Book Review: Wild Witchcraft By Rebecca Beyer

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer

Narrated by Candace Thaxton

This is another great book that you’d really be better served getting in print form, rather than audio for ease of reference. The narrator does a pretty good job with pronunciation and doesn’t come off as too stiff or robotic as some can. The production quality is top notch.

I liked the approach of most of the book – it didn’t feel too heavily Wicca based for most of it and, hands down, the best materia magica I’ve found so far (but I have a book on order that may well eclipse it, we shall see). I think it has more detailed historical information than Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs and less of the gendering of the plants, more leaning towards energy types. There didn’t seem to be a super over-abundance of astrology for those of us who don’t quite get all that just yet.

The tone of the book is very friendly and informal while still being very informative with a proper air of expertise. If you’re not a planty person, there are probably better books for you to spend your money on but you’d still find value here – in the spellcrafting tips, the sample rituals, the historical information around the ‘Wheel of the Year’ celebrations without coming across as too reconstructionist.

This book does touch on a lot around the subject of appropriation and how to avoid it and some of the differences between appreciation and appropriation and how hard the line can be to find in Appalachian root workings because of how integrated the cultures have become in this part of the world.

There are some great tips on foraging and some of the pitfalls to avoid and some things to do with them. Love love love to see that. The author even touches on some old herbal remedies and types of remedies you can make. It’s not a be all end all reference for this but a great place to get a little taste and see if that’s something you’d be at all interested in learning more about.

In my opinion, this is a really solid addition to any witch’s bookshelf – it doesn’t seem to have that all love and light and happy tone or the my way is the only way tone that I really do my level best to avoid. It’s one I’d like to get a physical copy of it to keep on my reference shelf. Definitely a keeper.

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