Dreamtime

Dreamtime is a visionary work of myth, memory, and spiritual excavation by one of Ireland's most original thinkers. In this profound journey of the soul, John Moriarty draws from global mythologies, literature, and personal experience to uncover the shared stories that shape human consciousness and the natural world. Woven through with richly poetic language and startling philosophical insight, Moriarty reconnects Western culture with the sacred imagination it has long forsaken. From Aboriginal Dreamtime to Homer, from Celtic folklore to Christian mysticism, Moriarty travels widely and fearlessly through the symbolic landscapes that have animated human life for millennia.   

The task of the poet-philosopher, Moriarty suggests, is to enlarge our capacity for symbolic understanding, while keeping the path to Connla's Well open and inviting us to inhabit a shared Dreamtime Dreamtime is not just a book—it is a re-enchantment, a call to awaken the mythic soul and to live in harmony with the Earth and its ancient wisdoms. A Book of Revelations grounded in sense as in spirit, Dreamtime refuses known categories, invites fresh modes of understanding and contains multitudes, introducing the reader to 'the splendour and terror and danger and wonder of a world everywhere and in everything eruptively Divine'. This is a powerful work of literature by a masterspirit of modern times.



JOHN MORIARTY, writer and philosopher, was born in Kerry in 1938 and educated at Listowel and University College Dublin. He taught English literature at Manitoba University in Canada for six years, returning to Ireland in 1971. He is author of three volumes of Turtle Was Gone a Long Time: Crossing the Kedron (1996), Horsehead Nebula Neighing (1997) and Anaconda Canoe (1998). In 1997 he hosted a major six-part RTE television series, 'The Blackbird & the Bell'. He lived down from the Horse's Glen at the foot of Mangerton Mountain in north Kerry, and died June 1st 2007.