Seasons of a Magical Life

Seasons of a Magical Life

Author: H. Byron Ballard

Publisher: Weiser Books

Published: 2021-08-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1633411974

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An invitation to return to a simpler time of earth-based spirituality and ritual living, through writings from a small forest-farm in the Appalachian Highlands. This book looks at the agricultural year as a starting space for a deepening of earth-centered spirituality. It gives a set of backstories to ease the reader into a time between the pre-industrial era and the modern one, into a place where the fast-moving stress of American life can be affected by a better connection not only to the natural world but to the elegant expression of the year as expressed through seasonal festivals and celebrations. The chapters are broken into four seasons, with the quarter days a highlight within each, and feature simple skills that accompany each marker in the year. Author H. Byron Ballard offers advice on spiritual and physical immersion into the seasons that applies to readers from all areas: rural, urban, and suburban. This is also a deeply practical book, including insights into the following: Farming & gardening: composting, manure, soil preparation, pests, seed-saving Food: cooking, preserving, foraging, the summer kitchen, mushrooms and mycelium Fiber arts: knitting, crocheting, spinning, weaving, decorative cut-work, and embroidery Sewing: treadle machines, electric machines, hand sewing Household crafts: candle-making, soap-making, broom-making, sharpening tools Health: medicines, tending the dying, death and death rituals A glossary is included for any unfamiliar terms.


Traditional Wicca

Traditional Wicca

Author: Thorn Mooney

Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide

Published: 2018-07-08

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 0738755206

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A Down-to-Earth Guide to Traditional Wicca While there are many powerful variations of contemporary Witchcraft, traditional Wicca offers unique experiences for those who seek it out. This book explores structured, coven-based styles of Wicca, in which the practitioners typically trace initiatory lineages back to Wicca's early founders. Discussing covens, initiations, lineages, practices, ethics, and more, Traditional Wicca shares tips and ideas on how to get the most from this profound approach to Witchcraft. Discover how to recognize healthy, reputable covens. Learn how to navigate the process of asking for training and succeeding in an outer court. Explore the spiritual strength of lineages, hierarchies, and initiation. This book also includes contributions from several practitioners, providing valuable first-person perspectives on what it's like to be on the traditional Wiccan path. Praise : "Like the bristles of a besom, Thorn Mooney's Traditional Wicca sweeps through the subject of Witchcraft removing the dust and dirt of ignorance and prejudice to reveal the true heart of Wicca. Thorn writes with obvious sincerity, with feeling, and from experience. Her book covers everything from defining Witchcraft, through the workings of a coven, to actual initiation and beyond. She warns that Wicca is not for everyone and—I am personally delighted to see—includes a chapter on recognizing 'Red Flags' when first contacting others...especially those who might claim to be more than they actually are. This book is the quintessential guide for the true, sincere seeker."—Raymond Buckland, author of Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft "Traditional Wicca is a unique and important book. It's amazing to me that in over 70 years of publishing on the subject of Wicca, nothing like this book has ever been written! I'm kind of jealous I didn't think to write it myself. The chapter on initiation is, by itself, worth the cover price. If you want to understand what people mean by 'traditional Wicca,' whether or not you're seeking it, this is the one book you must read."—Deborah Lipp, Wiccan high priestess and author of Merry Meet Again "Traditional Wicca is a topic that few actually understand despite its long and distinguished history. With passion and skill, Thorn delivers a book that many familiar with Wicca will wish they had had when they were studying it, and those who find themselves on the path for the first time will rejoice at having found. Whether you intend to seek initiation or not, this book is full of valuable gems that will enhance any practice at any level. Traditional Wicca is an all-inclusive tour through the history, practices, and lore of traditional Wicca that weaves voices from all over the tradition and challenges everything you think you know about it."—Devin Hunter, author of The Witch's Book of Power "A masterful gem of insight and wisdom,Traditional Wicca reveals the time-honored practices of initiatory Wicca, thought all but lost by many, but hidden like so many occult secrets in plain sight. Drawing a clear and respectful distinction between eclectic Wicca and its older more traditional sibling, Thorn Mooney takes us on a personal journey exploring the powers and the pitfalls of the initiatory inner court, revealing the persistence of a thriving and dynamic Craft that is at once orthopraxic and changing, traditional and experimental. With practical advice for the seeker, peppered with personal anecdotes from several practitioners and initiates alike, this book is a much-needed map...Highly recommended."—Storm Faerywolf, author of Betwixt and Between


Wild Witchcraft

Wild Witchcraft

Author: Rebecca Beyer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-05-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1982185635

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Learn how to cultivate your own magical garden, begin your journey with folk herbalism, and awaken to your place in nature through practical skills from an experienced Appalachian forager and witch. Witchcraft is wild at heart, calling us into a relationship with the untamed world around us. Through the power of developing a relationship with plants, a witch—beginner or experienced—can practice their art more deeply and authentically by interacting with the beings that grow around us all. Bridging the gap between armchair witchcraft and the hedge witches of old, Wild Witchcraft empowers you to work directly with a wide variety of plants and trees safely and sustainably. With Wild Witchcraft, Rebecca Beyer draws from her years of experience as an Appalachian witch and forager to give you a practical guide to herbalism and natural magic that will share: -The history of witchcraft and Western herbalism -How to create and maintain your own herbal garden -Recipes for tinctures, teas, salves, and other potions to use in rites and rituals -Spells, remedies, and rituals created with the wild green world around you, covering a range of topics, from self-healing to love to celebrating the turning of the seasons -And much more! Wild Witchcraft welcomes us home to the natural world we all dwell in by exploring practical folk herbal and magical rites grounded in historical practices and a sustainable, green ethic.


A Community of Witches

A Community of Witches

Author: Helen A. Berger

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9781570032462

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A Community of Witches explores the beliefs and practices of Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft - generally known to scholars and practitioners as Wicca. While the words "magic," "witchcraft," and "paganism" evoke images of the distant past and remote cultures, this book shows that Wicca has emerged as part of a new religious movement that reflects the era in which it developed. Imported to the United States in the late 1960s from the United Kingdom, the religion absorbed into its basic fabric the social concerns of the time: feminism, environmentalism, self-development, alternative spirituality, and mistrust of authority.


Live Your Own Life

Live Your Own Life

Author: Mary Bayard Clarke

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 9781570034732

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Letters from family members reveal the depth of their anger, and Clarke's own words illustrate the difficulties of living as the spouse of a scalawag in the Reconstruction South."--BOOK JACKET.


Witches of America

Witches of America

Author: Alex Mar

Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books

Published: 2015-10-20

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0374709114

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"Witches are gathering." When most people hear the word "witches," they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the nearly one million Americans who practice Paganism today, witchcraft is a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. So Alex Mar discovers when she sets out to film a documentary and finds herself drawn deep into the world of present-day magic. Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area; from a gathering of more than a thousand witches in the Illinois woods to the New Orleans branch of one of the world's most influential magical societies. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters: a government employee who founds a California priesthood dedicated to a Celtic goddess of war; American disciples of Aleister Crowley, whose elaborate ceremonies turn the Catholic mass on its head; second-wave feminist Wiccans who practice a radical separatist witchcraft; a growing "mystery cult" whose initiates trace their rites back to a blind shaman in rural Oregon. This sprawling magical community compels Mar to confront what she believes is possible-or hopes might be. With keen intelligence and wit, Mar illuminates the world of witchcraft while grappling in fresh and unexpected ways with the question underlying every faith: Why do we choose to believe in anything at all? Whether evangelical Christian, Pagan priestess, or atheist, each of us craves a system of meaning to give structure to our lives. Sometimes we just find it in unexpected places.


Signs, Cures, & Witchery

Signs, Cures, & Witchery

Author: Gerald Milnes

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9781572335776

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The persecution of Old World German Protestants and Anabaptists in the seventeenth century--following debilitating wars, the Reformation, and the Inquisition-- brought about significant immigration to America. Many of the immigrants, and their progeny, settled in the Appalachian frontier. Here they established a particularly old set of religious beliefs and traditions based on a strong sense of folk spirituality. They practiced astrology, numerology, and other aspects of esoteric thinking and left a legacy that may still be found in Appalachian folklore today. Based in part on the author's extensive collection of oral histories from the remote highlands of West Virginia, Signs, Cures, and Witchery; German Appalachian Folklore describes these various occult practices, symbols, and beliefs; how they evolved within New World religious contexts; how they arrived on the Appalachian frontier; and the prospects of those beliefs continuing in the contemporary world. By concentrating on these inheritances, Gerald C. Milnes draws a larger picture of the German influence on Appalachia. Much has been written about the Anglo-Celtic, Scots-Irish, and English folkways of the Appalachian people, but few studies have addressed their German cultural attributes and sensibilities. Signs, Cures, and Witchery sheds startling light on folk influences from Germany, making it a volume of tremendous value to Appalachian scholars, folklorists, and readers with an interest in Appalachian folklife and German American studies.


From Witches to Crack Moms

From Witches to Crack Moms

Author: Susan C. Boyd

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781611636260

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NOTE:A few references were found to be missing after printing. To view those references, click here. The second edition of From Witches to Crack Moms reflects shifts in drug policy and law, new research and statistics on women who use illegal drugs, and the impact of drug prohibition on them. Susan Boyd examines how the regulation of altered states of consciousness and women's bodies is not new. Like the witches of old, women suspected of using illegal drugs today are persecuted and punished. From Witches to Crack Moms offers a critique of drug law and policy and its impact on women in the United States and illuminates similarities and differences in Britain and Canada. Globally, the war on drugs impacts women disproportionally. Thus, in this book, the impact of drug prohibition on women and indigenous peoples in Colombia is also discussed in order to reveal the connections between the regulation of drug use in Western states and non-Western states. Informed by a feminist sociological perspective, Boyd discusses how drug law and policy is racialized, class-biased, and gendered. She highlights how punitive drug laws inform and shape criminal justice, social service and medical policy and practice. Boyd also provides insight into how the war on drugs, the regulation of reproduction, and women's human rights intersect, culminating in a volatile mix. "From Witches to Crack Moms: Women, Drug Law, and Policy offers a critical and painstaking examination of the historical and current policies that have contributed to the discrimination, subordination, and racialization of women in the criminal justice system. [...] The book is appropriate for policy, drug, gender studies, and women and crime graduate courses. The author includes a great deal of detail, offers a comparative perspective, and focuses on policy--an area often ignored in criminological literature." -- Mary Dodge, Criminal Justice Review


The Witch's Path

The Witch's Path

Author: Thorn Mooney

Publisher: Llewellyn Publications

Published: 2021-09-08

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780738763774

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The Witch's Path is all about taking your witchcraft practice to the next level--whether you're a beginner who feels overwhelmed, a disillusioned adept, a jaded coven leader, or anyone in-between. This book shares specific, hands-on tips for what you can do to move forward spiritually today, no matter what your starting point. Author Thorn Mooney explores the most common themes a witch may explore to work their way out of a rut: sacred space, devotion, ritual and magic, personal practice, and community. Each chapter features four separate exercises, organized by element and designed for four different types of readers, so you can come back to this book as you grow in your craft and discover fresh techniques and exercises that work for you. You will discover tips and advice for cultivating a sense of serious play, setting effective goals for spellwork, creating an altar, joining or leading events, and much more. Witchcraft is a deep and rich path. This book is designed to help you renew your sense of engagement with the craft so you can continue evolving your spirit, your practice, and yourself.