Bag Of Tricks.

Well. It's possible I'm losing my mind - I've signed up for the Pagan Blog Project. Belatedly, since that's how I roll. What the hell, I enjoy writing prompts and it will be a nice way to connect with other bloggers besides my usual tactic of lurking on their well-written pages.

BOOK REVIEW!

The Witch's Bag of Tricks: Personalize Your Magick & Kickstart Your Craft

I finished this one a while ago, having picked it up prior to the holidays. I was excited to have a book that seemed to go beyond the '101' level of witchcraft, and in that regard it does not disappoint - the author assumes one knows the basics of spellcraft. The aim of the book is to help the reader make her/his magic more effective, and to help the solitary eclectics get out of magical ruts.

The book, for me, started off promisingly enough. I think the first place it lost me was when it had a mini lecture on avoiding eating meat in the third chapter - I understand the horrific conditions often faced by commercially raised cattle and poultry, but I'm not sure I buy that my evil meat eating ways are fucking up my magic, sorry.

Personally, I found the entire book, though aimed at 'eclectic' practitioners, to be still very much based on a Wiccan worldview. That's really not a bad thing, but it IS something to bear in mind, as the author's personal biases creep in to certain topics. (Like the evils of meat. There's a chapter on love magic that had me rolling my eyes too - the author is of the "don't target a person" school of thought, although earlier in the book there was a section entitled "the cause for cursing." That seems sort of... contradictory?)

Some chapters are definitely stronger than others. The magical cooking chapter feels cursory, for example, but the chapter on magical mistakes and how to avoid them was interesting and useful.

So. Parts of it made my head explode, and other parts were actually food for thought. This is one of those books that you take the best from, and ignore the rest depending on your practice. I certainly didn't agree with all of it (especially if ethics or 'this is how magic works' was involved) but I enjoyed many of the questions and experiments throughout. I'd recommend it to people who are either Wiccan-esque or who have a background in such. I wouldn't throw it at a Chaos Magician or anything like that, but I think folk magic practitioners could also get some good shit out of it.


I've plunged into Protection and Reversal Magick and am enjoying it immensely. I'm only just on chapter four. I tested out Miller's offering process the other night and it was awesome. I'm not really one of those people who expects/gets a lot of paranormal phenomena - drop me in a haunted house and I'm the one busy fucking around with the camera while the real psychics are freaking out over emotional bleedthrough. But during the offering ritual, I observed my candles doing some odd things and heard a low, persistent noise that lasted the duration of the rite. It was a little spooky! I'm half tempted to wander over to his blog and be like, "dude, awesome!"

Big intellectual, me. As you can tell.

I have a shit ton more books to get through still, so I'll keep you posted on them all.