I finished reading one of my books from the thrift store today, collected some herbs from our garden, and cleaned out the big, previously very messy, space under my bed. In other words, it's been a productive Saturday, in spite of the brutal heat, humidity, and occasional torrential downpour.
Title: Power of the Witch: the Earth, the Moon, and the Magical Path to Enlightenment
Author: Laurie Cabot
©1989
Laurie Cabot is one of the closest things American witchcraft has to a celebrity. She is Salem's official witch, and has appeared on multiple television shows as a result of this fact. She is also known for always wearing robes and a pentacle in public. As a result of her national presence, her book was naturally quite successful when it was published.
My feelings on it are mixed. On the one hand, it was popular in its time, which means it influenced development of the Craft and as such is important for putting our community's emergence into a historical context. On the other hand, it is now two-and-a-half decades out of date, and definitely reads as such.
There were two major problems I had with this text: first, the language is extremely rooted in the gender binary. The phrases "men and women", "opposite gender", etc. both appear frequently, as does the assumption that only people who identify as female experience menstruation and related bodily functions. While I recognize that even today this is a common mistake made by plenty of people, I could see it being potentially very triggering for people who are transgender, nonbinary, or etc. She does clarify later that absolute male and female are only theoretical extremes on the ends of a spectrum, but that doesn't make up for the rest of the exclusionary language. Also, and this may be due to the age of the book and changes in terminology since then, but I'm reasonably sure that she equated being bisexual with being bigender, which is obviously incorrect.
The other thing I took particular issue with was more of a community problem. Cabot uses "witch" and "Wiccan" interchangeably, even though the two are fundamentally different concepts. Also, while she does use the word "Pagan" on occasion, she mentions no other branch of Paganism besides Wicca. To be fair, she does at least acknowledge that there can be witches belonging to other religions (e.g. Christian witches, Jewish witches, etc.), which I was glad to see, as that is often overlooked.
With my two largest criticisms out of the way, here are a few of the things I liked. Her account of the early history of original European Paganism wasn't perfect by any means, but it was better than a lot that I've read, especially considering when it was written. The first fifth of the book was a bit of a throw-away in my opinion, but it improved steadily from there.
She also shares many of her personal experiences in the Craft, which I always find an interesting read. Some of her narrative comes from her coven's rituals, while other parts are drawn from workshops she's taught, or from things she's experienced with her family.
Then near the end of the book, she actually gets to sharing how-to pieces of Craft info, in addition to more theoretical content. She provides several meditation sequences which I liked, as well as a lot of spells. Most of these contained oils and herbs which I don't have easy access to, but other people might find them useful. Additionally, she provides a sample altar set up, as well as ways to cast a circle or charge objects.
Overall, this wasn't the sort of thing I'd recommend rushing to the store to purchase, but for an 89¢ find at the thrift shop, I think it was worth it.
