The Shamanic Witch: Spiritual Practice Rooted in the Earth and Other Realms

by Gail Wood

Shamanic practice seeks healing and wisdom from realms that overlap the everyday world. The use of plant and animal medicines, vision quests, trance work, and ceremonies to heal one's self and others are the foundations of shamanism. So too, Wicca and witchcraft use the magic and medicine of plants, animals, and other realms. By learning to incorporate the practices of shamanism, the witch can enhance his or her natural abilities as healer and creator of positive change. The Shamanic Witch outlines the many similarities between the art of shamanism and the craft of the Witch and explores how the overlapping of these two traditions can be used to enhance one's practice. Where witchcraft brings the belief and religion, Shamanism brings the skills. Sections Understanding the World of the shaman, Creatures and Spirits of Other Realms, Developing a Shamanic Practice, The Toolkit of the Shamanic Practitioner, The Realms of the Witch, and Melding Becoming the WitchShaman.

Genres: Witchcraft, Occult, Spirituality

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely ideas for meditation and spiritual experimentation. Very Wicca-inclined. Great wordings.

[Letitia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Shamanic Witch is mainly focused on combining the practices of Wicca and NeoShamanism.
The author does assume you have some experience in Wicca and skips the basics in regard to it, which I liked.
From the Shamanic point, it starts at the beginning, it is here that I would have liked to have gone a bit deeper.
This was an interesting read, and I did enjoy it and learn from it.
Though, if you already have a bit of experience in both these areas, you probably won't take much from it.
Once you reach the parts about combining the two practices, it is mainly just incorporating totem animals into the directions and linking the upper and lower worlds to your circle.
There are some good ideas here though, and the ideas for journeys to take will be referred back to often.
Worst thing about this book, the repetitiveness in the second half.
Writing out her circle casting method once, and then referring back to it would have sufficed.
Towards the end, I found myself skipping over pages and pages of repeated information.
Not so good for reading the book through, but this would be handy when referring to the book, as what you need is all in one place, but for reading, it was annoying.
Overall, good book with some good ideas.
I'm glad to have read it.

[HRM Maire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspirational and well written. Any witch or pagan practitioner would benefit from this book, and it convinced me to combine the shamanic with my own work. The author's personal and engaging style will charm you and inspire you as well.

[✨Bean's Books✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. It's well layed out and journeys are easy to follow. However if you've read through Christopher Penczak's Temple of Witchcraft series, the 3rd book covers everything in this book. Unfortunately nothing new for me here.

[April White-perkins]

Hmmmmm, very helpful

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Read it for research purposes.

[SA · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really adapting "core shamanism" [Harner-derived neoshamanism] to wicca-witchcraft practice, which is fine as far as it goes; there are some useful ideas in here, and as an introduction to shamanism it's quite decent, albeit rather prescriptive for my preferences. It just doesn't really go far enough, which is generally true for "core shamamism", in that there isn't a community aspect here: it's all very centered around the individual practitioner and an individual's concerns. Which to me isn't really shamanism; it's just another angle on self-improvement, albeit with a spiritual direction that follows part of the road of the shamanistic practitioner.

A shaman per se is of the community and for the community; she is the hedge witch down the road that everyone goes to in private for help. While this is shamanistic, it doesn't do the necessary work of introducing the reader to shamanism as a service to the community.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Don’t remember much of this one. I remember it being ok. The ideas are pretty obvious. I don’t recall any mind blowing insights.

It does include some journeys/meditations, but I never find these useful in books. It breaks me out of meditation to stop and read. I hate my own voice so I’m not going to record myself reading through the meditation. I prefer guided journeys on insight timer for that kind of thing.

[Aitziber Madinabeitia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supongo que cuando compras un libro que se llama "la bruja chamánica" no debes esperar nada que no tenga relación con la wicca, si no más bien al contrario.Y eso es lo que tenemos aquí, una disquisición y un pequeño gran puñado de ejercicios para que cualquier practicante de la religión wicca pueda añadir a sus prácticas habituales las prácticas chamánicas.

Y esto es posible porque, como fundamenta la autora, la wicca es un marco religioso mientras que el chamanismo es una serie de técnicas concretas que pueden implantarse sin más problema en cualquier sistema de creencias, especialmente si estas buscan el contacto con las fuerzas de la naturaleza.

Ni que decir tiene que estoy en desacuerdo con este postulado, y por tanto el libro no me ha resultado la utilísima guía de los "otros reinos" que pretende ser. Pero, obviamente, esto variará según sujetos y por tanto lo recomiendo para quienes estén buscando una guia paso a paso de como aunar trabajo de "trance" con la práctica ritual wicca.

[Chante]

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