Wolf Milk is Dr Martin Shaw’s reflection on almost two decades leading vigils in the wilderness. Through myth, poetics and hard-won brooding he offers a way for modern people to enter an ancient ceremony. This startling book suggests a wingspan of both mystical experience and civic duty underpins the encounter.

“It is your task to walk back from the vigil with an animal, not a pelt, not a corpse, but something alive. Curate that energy, feed it, don’t domesticate it, make culture from it. It should be walking alongside you, not slung over your shoulder. You build your structures from its growls.”

Wolf Milk by Martin Shaw, available from Cista Mystica Press (2019).

Praise for Martin Shaw

“A book that tells of these things the way they should be told, by one who has clearly been taught out there in the presence of the ‘Great Other’.” —Colin Campbell, cultural cosmologist and traditional African Doctor

“A kind of handbook for being made and remade through the work of the wild…how we might replenish genuine culture at this teetering moment on the whirling earth.” —David Abram, author of Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal

“With sleight-of-mind and wizardly word magic, Shaw conserves and amplifies the mysteries of this ancient pancultural ceremony. A visit to an underworld cave of gods who might, if you please them, shred and reassemble your life. Cleverly disguised as a book, this reside spell-casting belongs in the satchel of anyone venturing downward—and those who would guide them.” —Bill Plotkin, author of Soulcraft and Wild Mind