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Title: Spiral Dance, The - 20th Anniversary : A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 20th Anniversary Edition by Starhawk ISBN: 0-06-251632-9 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.08 (115 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Overcomes my reservations about earlier editions...
Comment: I encountered this book when I was fourteen years old, back in the days when this was possibly the most individual-oriented, approachable book about modern Paganism you could find. Since then, I've worn out the covers and dog-eared every page.
Starhawk's approach to magick is the most rational, socially responsible one I've seen. Reading Spiral Dance, I never forgot that what's being described isn't just a self-help system, a political movement, or a system of ritual magick, but a religion.
But about ten years ago, I stopped recommending this book. The historical sources Starhawk used in 1979 were accepted then, but they've since been thoroughly discredited, and I didn't feel comfortable with the idea that all the beautiful poetic discussion of Faith rested on a flimsy (even false) interpretation of Fact.
Now that the twentieth anniversary edition (with explanatory notes and updates to the history) is out, I can recommend this book with a clear conscience and a glad heart.
Rating: 4
Summary: Pretty Good
Comment: As a resource for background and historical information on pagan religions and Wicca, this book is one of the best that I've found. There's a lot of folklore mixed in with her personal experiences with the craft. The excersises included in the book are very detailed, although the meditation and trance ones could be difficult for a person to do at first and may come off as a bit daunting to a beginner.
As a resource for spells, this book has a few, but does not give many. The book seems to focus more on raising power than focussing your intent on anything specific. There is also very little information on creating your own spells, although Starhawk does make it clear numerous times in the book that the rituals and spells given are not set in stone and unchangeable, but are given to be built upon and changed as the reader sees fit.
My only dislike in the book is the feminist slant that Starhawk seems to place on much of the information. While agree with some of her points, I didn't feel that I added anything to the book.
Rating: 3
Summary: Once Upon A Matriarchy
Comment: The troublesome problems that arise when attributing gender to deities hang perilously over Starhawk's often admirable The Spiral Dance (1979). But if "the patriarchy" erroneously or prejudicially attributed the male gender to the concept of deity, has Starhawk accurately corrected the problem by simply taking the opposite position and replacing the concept of "God" with that of "Goddess"? Unfortunately, the question of spontaneous psychological and anthropomorphic projection onto the concept of deity is never addressed, and appears never to have been considered at length by the author. Whether immanent force or transcendent reality or both, the simple truth is that an ultimate deity is unlikely to be gender specific at all.
Thus, The Spiral Dance, despite its best intentions, often seems oblivious to its own tone of unhealthy polarity, a tone that suffuses the book in both large and small ways (for example, sentences consistently read "women and men" instead of the more common "men and women").
Starhawk is quick to point out that her "Goddess" and women-centered religion are not oppressive to men in any way, regardless of her repeated and somewhat sly suggestions about female superiority, which she doesn't seem to realize are uncomfortably similar to the historical "patriarchal" position she decries (fellow feminist Camille Paglia has argued that women are the superior sex in a far more convincing, objective, and fact-based manner). The author's religion does recognize a male deity, but, not surprisingly, he is subordinate to and subsumed into the all-encompassing female principal that the "Goddess" represents. Readers may get the sense that Starhawk, blissfully locked into her own womanhood, simply can't see very far beyond her own gender, and really doesn't want to.
Early in the work, Starhawk states that "Witchcraft has always been a religion of poetry, not theory." It is also, apparently, not a religion based very much on fact, as Starhawk's "religion of poetry," as outlined and historically defined, is based around a loose mishmash of unproven, discredited, or purely erroneous anthropological, archeological, and historical theories (including those of Margaret Murray and Marija Gimbutas). The author refers to the academic scholarship that has eroded much of the witchcraft mythology as "blatantly biased and inaccurate," when in fact the opposite is true. It is Starhawk who attempts to support her cause by referring dramatically what she feels are its historical linchpins while she simultaneously denies the untidy complications of history as largely irrelevant. She shrewdly defends her approach by stating, "Is Buddhism invalid because we cannot find archeological evidence of Buddha's existence? Are Christ's teachings unimportant if we cannot find his birth certificate or death warrant?" Rather bravely, she also asserts, "the truth of our experience is valid whether it has roots thousands of years old or thirty minutes old...there is a mythic truth whose proof is shown not through references and footnotes but in the way it engages strong emotions, mobilizes deep life energies, and gives us a sense of history, purpose, and place in the world." Needless to say, The Spiral Dance falters whenever the book suggests historical precedents, justifications, and traditions for the beliefs it promotes.
As with all systems predicated largely upon belief, the question remains: how potentially dangerous and misguided are the beliefs espoused? Are members of witchcraft covens, particularly women, likely to be wiser, saner, and more capable of personal authority and empowerment if they accept Starhawk's interpretation of the period of the European witchcraft persecutions (here referred to as "the Burning Times")? Starhawk writes that "an estimated nine million Witches," were executed, and "eighty percent were women, including children and young girls," but admits in her notes for the 10th anniversary edition that "actually, estimates range between a low of one hundred thousand and this figure [nine million], which is probably high. The truth, clearly, is that nobody knows exactly how many people died in the persecutions." Undeniably and unavoidably, all organized religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have actively negative aspects, and have historically. But readers may want to refer to J. S. La Fontaine's Speak Of The Devil (1998) and The Abduction Enigma (1999) by Kevin Randle, Russ Estes, and William P. Cone, for other perspectives on the dangers of irresponsibly indoctrinating potentially naïve, vulnerable, and needy people with myth-based rather than fact-based ideas and theories, particularly those that imply special status, persecution, or hidden but present threats in one's immediate surroundings.
The Spiral Dance also promotes a heady political activism and what occasionally sounds very much like "compulsive compassion"; when Starhawk proudly announces that decisions within her coven and others are made by "reaching consensus," the shadows of Freud, Adler, and Camille Paglia's "Big Udder" may spontaneously interject themsleves into the minds of more informed and politically savvy readers. In fact, throughout her introductions, Starhawk sporadically adopts both a tone and a voice that sounds suspiciously like a liberal Methodist with radical pretensions.
The Spiral Dance also has much to commend it, including its promotion of "life as a thing of wonder" and "love of life in all its forms" as its basic ethic. "The price of freedom," the book rightly says, is "discipline and responsibility." Groundless or undue guilt and denial are discouraged ("The craft does not foster guilt, the stern, admonishing, self - hating inner voice that cripples action. Instead, it demands responsibility."), and a sense of honor and self - respect are seen as essential, healthy and positive. Sexuality "as a direct expression of the life force," is considered "numinous and sacred." Strict hierarchies are discouraged or eliminated, and men are encouraged to know and develop themselves as completely and inclusively as possible. Nature is cherished for both its beauty and its bounty.
Starhawk would have been better off promoting the included information as inspired by rather than descending from the various matriarchal and witch "traditions" and mythologies she names. The book's extended exercises on creating sacred spaces, trance, magical symbols, invocations, and rituals will be extremely helpful to anyone approaching this particular brand of witchcraft for the first time.
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Title: Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today by Margot Adler ISBN: 014019536X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham ISBN: 0875421180 Publisher: Llewellyn Publications Pub. Date: November, 1990 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: A Witches' Bible: The Complete Witches Handbook by Janet Farrar, Stewart Farrar ISBN: 0919345921 Publisher: Phoenix Publishing, Inc. Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft by Raymond Buckland, Ray Buckland ISBN: 0875420508 Publisher: Llewellyn Publications Pub. Date: December, 1986 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Living Wicca: A Further Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (Llewellyn's Practical Magick) by Scott Cunningham ISBN: 0875421849 Publisher: Llewellyn Publications Pub. Date: December, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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