Potent Potions & Joyous Rituals for Natural Goddess Glamour Become your most spellbinding self, inside and out, through every stage of your life. Alise Marie guides you into her inner sanctum, where you'll enjoy empowerment and practical magick that elevates your beauty routine from a monotonous chore to a sensual ceremony. Alise presents an abundant collection of plant-powered recipes and rituals for facial and body care, healing baths, kitchen witchery, and much more. Create elixirs, oils, and nectars that give you irresistibly smooth skin and gorgeous hair. Align with the cycles of the moon, explore the power of nature, and connect with goddesses. Featuring photos and time-tested secrets, this book reveals the enchanted beauty that is your birthright. The Beauty Witch is a registered trademark. All rights reserved.
Alise Marie is a joy to read. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked this up at Llewellyn.com, not being familiar with Alise or her writings, but I love natural skin and body care so I took a gamble. I’m happy I did so!
You’ll find solid formulas for everything from shampoos and facial serums to foot treatments and bubble baths in these pages, with nourishing (and yummy) cocktail, tea and silky elixir recipes to sip on while you get your spa on. Each offering is crafted with holistic health in mind, and there is a useful guide to individual ingredients and trustworthy vendors/websites provided for reference.
I’m a bit of an enthusiast for skin and body care, so the convenience and accessibility of these formulas has me excited to whip up pretty much everything in here. Alise demystifies preparation process in a user-friendly format. The front end cost of acquiring quality ingredients seems high, but in the long run the DIY approach is a money saver. Just Google facial serums or overnight creams if you don’t believe me. Many of the ingredients are also versatile, and are utilized in multiple formulas. The greatest benefit to this approach is that we know exactly what we’re putting on our bodies and in our systems.
This review originally appeared on The Magical Buffet's website on 06/13/2022.
If you follow me on social media, it’s no secret that I love skincare and cosmetics. So you’ll understand that once I heard about “The Beauty Witch’s Secrets: Recipes & Rituals for the Modern Goddess” by Alise Marie I had to request a copy to review. Marie has created a book with a little bit of something for anyone interested in beauty.
Looking for some useful, practical advice? Want to learn to make your own skincare? Recipes for some beauty enhancing beverages? Ready to turn your skincare routine into ritual? Alise Marie has ALL that and more in “The Beauty Witch’s Secrets.” Even if you’re someone like me and settled in on a regular skincare routine, Marie offers plenty of tips and insights that you’ll want to try out and perhaps make your routine a little more magical.
Have you ever wished you could sit around and talk beauty with your fabulous witch girlfriend? Alise Marie is that girlfriend and “The Beauty Witch’s Secrets” is the start of that conversation.
I was honored to be asked to blurb this book...Alise Marie is like a glamorous mentor and best friend...So inclusive, magical and loving Here is my blurb! Every witch deserves a little me time. Alise Marie’s complete plant-powered, moon-infused self-care manual seductively and lovingly reveals how to conjure your authentic glamour. This is the book Macbeth’s witches sorely needed.
This book was light on witchcraft and heavy on recipes for DIY, natural, vegan beauty products, which if that’s your thing, fine. I got really in to that years ago but it’s insanely expensive, messy, and without preservatives a lot of your homemade products go bad quickly. I have a hard time looking at all the photos of the author, clearly pumped to the max with lip filler (so likely other injectables as well), while reading her lectures on how everything put on your skin should be homemade out of food grade ingredients. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using injectables if you can afford that sort of thing, but the hypocrisy of folks who “secretly” use those types of beauty products while pretending they achieved the look by regularly slathering almond oil on their skin just irks me. I saw it all the time in the crunchy mom community too. Maybe it’s green smoothies, coconut oil, and breast milk? Nope, it’s Botox and $500 root touchups at the salon.
The thing that irked me most about this book is all the “spells” have ingredient lists, but no instructions for how to prepare. At first I assumed you’re meant to just put all the ingredients in jars and shake it up, but confusingly many of the ingredients are listed in phases, as in phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, with zero explanation as to what that means. There a section with beverage recipes that also lack instructions for how to prepare. She mentions only once in the intro to the first beverages that these are meant to be smoothies, if you just look at the recipes themselves you wouldn’t know, it never mentions blending the ingredients. The next section is for herbal tea recipes, fine, but in the US at least, most folks need some instruction on how to brew tea, especially if it’s not already in a tea bag. And the cocktail section was the worst for me. Am I to infuse the fruit and herbs into the wines over time? Or drink them immediately? Leave them floating in there? Or strain them out before drinking? Muddle the herbs? Chop them up? Just float a basil leaf on top? No idea! There’s no instruction for how to prepare. In spell work the process of how to prepare is just as important as it is in mundane recipes. What is happening here?
All of that being said it wasn’t TOTALLY terrible. If you are into DIY beauty recipes and able to get creative on how to prepare the recipes, it’s worth a read.
2.5 ⭐s, rounded down to 2 as I don't think it deserves a 3.
As a book about beauty for goddesses, I expected this to empower me and make me feel confident in my body. Instead, there was a lot of language used that portrayed very natural things as shameful, such as age spots, wrinkles, cellulite, weight gain, etc. Instead of recognizing that these things are natural, and providing recipes to enhance said natural beauties, it constantly spoke of covering them up and getting rid of them. And, not to mention, the amount of ingredients that are used in each recipe is kind of insane. A lot of them are not common, either. I suppose my expectations of this book were very different to what the author was providing.
The only reason I gave it the extra .5 stars is because the list of ingredients and resources at the back of the book seem genuinely useful.
Would not recommend this as a tool for realistic beauty rituals.
My review of this book was originally written for The Folklore Podcast. My interview with the author can be found here.
Llewellyn Publications brought a beautiful full-color book to print that promises to teach every reader how to become their most spell-binding self. The Beauty Witch’s Secrets: Recipes & Rituals For the Modern Goddess by Alise Marie is a treasure trove of recipes, potions, elixirs, and concoctions for practicing pagans as well as those simply curious that promises to both tantalize the mind and delight the senses.
Marie melds her expertise as an actress and holistic nutritionist with her experience as a practicing witch to bring eco-friendly recipes to the general public. Each chapter focuses upon a different beauty product, with the chapter intros explaining the different uses that concoction has. She carefully aligns every treatment with the appropriate cycle of the moon as well, so that their powers will be amplified and in line with natural cycles.
Furthermore, there are excellent references at the back of the book for not only the uses for each of the ingredients included in the books, but also where to ethically source them. All of the recipes in the book are vegan and able to be ethically sourced. Marie is also economical – the more expensive items that the recipes call for are able to be used in multiple recipes.
Marie succeeds in bringing interesting and valuable knowledge to the public, and this reader is personally looking forward to using some of the potions in the next coming weeks. Everyone deserves pampering, and the lotions, hair masques, and drinks can be used by women and men alike. She can be found at www.thebeautywitch.com if anyone is interested in learning more about how to use this knowledge to bring their best self to light.