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Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Discover the Celtic Circle of Belonging

John O’Donohue, poet, philosopher, and scholar, guides you through the spiritual landscape of the Irish imagination. In Anam Cara, Gaelic for “soul friend,” the ancient teachings, stories, and blessings of Celtic wisdom provide such profound insights on the universal themes of friendship, solitude, love, and death as:

  • Light is generous
  • The human heart is never completely born
  • Love as ancient recognition
  • The body is the angel of the soul
  • Solitude is luminous
  • Beauty likes neglected places
  • The passionate heart never ages
  • To benatural is to be holy
  • Silence is the sister of the divine
  • Death as an invitation to freedom

anam cara

Anam Cara is the title of a 1997 bestseller on “Celtic spirituality”, the first publication by Irish author and then-priest John O’Donohue. According to O’Donohue, the Irish term anam cara (lit. “soul-friend”) originates in Irish monasticism, where it was applied to a monk’s spiritual advisor.

The book was an international bestseller and catapulted the author to public notability, as an author and much sought-after speaker and teacher, particularly in the United States. O’Donohue left the priesthood in 2000.As O’Donohue puts it: The term is greatly misconstrued to mean “soul mate”, anam meaning soul and cara meaning friend.



“If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.”
― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom


“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.”
― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom


“Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself.”
― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom


“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”
― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom


“Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.”
― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

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