Welcome to Gaia! ::

Dull and frustrating.

Actually, I think everything I've read of this book so far fits that description.

I just realised, she's a year older than my dad. /randomfact


I love Dr Horrible...but I do agree if you are to start singing with words that's what will happen, but as I mentioned earlier, I have done something very similar to this exercise (sounding). We didn't use any words though. Basically what happened was the lady leading the exercise began to hum a single note, we went around the circle and joined in one by one until everyone was humming this single note (or at least trying to hum that note). As people had to stop for breath, the timing was broken up. We did this for a while until people stated experimenting a little with their notes. Maybe the fact we did it with our eyes closed amde people a little more confident, but it was really quite fun.


Probably a little bit of both. She's obviously never stopped to think about the reason solitaries do as they do. But your point about finding enough people that share your beliefs to create a coven is correct. Of all the Pagans I know, there's only a small group that are actually part of a coven...though by Starhawk's standards they'd probably just be a group of people doing rituals together.

Raising energy for the point of raising energy? Pointless...they could at least try and direct it to doing good in the community instead of just Earthing it.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Why people would do that, I have no idea.

Quick reflection on chapter seven: the spells, given a few tweaks may be useful...

I'm actually having a lot of trouble getting through this. I keep getting distracted by more interesting books. Like an Encyclopedia of Medieval Folklore or The Sagas of the Icelanders. I'm still trying but I'm not having much success. I'm just not finding a lot that I find of value or interest in Spiral Dance. Not even they writing style is engaging.

Go go Chapter Four!

It's unclear to me whether the entire ritual she quotes at the beginning of the chapter is by the Mary Daly cited at the end, or just the last couple of paragraphs. I really wish she put more effort into being clear. I like the alternative circle-casting ideas she listed in the 10-year notes, but on the other hand, I really don't feel like I'm getting a feel for her tradition. Even at the 10 year stage, there's no great consistency there.

Now on the other hand, if she was talking about wider witchcraft, that wouldn't be an issue as she would be giving different ideas that different witchcraft traditions might use. But then she goes on to say "In witchcraft, we define a new space and a new time whenever we cast a circle to begin a ritual" which I don't think is true even if we consider only forms of witchcraft that involve circles.

I guess this comes back to my underlying problem - she's not talking about her tradition, and she's not talking about witchcraft generally, so what is the subject of the book?

I do not like page 83. Lots of wanking on without actually saying much. I think either she doesn't know what the word "pantomime" means or she is trying to insult ritual, or something. Nor am I happy with her "you can't raise energy effectively without a circle" assertion - maybe it doesn't work for her, but it certainly works.

"Witches harboured Jews from Christian persecution"? Are you kidding me? Where the hell did THIS come from? - and is this your explanation for there being elements of Kaballah in your witchcraft? Because I gotta tell ya, lady, that's not where it came from.

20-year notes for page 84: she speaks of ritual purification being performed at the same time as grounding, with "worries, concerns and anxieties" being "as compost for the Tree of Life". Is anyone else at all put out that she encourages the polluting of a sacred spiritual tree with her emotional rubbish?

10-year notes for page 85: I like the ritual purification via a dip in the sea. I don't like that she changed a prayer to her gods to one to generic concepts because she felt it was "too heterosexist and anthropomorphic". What does this mean? She doesn't like her gods? She has changed her gods in those ten years? She doesn't wish to pray to them? I wish she had given more detail, because it annoys me, but I suppose it wasn't the place to do so.

Her banishment on page 86 is very unpleasant and I don't think I want to know this woman. A spirit might be "unfriendly" but I don't see that as any reason to wish horrible torture upon it. I certainly would not want her at my hearth. This exercise in particular is also much more focused on words, which is a bit ridiculous; it doesn't tell you how to perform a banishing, just what to say when you do. It's not what I'd consider a helpful example.

I don't believe at all her comment on page 86 or the corresponding 10-year note that the four-quartered circle and the system of classical elements is basic "to many cultures and religions".

I wish she'd stop going on about "younger self". Lady, play more goddamn video games, alright? I remember being a child. My thought patterns were more limited and more naive, but otherwise more or less the same. You apparently do not remember being a child, or you've changed drastically since then. Regardless, SHUT UP ABOUT THE GODDAMN YOUNGER SELF. I'm beginning to think it's a bit ageist or something.

b***h don't know what an athame is. Stop spreading the ignorance.

Jesus Christ. "Mother Moss of Compost coven found her athame lying on the white line in the middle of the freeway when she was driving home late one night." A knife. Randomly lying in the middle of the road. As if tossed from a moving car. By....? Mayhap a murder suspect? I hope she handed it in to the police before utilising it as a ritual tool!

I'm not entirely sure why she put exercises about meditating on elements in a chapter about creating sacred space. I know they're related, but it's particularly poorly presented to chop and change within a chapter in this way, rather than one subject leading easily on to another.

Pg 88: Who the hell is Arida?

Her interpretation of swords = war, bad and knives = food, good is very odd to me. An athame is double-edged. A sword, as far as I'm concerned, is a weapon more seen than used unless one is actually in a battle. It's a representation, it is formal, it is an indication of rank and ability. A knife is something you stab someone with in a dark alley, or while they sleep. A sword is an honest weapon, seen more than used, and a knife a dishonest one, used more than seen. Very odd clashing of symbols here, for me.

It occurs to me when she starts explaining what a wand is used for that she never explained what an athame is used for.

Another unfamiliar name used for fire on page 88, with no explanation of who she is. Poor teaching to tell someone to hail a deity without any detail on who that deity is. Having said that, the elemental exercises are pretty good.

Now, Tiamat I know of. And Tiamat does not seem the sort of entity you send neophytes off to play with.

Pg 89: "Because the sun never reaches the Northern Hemisphere..." Um.... what? Is this a typo?

Pg 91: "The pentagram is a drawn or written pentacle." lol?

Glad that she distinguishes the Iron Pentagram exercise as specific to Feri. Annoyed that she goes on to ignore asexual people both in the main text and in the 10 year notes.

I disagree with her definition of "wisdom". Entirely and absolutely.

Pg 95: I can't even blame Llewellyn for the "or a minor" as Llewellyn didn't publish my copy. I truly hope she meant "mirror". Using a minor as a representation of a god seems like a really awful idea.

I am feeling more and more like she doesn't have any idea how to teach. I am reading this chapter about creating a sacred space, and I still have no clue why one would do this or do that. She's talking again about "Guardians" on page 96 but I don't have a single clue who or what these "Guardians" might be. Are they concepts? Entities? Gods? This hasn't been explained, just chucked out there. She spent a lot of this chapter giving vague overviews of the elements and the tools, both of which could have done with a chapter to themselves, and as a result really failed to explain the concept of sacred space in any real way - her page of waffle was, to me, just that: waffle. Essentially meaningless and filled with buzzw-words. I'm sure she felt totally fulfilled when she wrote it, but she's meant to be teaching a newbie, not preaching to the converted and not merely trying to inspire. It's as bad as that Marian Green woman. On top of that, she didn't explain the process of casting a circle in proper detail (too much about 'visualisation' and not enough about energy) or why this or that thing would be done. I know entire books have been written on that subject, but frankly, when she devotes half the chapter to related concepts, I feel as a reader I'm missing out. If a previous chapter had been devoted to the elements and how the witch works with them, then this chapter could have involved how the elements fit into the circle, why they are used, why they're not used, what the Guardians are, and so forth. I feel like these things got a cursory sentence here and there but not enough attention.

That she then devotes three full pages to poorly-written invocations is just another nail in the coffin.

I am frequently disappointed in books that instruct the reader to "thank the goddess" and so on before the chapter that introduces the reader to the goddess. It's weird. I think I read something in the intro that suggested the reader read all the way through before doing any of the exercises, but in that case why load them up through the text? Shove them all into an appendix instead, so they don't continue to interrupt the flow of what you're writing.

Overall better content in this chapter, but I still expected more. My patience for her waffling has decreased as well which is part of it. I wish she'd get to the point and spend more time explaining what she means instead of expecting her imagery to do her explaining for her. It really doesn't, and it leaves one unsure of what she intends to say.

I'm worried about the next chapter. On the one hand, it will be the one instance where her tendency to tap in to her emotions about a subject will aid her in explaining it, rather than in the past chapters where they have only hindered her. On the other hand, you just know it's going to be an all-out wank-fest of non-specific crap and she's going to abuse the hell out of other deities and cultures and it will piss me off.

I mean whaaaaaaaaat. I can't even work out what she was trying to say! xd

Alright. At last, I have a copy and am beginning to read. page 5: she has already lost my interest..... It's very cut and dry. Not a whole lot to it. Granted, it's still the introduction, but I hope it gets a little better than this, or I probably won't finish it.