Anyone know any good books on Witchcraft?

[shadowkat]

Friend of mine is researching the topic and asked for a few good books on it. Anyone who knows anything that I can pass on to her - let me know.

Thanks!

Only one could think of was Margot Adler's "Drawing Down the Moon".

Comments

[superplin.livejournal.com]

Does she want to know about the actual practices, the origins, or something else? And does she have a specific kind of witchcraft in mind, or just generally speaking?

If she is writing a book and wants to know about practices, it depends a lot on whether she is focusing on a specific tradition, or kitchen witches, etc. However, a few books that come to mind:

- Marian Green's A Witch Alone
- Deborah Lipp's The Way of Four
- Patricia Crowther's Lid Off the Cauldron
- for more cultural background, especially for the British/Celtic strains of witchcraft, there's Hutton's Triumph of the Moon

Most of these are skewed towards Wicca, in the traditional sense. For more neo-eclectic Wicca, she could check out books by Scott Cunningham; Starhawk's Spiral Dance has a mix of practices, largely-discounted history (although I think the latest edition acknowledges the inaccuracies), and politics; and there are a number of books on hedgewitches/kitchen witches, etc., i.e., those who practice without a religious component.

I've no idea which (if any) of these would be most useful, but that's all I can think of right now.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

She's considering writing a novel that does what was recently attempted by the British series "Hex" but better. (The series tackled witchcraft but failed to create a mythology - that's the problem with so many tv shows, they don't bother to research first.)

So I think what she is probably hunting is history, magical practices, and folklore/legends.

I'll give Whedon credit - I think they actually did research it a bit, since Willow clearly just practices Witchcraft and is not a wicca at first, and Tara is a Wicca. But hard to tell.

I did research it several years ago - but concentrated mostly on Druidism, which is quite different, and Witchcraft (from the political/historical standpoint)as well as Wicca, but not the magical practices per se.

Thanks for the suggestions! Very helpful. Will pass them on.