Priestess, Pythoness, Sibyl. These are words which evoke images of strong magickal women, serving in temples, speaking the words of the deities, living in caves and sacred glades. The enduring power of these roles and the functions of spiritual service they perform have survived from the mystery religions of the ancient world to indigenous cultures around the world today and the modern magickal and pagan revival. These roles are all united in their use of trance states, which may be achieved through a wide variety of methods. It is these methods which permeate this book, drawing together strands of experience and research from a diverse range of spiritual traditions from all around the world.

The Western Mystery Traditions often focus on the priestess being the vessel for the feminine divine, and this pattern is recorded in this anthology within a wide range of experiences and techniques. Both Naomi Ozaniec and Vivienne O'Regan explore the mysteries of the Egyptian Mother Goddess of Magick, Isis, and their wealth of experience as priestesses within a spectrum of different magickal environments shines through in their essays The Mantle of Isis and The Path of a Priestess.

The Wiccan technique of Drawing Down the Moon is amongst those discussed by Janet Farrar in her wide-ranging essay Waking the Gods, and is also considered from different experiential perspectives by Diane Champigny in Lifting the Veil, Drawing Down the Moon by Galatea, The Oracular Experience by Emily Ounsted and In the Moment by Sorrell Cochrane. Moving to the Norse practice of Seidr, Katie Gerrard presents an adapted version of the High Chair Rite in her essay The Seer. A very different perspective showing the role of the priestess in the Gnostic Mass, a ritual written by Aleister Crowley, is unveiled by Cathryn Orchard in her contribution Gnostic Priestess.

Dance and its use in achieving trance states is the subject of Dancing the Dream by Mariëlle Holman and Dancing Priestesses by Nina Falaise. Jacqui Woodward-Smith expounds on her own experiences of how divine inspiration has manifested through her poetry and ritual work in Priestess of Avalon, and at the other end of the spectrum is Dreaming with the Gods by Connia Silver, which discusses the use of dream incubation to achieve divine communion. The significance of dreams is also considered by Sophia Fisher in her essay Possession & Dreamwork in Haitian Voudou. In Seeing the Truth Kay Gillard describes her experiences of the transformations of transfiguration during trance states.

The idea of the gender dynamic between the divine forces and the priestess providing herself as their vessel is explored in several of the essays within this work, in Yvonne Aburrow's The Republic of Heaven on Earth, Andrea Salgado-Reyes' Ogun's Dance and Bolina Oceanus' For Lo! Apollo is within me. Between them, these essays explore very different perspectives of priestesses channelling not the feminine but instead the masculine divine, something which is rare in the modern Pagan and magickal movements.
In addition to the experiential works, the first section of the book "Ecstatic Histories" contains three historical essays which explore the major oracles of the ancient world. The first of these is my own Mantic Voices which provides an overview, looking at priestesses fulfilling the role of oracles from the ancient world through to the modern day resurgence of the priestess in western magickal culture. This is complimented by two fascinating scholarly essays exploring themes regarding early oracles, Caroline Tully's The Pythia of Apollo, which provides an in-depth look at the Oracle of Apollo, the God of prophecy in ancient Delphi and Kim Huggens' Silent Priestesses which explores the role of women in the early Church as priestesses and prophetesses.

These essays bring together a wealth of traditions and experiences, with the knowledge, wisdom and understanding of these women shining through, each as unique as the lady who wrote it. The knowledge and experience brought together here in this way makes Priestesses Pythonesses Sibyls an inimitable work which will benefit the new generation of Priestesses emerging into the world today, as well as those already practising. It is my hope that this will also be an invaluable guide for those who always wished they had someone to ask and discuss these practices with.

From the first to the last word, this anthology provides an exceptional and matchless collection of perspectives from the modern sisterhood of priestesses, diverse in their beliefs but united in their roles, offered in honour both of the deities they serve and the traditions they represent. I am truly honoured to have been the nexus for this project and to have been able to bring the voices of these remarkable women together for you the reader.