A review by marydrover
The Holy Wild by Bayo Akomolafe, Danielle Dulsky
5.0
This is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read. I intended to write a separate (and longer) review for this, but that never happened, so you’ll just have to deal with me flailing a little here. If you’re curious about my reaction as I was reading, I have a highlight up on my Instagram page that are my genuine reactions while I was currently reading it. This is probably one of the few witch books I would actually recommend to non-witch friends because it’s more about female empowerment than it is anything else. Actually–I think the best way to explain this book is to just gift you the opening paragraphs:
In the beginning, there was She.
She was nature’s primordial pulse, the pan-elemental alchemy of birth; the fertile void of death; and the mysterious, enduring, and numinous cosmic infinite. All was She, and She was all. Her power pervaded the totality of existence and veiled all potential worlds in the name of holy manifestation. Her steady, purposeful rhythm pounded on, in, and through the stellar fusions, the planet building, and the great galactic swell. The universal dawn was a quantum prayer to Her, and SHe was dancing for us long before humanity’s blessed inception, long before the glow of the primal feminine was eclipsed by modernity.
While the rhythm of Her hallowed drum has slowed and quieted to a barely audible, near-whisper beat, while humanity’s spiritual landscape has been overbuilt and hums with man-made hymns, She can never be silenced. She is our elemental nature, the stuff of our souls, and we are She embodied. Every one of us could hear Her if we only listened, for She has sought safe harbor in our very marrow. She lives in us, and with Her genesis came our mandate to wholly and emphatically embody Her in the wake of the feminine’s historical denigration. If we only put our ears to the ground, we would hear the promised pulse of Her return not as She descends from gold-and-diamond heaven but as She claws Her way up so ceremoniously through rock and stone, destined to erupt from beneath the very structures built to keep Her contained.
Yeah. This is a Book. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and I’m still thinking about it in great detail long after I finished it. I ended up taking a full week to read it because I would get so overwhelmed by just half of one of the elemental chapters and had to take a hot minute to sit with what was rising. This is an important book for women. It takes the original feminine sins (think Lilith, Mother of Babylon, Mary Magdalene, etc.) and transforms them, telling the story from the woman’s perspective. There are some chapters of rituals and magic in here, but even those are like an ode to powerful women. If you want to feel inspired or like you matter, this book is for you.
In the beginning, there was She.
She was nature’s primordial pulse, the pan-elemental alchemy of birth; the fertile void of death; and the mysterious, enduring, and numinous cosmic infinite. All was She, and She was all. Her power pervaded the totality of existence and veiled all potential worlds in the name of holy manifestation. Her steady, purposeful rhythm pounded on, in, and through the stellar fusions, the planet building, and the great galactic swell. The universal dawn was a quantum prayer to Her, and SHe was dancing for us long before humanity’s blessed inception, long before the glow of the primal feminine was eclipsed by modernity.
While the rhythm of Her hallowed drum has slowed and quieted to a barely audible, near-whisper beat, while humanity’s spiritual landscape has been overbuilt and hums with man-made hymns, She can never be silenced. She is our elemental nature, the stuff of our souls, and we are She embodied. Every one of us could hear Her if we only listened, for She has sought safe harbor in our very marrow. She lives in us, and with Her genesis came our mandate to wholly and emphatically embody Her in the wake of the feminine’s historical denigration. If we only put our ears to the ground, we would hear the promised pulse of Her return not as She descends from gold-and-diamond heaven but as She claws Her way up so ceremoniously through rock and stone, destined to erupt from beneath the very structures built to keep Her contained.
Yeah. This is a Book. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and I’m still thinking about it in great detail long after I finished it. I ended up taking a full week to read it because I would get so overwhelmed by just half of one of the elemental chapters and had to take a hot minute to sit with what was rising. This is an important book for women. It takes the original feminine sins (think Lilith, Mother of Babylon, Mary Magdalene, etc.) and transforms them, telling the story from the woman’s perspective. There are some chapters of rituals and magic in here, but even those are like an ode to powerful women. If you want to feel inspired or like you matter, this book is for you.