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Rain

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Rain is Currently Reading

Rain is currently reading

Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism

by Sarah Lyons

bookshelves: currently-reading, witchcraft

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(page 54 of 168)
— Feb 07, 2022 03:44PM

Feb 07, 2022 03:44PM

Rain is currently reading

Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins

by Cassandra Snow

bookshelves: currently-reading, witchcraft

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Rain said: " I'm not done reading this yet, but I wanted to write down some of my thoughts so far. I'll come back with a full review when I finish!

What is book is:
- I love the idea behind this book, and I think Snow takes a really well-rounded approach to the top I'm not done reading this yet, but I wanted to write down some of my thoughts so far. I'll come back with a full review when I finish!

What is book is:
- I love the idea behind this book, and I think Snow takes a really well-rounded approach to the topic. This book is written mostly for the beginner witch, which might turn off more experienced people, but I'm definitely the right audience for it. I think an experienced witch who's recently come out/started engaging with queer communities would also find a lot of helpful stuff here.
- Snow takes a hard stance against cultural appropriation and white supremacy in the witchy and pagan communities, which is great to read, but it comes off a little heavy-handed sometimes. I think this book would benefit from more examples of what exactly cultural appropriation and white supremacy can look like, and what we can do to stop or change it. From reading other comments and reviews, it seems that some of their facts about cultural appropriation are off the mark, too. Always do your own research when it comes to this stuff, folks, and use resources actually written by the people and communities affected by it.
- I appreciate the appendix with associations. I've been looking for something like that for a while! I think it could have been a little more concise by listing the botanical names of things next to them instead of in a separate appendix, though.
- There's a lot of stuff about chosen family, community, and living at the margins, which I think it a needed perspective and one that definitely resonates with me (though I'm certainly privileged as a white, mostly-able-bodied person living in North America). This book seems like a good companion to Revolutionary Witchcraft: A Guide to Magical Activism, which I'm also currently reading; Lyons tackles a lot more about environmental justice, decolonization, and anti-racism, whereas Snow leans more into class, sex positivity (including sex workers' rights), and queer identities and subcultures, but they definitely overlap. Good stuff! This one has a lot more spells, if Lyons' book left you wanting more.
- Snow is very aware of the variety of traumas, disabilities, and living situations queer people can have, and offers a lot of good alternatives for how to do witchcraft on a shoestring budget, how to work on overcoming religious trauma, how to adapt practices to physical disabilities, etc. So if you're not queer but have had trouble getting witchcraft to work with you because of your disability, financial status, or mental health, this might be a good book to check out.

What this book isn't:
- One thing I was really hoping for here was some concrete advice on how to tackle gender binarism in witchcraft. A lot of Snow's other tips and ideas are kind of intuitive, but dealing with the gender binary isn't, and I often wish there was a guidebook for "how to not feel dysphoric when an otherwise good witchy book keeps assuming you're a woman" or "how to respond to people who are being cisnormative in witchy spaces". So far, this isn't that.
- In that same vein, I wish there was more about queer(ing) deities and archetypes. I want to be able to connect with mother figures, for example, but it's really hard when I usually avoid associating myself with motherhood in any way.
- That said, I think there's more of that stuff in Queering the Tarot, which I haven't read yet but also recently picked up.
- I wish there was an index.
- There's a bibliography, but no actual citations. Why are citations never a thing in witchy books? If you're going to go through the trouble of making a bibliography, I think you should actually associate the information with your sources (via in-text citations, footnotes, endnotes), so that a reader can go to that source and verify it.
- Related: I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until people stop doing it... Please tell us why, not just what and how, especially when it comes to spell ingredients. Associating roses with love is a given, but this is the first I've heard of cold press coffee being associated with prosperity (p. 235), and I'm unlikely to use that in my practice unless I understand the reason behind it. ...more "

progress:

(page 22 of 288)
— Feb 07, 2022 02:54PM

Feb 07, 2022 03:33PM · see review