The court cards are a common snag that tarot readers run into. One of my besties has been reading tarot for longer than I’ve been alive, and they still have issues with the courts. This book provides an interesting new take on the court cards, and how to approach them.
Basically, Robertson personifies the court cards into individuals, with wants and goals and jobs to do and advice to give.
I think this makes them more approachable than just listing the common meanings and expecting people to memorize them, or using the list as a reference tool. At the end of every chapter, Robertson has a tarot spread that uses that court persona as the basis for a reading.
I don’t think this is a beginner’s book, per se; it’s for anyone who’s having trouble interpreting the court cards. I’m going to offer it to my friend, see if they gain any clarity with this new approach.
3/5 stars, only because not very much of it stuck in my head. It’s a good thing I take notes.
Know going into this that this is his second book. I have not read the first one, yet, but I liked this one enough that I’ve decided to get the first book.
I enjoyed this book for a few reasons. The first is simply because John Beckett’s day-job is engineering. As a person who loves sciences, it still feels rare to find an author of spirituality books who is also deeply involved in science. And he’s honest in his writing about how that came to be and how he makes it work.
“Paganism In Depth” did not fill a need, but it did give a framework and methods of approaching building your own spiritual path… Which is another reason I enjoyed this book; it’s not a detailing of all the author’s practices, but is more a broad description of his polytheist practices and why he does things in this way.
The full title is “Paganism In Depth: A Polytheist Approach” so Beckett goes into detail on why his paganism is “polytheist, ancestral, devotional, ecstatic, oracular, magical, and public” and what each of these means.
It’s hard to say what the best part is, because most chapters have something quote-worthy, but there were two parts that I think have had the biggest impact on me. The first was in Chapter 1, wherein Beckett describes how to build & evaluate your Model of How the World Works: a continuously updated living model that’s open to new input and new interpretations. The second was in Chapter 7 (Divination & Oracles), where he says that divination is more like headlights than a map:
Divination will show you where a given path or course of action is likely to take you, but it’s up to you to determine if that result is good or not.
Cha. 7 – Divination and Oracles
This is not a beginner’s book. This is an intermediate book intended for those who feel called to go deeper into their spiritual practices, to go off the maps and into mostly-uncharted territories, and leave markers for those who come after us.
Here there be monsters. Beckett discusses those monsters in Chapter 12.
Herbal magic is one of the topics in witchcraft that I want to study more. I would like to be able to do things like whip up a spell jar without having to cross-reference five different resources. I spent a long time comparing different herbal books, and it’s rough when I don’t want recipes, I want herbal profiles and correspondences.
Ellen Dugan is a Master Gardener, and I was hoping that her practical experience with plants would mean she’d know her shit. I was actually unable to finish this book, despite it being a fairly slim volume. I read the first two chapters, and that soured me so much that I skimmed the rest and decided it wasn’t worth my time.
Long story real short:
This is not the book you’re looking for.
There are a select few points that Dugan makes early on that I agree with, mostly about general correspondences like seasons and the phases of the moon and maybe some color references. … But that’s it.
It turns out that I have strong philosophical differences with the author. And I can’t emphasize that enough. Dugan takes a very hard stance on Harm None, Threefold Law, and Positive Magic Only, and presents it like this is The One Way to do things and if you go against these tenets then you’re a bad person who’s going to Witch Hell or something. Nowhere in the book did it say that she’s Wiccan, not even in the About The Author. She also never gave a disclaimer like, “This is what I believe, do some philosophical reflection to determine your own stance.”
Lady, if I wanted to be told what to do and what to believe, I’d go to church. (No offense meant to any readers from an organized religion.)
Additionally, the four chapters with the actual herbs are Love, Health, Protection, and Prosperity (Positive Magic Only, remember!), and the small handful of herbs in each chapter only get tagged with that one correspondence. I know for a fact that most herbs have multiple uses, so this was less than helpful.
The only reason I’m giving this book 1 star out of 5 is because she gets bonus points for both an index and a bibliography. I would be more upset had I paid full price for this slim volume; as it stands, I’m writing off the $10 as a loss and going with a different author next time.
I’ve been listening to a lot of the 3 Pagans and a Cat podcast this summer, and they often praise mention Jason Mankey. So I was scrolling through the sales on Llewellyn, building a massive cart that I then had to whittle down, as a reward to myself for doing well in my online class this fall, and I saw his name and decided to give him a shot.
“The Witch’s Book of Shadows” is not the first book in the series, but it was the one I was most interested in reading. I have Plans to make a massive tome of a grimoire, and wanted to see if there was anything my idle Pinterest searching hadn’t uncovered yet.
My first thought was, ‘Holy shit! This book is tiny! So much smaller than expected!‘
The book measures 5 inches wide by 7 inches tall.
This book is very readable; I read it cover-to-cover in one day. The language is very accessible. There’s a lot of information, but it’s not theory-dense. I did learn some things, especially about historical magical texts, and I had a few ideas for my own practice & future grimoire. I need to go back through and write down in my grimoire notes the bits that I underlined while reading…
The only real problem I had with this book is that Mankey sometimes uses “wicca” and “witchcraft” interchangeably. To me, “wicca” is the religion that touts Harm None and the Threefold Law, while “witchcraft” is using magic to affect real-world change. Mankey is very clear on his background as a Gardnerian Wiccan, though, so maybe he doesn’t make a distinction between the terms?
As it stands, I’d give this a 3.5 stars out of 5. If the above problem were resolved, it’d be 4 stars out of 5. Good, enjoyable, easy read, lots of information, not life-changing.
The Book, The Tree, & The Flame 