few revisions - a "second edition" if you will). But at the moment other projects have priority. In the meanwhile, have a look at my Masters' Thesis, "Animism, Spirit and Environmental Activism (available from the Archive of the Government of Canada as a PDF Download: click here). Dangerous Religion was essentially a version of that thesis re-written for the trade-paperback audience.