Drawing Down the Moon (107 page)

Forfreedom, Ann, and Julie Ann.
The Book of the Goddess
(1980). Available from Ann Forfreedom, 2441 Cordova Street, Oakland, CA 94602. Personal experiences of the Goddess, poetry, and illustrations.

Fortune, Dion.
The Sea Priestess
(New York: Samuel Weiser, 1978). Dion Fortune wrote many novels as well as books on practical occultism. Within the novels, Pagan initiatory themes are dominant; in her nonfiction, they are not. All the Pagan novels, including
Moon Magic
and
The Goat Foot God,
are interesting, but
The Sea Priestess
is very special, portraying the power of ritual and initiatory experience in a way that words are seldom able to express. None of these novels work
as novels,
but
The Sea Priestess
works despite its structural flaws. Students at the beginning of a Pagan spiritual search should find this novel particularly powerful.

Fox, Selena.
Circle Guide to Pagan Resources
(Madison, WI: Circle Publications, 2003). By the time you read this, there may be a later edition. The absolute best guide to groups, gatherings, journals, and Web resources. Goes state by state, country by country, and probably has three times the number of groups listed in this resource guide.

Foxwood, Orion.
The Faery Teachings
(Coral Springs, FL: Muse Press, 2003). Lessons from an Elder trained in Celtic, Alexandrian, and Faery traditions of the Craft.

Gardner, Gerald B.
Witchcraft Today
(New York: Citadel Press, 1955). One of the books that started the Wiccan revival. It was first published in 1954 after the repeal of the last Witchcraft Acts in Britain. There is some questionable scholarship here, but if it weren't for Gardner,
Drawing Down the Moon
would never have been written, and more importantly, the Wiccan revival might not have taken place.

———.
The Meaning of Witchcraft
(New York: Samuel Weiser, 1959). A much more comprehensive book than
Witchcraft Today,
and a further expansion of Gardner's views. Gardner also wrote an early Witchcraft novel,
High Magic's Aid.

Gimbutas, Marija.
Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500–3500 B.C.
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982).

———.
The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbolism of Western Civilization
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989).

———.
The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1991). Controversial, contested, and pioneering works by an archeologist who delved into the pre-patriarchal cultures of Old Europe.

Glass, Justice.
Witchcraft, the Sixth Sense
(North Hollywood, CA: Wilshire Book Company, 1970). When this book came out, it was one of the only good books on the modern Craft. This is one of the earliest guides to Wicca, and still a sensible, sensitive, well-written introduction to the Craft.

Goldenberg, Naomi.
Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1979). A study of the rise of women's spirituality and the problems patriarchal religions have failed to address.

Goodrich, Norma Lorre.
Priestesses
(New York: HarperCollins, 1989). A study of priestesses from the Hittites through the Roman Empire.

Graves, Robert.
The White Goddess
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966). This is a great work of poetic prose often confused for scholarship. A massive, mythic framework for the Great Goddess in hope of her re-emergence. An important book in the history of the revival of Wicca and Goddess spirituality.

Griffin, Susan.
Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
(New York: Harper & Row, 1978). A deep, dark, and powerful work that argues, among other things, that there is a connection between the “age of enlightenment” and the persecution of Witches.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen.
The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft
(New York: Facts on File, 1989).

———.
The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft
(New York: Facts on File, 2nd Ed., 1999). Many of the leaders of the Wiccan and Pagan revival are in this encyclopedia. Fun to peruse.

Harner, Michael.
The Way of the Shaman
(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1982). Harner writes about and promotes “core shamanism,” a way of using shamanic techniques that can be applied to any group and culture.

Harrow, Judy.
Spiritual Mentoring
(Toronto: ECW Press, 2002). An excellent book on mentoring and pastoral counseling from a Pagan and Wiccan point of view.

———.
Devoted to You: Honoring Deity in Wiccan Practice
(New York: Citidel Press, 2003). Insights from working with various deities.

Hopman, Ellen Evert, and Lawrence Bond.
People of the Earth
(Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1996). A great supplement to
Drawing Down the Moon.
Contains long interviews with Pagans and Wiccans from all across the country and Canada.

Hutton, Ronald.
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). This is an utterly brilliant book written by an English historian.

James, William.
The Varieties of Religious Experience
(London: Collins, 1982, reprinted from 1902). The classic treatise on religious experience, still worth reading one hundred years later.

Jong, Erica.
Fanny
(New York: New American Library, 1980). There have been very few bestsellers that feature a priestess of the Goddess or a Witch from a Wiccan perspective. This is one of the few. Fanny is a feisty, bawdy character.

Kelly, Aidan.
Crafting the Art of Magic
(St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1991). Some of Kelly's work on Gerald Gardner. Kelly was the first to note that Gardner's manuscript “Ye Bok of ye Art Magical” was the earliest version of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows.

Lamond, Frederick.
Religion without Beliefs: Essays in Pantheist Theology, Comparative Religion and Ethics
(London: Janus, 1997). A fascinating book by a former member of Gardner's coven on Wicca as a practical religion without dogma, based on direct personal experience.

Luhrman, T. M.
Persuasions of the Witch's Craft
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). A fascinating survey of Witches and magical groups in England. This was Luhrman's doctoral thesis; she might have been more forthcoming if she didn't have to play academic politics, but she was more a participant than she lets on.

Magliocco, Sabina.
Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). A truly excellent study of Wicca and Paganism and their relationship to folklore and anthropology.

Mariechild, Diane.
Mother Wit: A Feminist Guide to Psychic Development
(Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1981). One of the early feminist guides to psychic work; the exercises and affirmations are done with a poetic sensibility and great sensitivity.

Markale, Jean.
Women of the Celts
(London: Gordon Cremonesi, 1975). A fascinating study of women in Celtic society.

Melton, J. Gordon.
Encyclopedia of American Religions,
2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale Research, 1987).

———.
Magic, Witchcraft, and Paganism in America: A Bibliography
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1982). Melton is important as one of the first outsiders to study Paganism and Wicca respectfully.

Merchant, Carolyn.
The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980). A more scholarly and less poetic exploration of some of the same issues explored by Susan Griffin in
Woman and Nature.

Miller, David.
The New Polytheism, Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974). In this early and groundbreaking book, Miller used the Greek gods and goddesses as archetypal images to discover a new world of multiple values. While his reliance on classical Greek imagery is limiting, his political and philosophical insights on the relationship of polytheism to politics and society is illuminating and liberating.

Murray, Margaret A.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
(London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Much of her scholarship is now considered questionable. Other parts are valuable, including much of the history of folk traditions and the continuation of Pagan customs. Her books, like those of Gardner, are important because they provided a springboard for the Wiccan revival.

———.
My First Hundred Years
(London: William Kimber, 1963). She did live to be one hundred, and for all the controversy surrounding her scholarship, was an extraordinary woman.

Patai, Raphael.
The Hebrew Goddess
(Philadelphia: Ktav Publications, 1967). Patai asserts that the Hebrews continued to worship the Canaanite goddesses of old. Patai looks at the place of the Shekinah, of Lilith, and explores the battles between patriarchal and matriarchal forces within Jewish history and tradition.

Piggott, Stuart.
The Druids
(New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986). Although there is more recent scholarship, this is a classic study of the Druids that separates fact from fiction.

Pike, Sarah M.
Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). A fascinating study of the Pagan festival movement.

———.
New Age and Neopagan Religions in America
(Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). A complicated study that tries to cover both New Age and Neo-Pagan religions and place them in historical context.

Rabinovitch, Shelly, and James Lewis.
The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism
(New York: Citadel Press, 2002). A really excellent encyclopedia that tackles most of the important issues and controversies surrounding Wicca and Paganism.

Robinson, James, ed.
The Nag Hammadi Library
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977). The Gnostic writings unearthed at Nag Hammadi. An important series of documents, especially for women interested in finding sources for goddesses in religion. For example, The Thunder, Perfect Mind is one of the most amazing invocations of the feminine, and it dates back at least to the second century.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford.
Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing
(New York: HarperCollins, 1992). A Christian feminist theologian explores issues relating to women, nature, and patriarchy, and creates new theology.

Sallustius.
Concerning the Gods and the Universe
; edited with prolegomena and translation by Arthur Darby Nock (Cambridge: The University Press, 1926). A short, forty-seven-page work by a Neoplatanist and friend of the Pagan Emperor Julian that Gerald Gardner thought similar to the theology of the Craft.

Scarre, Geoffrey, and John Callow.
Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe,
2nd ed. (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave, 2001). An excellent summation of recent scholarship on the issue of the Witchcraft persecutions in Europe.

Sjoo, Monica, and Barbara Mor.
The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). The late Monica Sjoo was an artist, a writer, and an activist. Scholars may quibble, but it's a powerful, passionate, feminist exploration of the Goddess.

Sky, Michael.
Sexual Peace: Beyond the Dominator Virus
(Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 1993). A basic and very eloquent primer on the problems of patriarchy, uniquely and personally told from a male point of view.

Spretnak, Charlene.
The Politics of Women's Spirituality
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1982). Almost six hundred pages of essays charting the rise of the Feminist Spirituality Movement. A sourcebook filled with scholarship and controversy. Also contains poetry, prose, and an excellent bibliography.

Starhawk.
Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1982). This book joins the insights of the direct action non-violent peace movements with the insights of the Wicca coven. Starhawk draws on her own experiences with groups, doing rituals, protest actions, and spending time in jail, and provides a primer for working with groups. Parts of the appendix on the history of the “Burning Times” would be contested by most scholars today, but her analysis of the loss of the commons, which combines the insights of feminist writers with English labor historians like Christopher Hill, is fascinating.

———.
The Spiral Dance, A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979). This book came out the same day as
Drawing Down the Moon.
It remains one of the best books on modern Wicca, filled with theory, practice, rituals, and exercises. As with all of Starhawk's work, a beautiful interweaving of spiritual and social concerns.

———.
Truth and Dare
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). A psychology of liberation.

———.
The Fifth Sacred Thing
(New York: Bantam, 1993). The first of several novels. A future imperfect utopia struggles to maintain its integrity in the face of war, violence, and other struggles.

Stone, Merlin.
Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, Volumes I, II
(New York: Sibylline Books, 1979). Another controversial feminist classic. A collection of Goddess legends from all over the world, with a feminist point of view, and arranged culture by culture. Includes a lot of source material.

Sulak, John, and V. Vale.
Modern Pagans: An Investigation of Contemporary Pagan Practices
(San Fransicso: RE/Search Publications, 2001). Interviews with modern Pagans, and others, including Oberon Zell, Starhawk, Matthew Fox, Patricia Monaghan, Diane di Prima, and me. A few interviews explore some of the edgier issues, including polyamory and sacred prostitutes.