When Rory Maclean’s wife died of cancer at age 55, he set out on a series of journeys that changed his life.
His newest book is an examination of grief, a celebration of love, and a cross-cultural exploration of the afterlife.
Maclean sought out sacred spots where the veil between realms is thin, “guided by thousands of years of stories, myths, dreams and imaginal accounts”. Throughout it all he struggled to balance Western skepticism and our innate desire to believe in our own survival.
He approached each religion like an an anthropologist, participating in the rituals of living traditions in the hope of reconnecting with the wife he had lost.
From the heights of Bhutan to the plains of South Dakota, each journey and meeting opened the door to the next, as his path led him out of darkness and into a new understanding of the mystery that bookends our lives.
Rory Maclean is the author of Geography of Heaven, Berlin: Portrait of a City, Pravda Ha Ha and other books. He’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the founder and curator of the annual Sherborne Travel Writing Festival.
You can read more about him on his website, follow him on Instagram and X, and listen to his earlier Personal Landscapes appearance.
We spoke about the nature of grief, cross-cultural accounts of an afterlife, and what ancient rituals can teach us about modernity.
These are the books we mentioned in the podcast:
We also mentioned:
How We Die by Sherwin Nuland
Sprit of Place by Lawrence Durrell
The Living Goddess by Isabella Tree
My podcast conversation with Isabella Tree
Rory’s earlier appearance on Personal Landscapes
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