Katie Gerrard, author of Seidr – The Gate is Open which was recently released on Avalonia, was also one of the contributors to the new Avalonia anthology Vs. edited by Kim Huggens. In a blog Katie wrote on her Facebook author page, she mused on her experience of reading the collection of essays in Vs. saying:
Vs has been awhile in the making and Kim Huggens has put together a very challenging and evocative premise, “exploring the dynamic and wide-ranging nature of duality in magic, paganism and folklore, from polarity to paradox to opposition to friction to union”. The subject area forces you to stop and think and begin to form opinions, even before you open the book and start reading the first essay. So much so that when I first received the specification and call for contributions through to my inbox it took me a few reads through to understand what was required. Thus Vs is, understandably, not light reading. This is its strength and what will make it a book shelf staple for many years to come.
Reading Vs through from cover to cover takes you through a journey of polarity, other, and similarity. Your guides for this journey are experts in their fields and this naturally makes for an abundance of information that stands not just as a collection of facts, but as carefully considered theory based on research and often also practical spiritual experience. I particularly enjoyed Sophia Fisher’s ‘Vodou Maryaj’, Karen F Pierce’s ‘Riders upon Swift Horses’, and Sophie Nussle’s ‘Inanna and Ereshkigal’.
