"All myths and sagas and legends are like a shimmering veil of many colours, stirred now and then by the wind of our desires, but still hiding from most of us that Council of the Wise seated at the Round Table of the Stars... But between us and them lies the gulf of our arrogance and the mists of our unbelief."

The Flaming Door is perhaps Eleanor Merry's most famous work and made an important contribution to the renewal of Celtic mythology. Slumbering in the ancient sagas and legends are the secrets of initiation: when men and women found their way through the 'flaming door', the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The book falls into two parts: before Christ, which includes studies of The Bards, The Cauldron of Ceridwen and Hu the Mighty; and after Christ, which includes the Legends of Odrum, St Columba and the Legends of the Rose and the Lily.