The Gentle Arts Of Natural Magic

by Marian Green

Discusses personal alchemy and the magic of earth, water, fire, air, the moon, sun, trees, and underworld, and offers advice on performing rituals

Genres: Spirituality, Witchcraft, Paganism, Magick

232 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1987

About the author

Marian Green is an author who has been working in the field of ceremonial and folk magic since the early 1960s. She has also organized a conference every March since 1968 to bring together writers and their readers, the Quest Conference. She has written more than a dozen books on ceremonial magic and aspects of witchcraft as well as editing QUEST magazine since 1970. She is a council member of the Pagan Federation and has also been editor of Pagan Dawn.

Reviews

[Natasha 4E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every chapter of this book has a theme. The writer tells stories and suggests exersizes, giving the reader a foundation on which to build a spiritual practise.
Due to the title, I had expected a book that was more practically oriented, but still, I thought this was a nice read.

[Winterborne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Charming, but although the chapter titles suggest an organised progression through various aspects of natural magic, the text within those chapters is rambling and disorganized. I suspect that the text was subject to very little editing before publication, perhaps even by the author.

The apparent aim is to guide the reader along a path that will enable them to reconstruct the practices of the 'village witch', who is also named by several synonyms. There are numerous references to purported folk practices of the Christian era and to pre-Christian organized religions, presumably due to a belief that the former represent corrupted survivals of the latter, a hypothesis which I understand to be considered dubious by scholars. The text contains many assertions regarding those practices with few to no citations: the 'further reading' section at the back is scanty and contains more references to other occult texts than to studies of folklore.

Since the book was published in 1987, we are now a generation further removed than at the time of writing, at least in the south of England, from the time when the countryside was largely populated by those who lived and worked in it full time. This will make harder to reconstruct any magical practices of those people without relying entirely on printed sources, which seems to defeat the object somewhat. Along with the fact that there is little guidance about how to integrate natural magical practices into the urban lifestyle probably led by most readers, this suggests that this book may have little relevance in the present day. However, there is an emphasis on acquiring the practical skills needed to make one's own tools, which is praiseworthy.

[Julie Decker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a peek at less structured folk magic, filled with philosophy and nurturing commentary on how to live in harmony with your world (and why). I found its writing a little too meandering to feel drawn in, though; it felt more like reading a dream about some interconnected concepts, while I'd expected a bit more of a concrete "how to" based on what the title said. Instead it was mostly philosophy, though it did contain some fantastic quotes, such as "Try to see that no priest, no God can suffer on your behalf if you have not tried to make better what you made bad."

[Swankivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the first real Neopagan book I found to read; not exactly a good start, but it pointed me in the right direction.

[Arlene Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a sweet, exceedingly English, natural view of "magic."