A Pagan Book of days? Please help me.

I am looking for a gift for a close friend who recently developed an interest in paganism. I want to give her a nice reference book with information on the different pagan festivals through the year, not just the Wheel of the Year days, but also some of the many other festivals.

I saw The Pagan Book of Days: A Guide to the Festivals, Traditions, and Sacred Days of the Year by Nigel Pennick. Is this any good?

If you are reading this, please make some recommendations!

Wicca Magickal Beginnings

This book by Sorita d’Este and David Rankine of Avalonia became available just around the time that the much loved and missed Avalonia forums were closed.  I ordered my copy promptly, but when it arrived I was reading the Women of the Golden Dawn by Mary Greer and put it aside for later.  I got distracted along the way and nearly forgot about the book when a friend, who is a Gardnerian High Priest, reminded me about it last week, saying that it was probably the most useful book available on the subject.  Naturally I was intrigued.

What is great about Wicca Magickal Beginnings is that both initiates and non-initiates will find it of both of use and interest.  This book provides amazing insights into practices which pre-date Gerald Gardner, as well as literature and other recorded sources, which all eventually made their way into Wicca.  The way in which the material is presented makes for easy reference, divided into chapters by subject.  For example there is a chapter on the origins of the Watchtowers, one on the origins of the Magick Circle and another on the precedents of the Wiccan Rede.  All the major parts of the rituals are covered.

This book gave me the feeling of real Witchcraft, the feeling of what it might have been like to be around during the early days of Gardnerian Wicca or with Alex and Maxine Sanders in Nottinghill.  There is plenty of material I have not seen before and that does not appear to have been considered by other authors, such as Ronald Hutton, on the subject of Wiccan history.  The authors aimed to provide material which side stepped all the debate about lineage and personalities according to their introduction and they succeed in this. The book is non dogmatic and a pleasure to read.  There is a cornucopia of material to use and explore toward expanding the current scope of knowledge of the tradition’s practices, both from ceremonial and folk magick, much of which surprised me.

Wicca Magickal Beginnings is a joy, a pleasure and a brave contribution to the debate of the origins of the tradition.

When ‘Advanced’ = ‘Very Basic’

This seems to be the trend.  I picked up a book in a London store today and had a look.  It had ‘ADVANCED WICCA’ written all over it, it claimed in the description to be for advanced practitioners of the art magical who wish to learn the secrets of advanced Wicca.  So I was curious and I looked.

What was clear to me was that the book did cover the very basics.  It told me all about the Gawdess and the Gawd, the Four Elements and how to do spells.  It told me all about how to open my chakras and how to close them, how to choose the correct phase of the Moon even.  Boohaadaadihay! I say.  What is so advanced about that?  Besides, do authors like this really believe that their readers are as idiotic as to believe that such nonsensensical dribble is ‘advanced’?  Well, it seems like their readers are indeed idiots, where as the authors are clever people who know how to take candy from a child without making them cry.  It seems to be a trend.  Write P.H.D. after your name on the cover of a book and you are an expert in whatever you are writing on, write the word ‘advanced’ and people believe you too.  Of course with Wicca it is even more nonsense than usual because the only way you can do advanced work is by working through the degrees with a good and disciplined coven, none of this nonsense of chakras and a hundred goddess names!

So, why do people who call themself pagan and who support ecological causes and honour the Earth buy such dribble?  It is clearly wasting the Earth’s resources!  It is clearly nonsense!  Is it that Pagans nowadays are actually new age consumers who wish to be trendy and that the idea of reading a book with real information in it seems like hard work?  It reminds me of an article I read recently about how the sale of oranges in the UK is down significantly due to the fact that people think its too much hard work to peel it!  I say, peel an orange hard work?  Reading a real book on Wicca hard work?  I guess it would be, because it will probably tell you to read a dozen more and then seek out a teacher!