A review by oisin175
Besom, Stang & Sword: A Guide to Traditional Witchcraft, the Six-Fold Path & the Hidden Landscape by Tara-Love Maguire, Christopher Orapello

medium-paced

2.0

It has some good information but ultimately it's fairly disappointing and a bit garbled in its message. It starts off saying that the traditional witchcraft path is non-religious and has no deities; then it goes on to describe the "witch mother" and "witch father" who rule over certain areas of life and death, have power, receive offerings, and are called for workings. This is basically a deity in the pagan path but the authors say these aren't deities...because. No other real justification. There's also a lot on the need to make regionally meaningful paths and engage in reverence for the natural world, but all of the herbalism calls back to European herbs (despite the authors being based in the US) and the spells frequently call for discarding glass and other waste in running water or in the ground. So the overall messages throughout the book don't really conform to the actual practices described. There is still some useful and interesting information in the hedgewitchery chapter and the lunar calendar chapter. Herbalism was interesting even though it doesn't comport with their overarching message. Not a bad book, but there are definitely better books out there that don't alternately preach a message and then tell you to violate it.