Dancing with Nemetona by Joanna Van Der Hoeven Review

Pagan Portals: Dancing with Nemetona, A Druid’s Exploration of Sanctuary and Sacred Space by Joanna Van Der Hoeven published in 2013.

Dancing with Nemetona was an impulse buy. I purchased the book out of interest in spirituality and paganism when it popped up as a suggestion on my Amazon. I’ve always been interested in the early forms of religion like paganism, greek mythology and roman deities though I’d never read a book about them, that was non-fictional, and not embellished by fictional dramatisation.

Not embellished by fictional dramatisation.

The book provides a spiritual education into the ancient Goddess Nemetona, the Lady of Sanctuary, of Sacred Groves and Sacred Spaces, who leads those who are on the druid path. I found the read to be not as intriguing as I had thought it to be as the latter half of the book focuses on ritual and meditation. Although, the acknowledgements of personal space, and the feeling you get when you return to your family home were two very poignant parts of the book that I enjoyed. The most interesting part of the book for me was the Appendix which gave the reader accounts of what Nemetona means to others, gives key information regarding druids and raises a debate of “authenticity vs validity” (which I thought was an exceptionally wise move by Van Der Hoeven).

A dreadful impulse buy.

The Breakdown:

Genre: Religion/Spirituality

Writing style: Addresses the reader often eg. “we can do...” or “our personal…” It describes everyone as a collective and also uses first person accounts. As well as including songs/chants.

Structure: 6 small chapters and an appendix of 6 sections

Ease of reading: It was a very short book, only 67 pages without including the bibliography and suggestive reading, but it took me about 2 days to get through it. It wasn’t as engrossing as I expected it to be.

Design: No internal art work, but the painting design on the front is beautiful, mystical, and ornate.

Target audience: I read it as an intrigued novice in regards to druids and Nemetona, and I think that this book is definitely more for mediators and spiritualists who will get a lot more out of it that I certainly did.

Cost: £4.99

Overall:

I really want to be engrossed when I learn about new things but I sadly wasn’t engrossed by Dancing with Nemetona. I speak as a person who has no experience with Druid’s and was intrigued to learn what I could in the Appendix, but perhaps I should have began my own exploration in Druid backgrounds before jumping into reading about their deities. This was a dreadful impulse buy - next time I shall purchase something awful and trashy and see how that works out - and when I decide to read about paganism again I will start at the basics and ease into it.