yourartistfriend's Book Journey

This is a really well intentioned book that unfortunately missed the mark for me. _

At the beginning of the book the author claims: “If you know lots about witchcraft, but nothing about politics outside a voting booth, this book is for you. If you know loads about politics, but your knowledge of witchcraft begins and ends with Harry Potter, this book is for you, too.”

After reading I can confidently say that my impression of the book was that only the second claim is true, or more accurately, I believe this book was mostly directed at sceptics. On its own, there is nothing wrong with writing a book on witchcraft directed at people who don’t yet know if they believe or want to take part in the practice, but that is unfortunately not how this book was marketed or presented in the introduction.

The author discusses the importance of community, connecting with the land we live on, bringing up important moments where community came together to fight for an important cause, such as Standing stones and the AIDS epidemic. She also mentions how you don't need tools to practice effectively and how witchcraft is for everybody. I can get behind a lot of what the author is saying, however she has a specific approach to this topic that did not work for me.

Various concepts from witchcraft and other magical practices were defined very loosely here. For instance, the author says “being initiated is like falling in love. You just know it when it happens”, which would not be accurate by most common definitions of initiation. She also says that “all protests are spells”. The author uses Crowley’s definition of magic to inform this statement (which she quotes as ”Magic is the art and science of causing change in accordance with the Will") and takes it completely literally, making it seem like all change we create in the world is inherently magic. By this logic, deciding to flip the switch and turn on the light in a room would be magic, as it is technically causing change in accordance with our will. This would not be considered accurate by most widely accepted beliefs in the magical community. This is not to say that the author can’t have her own definitions of these things that simply work better for her. All I am saying is that this approach didn’t work for me, as I believe it banalizes and oversimplifies witchcraft unnecessarily. Also, activism can stand on its own as a powerful, meaningful thing. It does not need to be associated with witchcraft to be that.

In the section about sigils, the author mentions in passing how: “There are even programs online that will generate [sigils] for you”. It feels all sorts of counterintuitive to encourage people to use shortcuts with AI when it comes to something as involved as creating magickal symbols. Same as attempting to generate any other form of art, this does not sit right with me, and it reminds me of people who use AI to read their tarot, something which renders the practice completely pointless.

There are multiple instances in the book that feel slightly patronizing. In one instance the author says *“Remember when I spent an entire chapter defining what witchcraft is and you were still kind of confused?” and there were other comments like ”Did I just blow your mind?” I can tell this was supposed to be funny, and I’m sure it wasn’t malicious in intent, but there is no reason to assume your reader was confused after reading a chapter from your book, especially since you claim the book is for more seasoned practitioners as well as for beginners.

One thing that really bothered me is that there is no bibliography in the book. It seems like a book on this topic really needs some decent references, and I was really disappointed to find that this wasn’t taken into consideration at all. _

Every time I see books on this topic I am so excited that the magical community is out there proudly fighting for justice and trying to inspire others to do the same. But I strongly believe that genuine critique is good. We critique things like books and movies because we want the entire industry to get better, not because we want to make those creators feel bad about what they created. This book isn't a terrible resource, but I didn’t think it was a good one either, which is why I wouldn’t recommend it. We can do so much better.