Coven Craft: Witchcraft for Three or More

Subtitled "Witchcraft for Three or More" this book is about organizing and running a coven. In the introduction and first chapter it "educates" the reader on what Wicca is. According to Amber, Wicca is 15,000-200,000 years old with many of the religious practices being identical today as they were then, and that Gardner didn't create Wicca and it is a surviving tradition, because the people who initiated him are real, and having a real person is all that is required to validate any story. Then she went into the "origin" of the phrase faggot as being from the Burning Times when they burnt gay men, and that good and evil were concepts that came out of a "late" tradition, Zoroastrianism. Needless to say the scholarship didn't have me won over by the end of the first chapter (though in Chapter 16 she complains about "sloppily researched" books), but after that the book did actually progress well. It covered most of the basics, why have a coven, how to start, what you need, how to run it, inter-personal dynamics, counselling, etc. The book did try to touch on legal and media issues, which I felt was a bit mixed, in somecases she seemed rational about it, other times not as much. While it was a good book, it wouldn't be the book on this topic I recommend, in that case I'd stick with The Real Witches' Coven (Kate West), Gathering the Magic (Nick Farrell), or Inside A Magical Lodge (John Michael Greer). ( )

Coming soon to my personal collection.

I can't even finish this book. Even if the actual information on coven organization is good, the author's clear ignorance of every topic from history and modern archaeology to Thelema and Western ceremonial magic make this book an absolute unreadable mess. I'm going to keep this copy around just to remind me of what not to do in my own writing. It will have the secondary benefit of keeping this particular copy out of the hands of one impressionable wannabe Witch browsing their local used bookstore. I only gave it a 1/2 star rating so that I'd have at least given it the lowest rating I could. I'd have preferred a 0, but that isn't an option. ( )