So much to learn! Merlin thought. He stared across the smoldering fire at the five young faces of the twenty-first-century kids he had brought to the sixth century to fulfill an ancient prophecy. They sat silently, lost in a sea of unfamiliar thoughts. They had become shamans, but they had not learned about their new power, relationships, or responsibilities, or about their new vulnerability.
So much to know! Merlin pondered. Wisdom is the key to the shaman's journey; healing the goal. Meaning, purpose, love, and relationship to earth and God--at some time in life, everyone is exposed to these. Shamans, however, must plumb their depths and ascend their heights as these are urgent and essential to the journey, like cardinal points on the compass.
So much danger! he realized. He had only these few nights to mentor them on how to protect themselves. At best, he had only a short time before they would return to their twenty-first century and preserve history as we know it. At worst, he had only a few nights before she found them. She who wanted to kill them to see that they never learned at all.
"The Merlin Dialogues, by Dr. Ed Lewis, brings to life the journey of five kids from the 21st century back to sometime in the 6th century. Traveling well off the road that led to Tintagel Castle 'Deep in the woods...there was no relief from the knowledge that they were being hunted like prey.'
Sitting around a campfire after dark, Merlin announces, 'The time has come to gift you with your shaman names.' Shaman names represent '...who you now are, who you are to become in the future, and also identify your animal helpers.'
Seamless transitions between story teller and dialogue, weave a magical and mystical allegory, as cousins learn in the 6th century about themselves, each other, and more importantly: about life, love, being, and Being - as well as about Mother Earth and the perils of ever worsening climate damage."
-Steve White
CEO, multi-client communications business
Rockport, Maine
"Merlin [is] both enchanted and enchanting, a consciousness sorely wanted by our present culture. Merlin teaches the [kids] to come to trust their own intuitions so that their guide is inside, the place where Merlin lives. I'm sure that [young readers] will get the spirit of this through journeying through your story. At the end of the day, we are meant to make our own personal take on life, something that is therefore unique and all the more valuable for that."
--Gareth Davies
retired Church of Scotland minister,
shamanic practitioner, and art therapist
Edinburgh, Scotland