So often when I crack open this book, I get a real sense of familiarity. Unfortunately this is not a positive sign. So often I feel like I am about to read the same old shit again. This book was a little bit different because it doesn’t regurgitate the circle drawing practices or the wheel of the year from some wiccan traditions, but at first I didn’t get a real sense of creativity difference or unique information.
As I opened it further I found it very lacking for both the advanced practitioner of magic and for the beginner. It has little teaching content and what exists is better in other places. Plant lore is MUCH more detailed in Scott Cunningham’s encyclopedia of magical herbs and Catherine Yronwode’s Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic, Energy work is much better in Michelle Belanger’s Psychic Energy Codex and Robert Bruce’s Energy work and rituals for tuning into nature … well just sitting in a garden and meditating and observing the plants and seeing what feels they give you works you don’t need to read a book about it. By all means give this book away. Many pagans love books like this, but then their lives seem to go no-where, their magic makes like a hoover and sucks and they get sucked into a local hell-mouth of rubbish psychology. Magic when done right is powerful. It makes the autistic computer programmer into a dancing artist. It make the layabout into a jetsetter. It makes the poor, rich and the rich, happy. It educates the foolish and gives the lost, true meaning. The people who appreciate books like this however, live comfy unremarkable lives, untouched by magic.
Identity for the Lost
She spends the first pages setting out the identity of a Green Witch to make it enticing but without actually saying anything. It’s a person with ethics … any ethics … their own ethics… no ethics specified. It’s a person who lives connected to nature, but no explanation as to what that connection entails leaving anyone to fill in the blank with whatever they like.
“Some Green Witches talk about devas or faires, while others roll their eyes and hoe the garden.” There’s no one thing that actually defines the Green Witch. So the reader can imagine their own ethics and their own connection to nature and own beliefs, then impose this over the idea so it becomes a reflection of the things they like.
It’s like Bella being such a blank character in the Stephanie Meyer Twilight series so all the teenage girls who read it can easily substitute themselves for Bella. I see this time and time again in pagan books. This book is written to feed the need of people who are looking for something to be and trying to catch all people like that. You don’t need to be anything other than what you are and a book is not needed to put a name on that.
Quite early on she suggests the reader, if they have seen themselves in the very vague description that came before, make an oath to “formally declare themselves to be on this path”. Naturally someone like me isn’t interested in committing myself to something, particularly something so unspecific. Why was she so vague? I can only conclude it was so it would apply to as many people as possible. Why would she want to have as many people as possible? I can only conclude she’s trying to attain followers, as many as possible. This is not a good sign. I must more prefer Peter Grey’s Apocalyptic Witchcraft where he makes a point of making it clear the magic not for everyone. Maybe it’s the elitist in me.
We often become so afraid of not knowing who we are and/or not liking ourselves, that it is common to yearn for something to be. As if having something to be is going to give us a solidity and a foundation in our identity. Unfortunately these things often give us a false identity. It’s not the real you it’s something you’re trying to be and the fact its something you “try” ends up making it something you naturally aren’t. It becomes like putting paint over a crack in the wall. It’s not going to last for long before that problem shows itself again because you haven’t actually fixed it. For the person who fears a lack of knowledge of who they are it’s a false promise that might work for a short time and for the practitioner who knows and loves who they are it’s a waste of pages and reading time they don’t need to read a whole chapter about contriving an identity that isn’t necessary. I guess it is aspirational, but I’d rather leave the reader to aspire to things that fit with their identity than try to make them follow this pattern. Focus on the magic please dear author, not the identity.
Lack of Doctrine
A lot of people turn their nose up at the word doctrine. It sounds rigid and inflexible to them. But the word doctrine actually means teaching. If you want to avoid teaching then don’t write a book purporting to teach something. In the end you’re writing a book to try and teach something, but you keep avoiding teaching anything because you don’t like the word doctrine. I like a book that has doctrine. At the end of the book I can say… hey I officially learned something. You want to avoid to teach… well don’t write a book.
Books like this aim instead to “take us on a journey” which sounds great, but people who have been on this journey for a long time are like … yeah I’ve ridden the X64 to Oxford 100 times already… give me a different journey and in order to do that a book needs to take its readers on a more specific journey, one they haven’t travelled before.
Too many books try to take their reader on a journey with no clear destination, direction and at the end of it their reader isn’t really sure what they learned. Also you ask them to put it into words and you hear the same vague terms over and over. I am sorry for the people happen to bob around in vagueness, that’s fine, but of all the things I could have incarnated as, I was extremely lucky to have been born human so I have the opportunity to learn things so I’m going to be as efficient as I can be with my learning and learn something concrete rather than a vague something that I can’t really tell if I am learning anything at all. If you have to use vague catch all terms for what you learned, then you can’t specify what you did learn then you probably didn’t learn a whole lot.
Because this book has little teaching in it, it’s not really useful for people who have already learned about magic because it doesn’t really add to what they know already and then it’s not great for beginners either as we will see later.
She also avoids any recognised traditions, avoiding words like Hoodoo and Wicca, so they don’t need to teach a tradition and can make it up as she goes a long. One of her earlier lines says “There is no body of formal knowledge passed on through careful training.” “Then why write a book?” I ask. Also after specifically saying that it isn’t a formal path like Wicca, she begins both her first Oath and first Prayer with an address to the Lord and Lady, the dual deity of Wicca, the four elements inherited into Wicca from Ceremonial Magic from Greek philosophy. So is she really teaching something that so deviates from Wicca or is just Wicca for those that can’t be arsed to read the Farrars, Valiente, Sanders and Gardner? Yes, yes it is.
Green Witch Holidays
She also suggests you don’t need specific holidays, but you can just make them up… This is slightly concerning for me because the reason we have religious holidays is because they fulfil a particular function. Whether it is an agricultural one, a psychological, something that enforces a regular observance of the cosmology of a saint or god, it is still important that it is done. If you just make up the holidays then you’re not going to have this purpose in mind and you’re just wasting your time and irritating your boss by demanding to have a certain day off for some holiday you just made up.
Relying on Intuition
She provides that the Green Witch works on intuition a lot. The issue I take with this is, how does one tell the difference between intuition and just doing whatever you feel like. There used to be a powerful psychic in mum’s church who thought of herself as the prophet of the Lord. The issue was that when she received a message from beyond she would feel it with her emotions and when she felt her emotions … well sometimes she assumed it was also a “message from the Lord”. Perhaps right now I am experiencing deep in my gut an intuitive guide leading me to buy ice-cream.
I am all for creativity and intuition, but a person should learn how something feels when you’re doing it by the book before you go off book. Otherwise you could end up doing something totally wrong and just not be able to tell what the agreed method should feel like. How can you tell “better” if you have never experienced it. It’s like knowing whether or not to add salt to meal without tasting it first.
There are so many people who can’t magic themselves out of a paper bag, but claim to have been a practising witch for 15 years, energy workers who don’t have the energy to get out of bed in the morning and healers who seem to be perpetually sick. I’m sorry to say something many people don’t want to hear, but you can get it wrong, you just might not have quite tuned into an intuition of what works yet. People don’t like this opinion because it means that they can be wrong and they don’t want to be wrong. Well fine but not wanting to be wrong doesn’t instantly make you right, if it did I would have done better in my degree.
Just starting out going I’m going to figure it out by self and just work on intuition is like a child trying to pick food for themselves… veg is yucky so throw that out, sweets are tasty so we will have that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then the practitioner/child starts to wonder why their magic isn’t working and they have the magical equivalence of an ulcer.
Not Great for New Comers
She gives a vague indication of an air altar could be put in a place of communication and earth in a place of relaxation, but gives little indication by this point in the book what each element is for. No good for a new comer to the craft who doesn’t have the associations for each element and is left to guess the other two.
For someone who knows how to set up altars to the elements this has no additional information and for someone who doesn’t know this does not contain the information to do so.
By the way in Eastern religions fire is associated with emotions because of their potential to burn and be active rather than water which can easily settle calmly down. This is contrary to typical Western associations so don’t tell me there’s only one way to interpret the elements and the practitioner should just intuit this way.
Feng Shui your house
This author jumps into redecorate your house quite early and I’m like what does this have to do with your spirituality? She talks about the flow of energy in the house like she’s trying to bring up feng shui, but gives no pointers on how to create the flow or anything about what fengshui is about. If you’re going to feng shui things up use actual feng shui otherwise you won’t know your jade dragon from your black tortoise and this book doesn’t cover fengshui so pick up a Stephen Skinner for that.
Your home is your home. It’s a reflection on you. Mine is often a mess because I’m busy focusing on things that matter more to me than cleaning. I will tidy it before it gets unbearable, but this is much like me. I put off getting the perfect retinol moisturiser until I have done all my studies, religious rituals and practised my kungfu. My house is full of things. If I lived in my sister’s minimalist, showroom house it would be a nightmare for me. I’d feel like I can’t have a book out because it would cause mess. Also suggesting you have a separate room for each purpose? I’d rather spend money on things congruent with my will than a 10 room mansion with nothing to put in it. Let your home being suited to you not some very vaguely defined Green Witch path you’re trying to contrive before you even know anything about the path.
Ms Murphy-Hiscock can you keep to the point please? Connecting to earth not Marie Kondo. It’s like reading another here’s everything about magic in one small tome. Sorry too much area to cover and in such a thin book you won’t do anything any justice.
Also she says to keep it clean so the energy can flow better. This appears before much of the path is explained before her first how-to guide on working with energy.
After indoor altars comes making outdoor altars… Having come from a ceremonial tradition where altars often get set up for a ritual and put away after the ritual is over, I feel like this setting up of altars is to give the practitioner a get-itus like a child at Christmas … I have an altar I’m a witch now, giggedy. The important thing is connecting to the forces not having a specific place to go to. People argue about whether god should be worshipped in a temple or on top a mountain, but pagans on the other hand have the ability to draw their magic circle no matter where they are (see Crowley Liber ABA book 4 the beginning of Part 2 – free on sacred texts for what is a circle). There’s this rush to create an altar to forces this Green Witch hasn’t yet connected to. How is she supposed to intuit where’s the best place to put something she’s never felt or met? Or is this just another drive to buy witchy stuff to make you have a complete home. If she were a real witch I think she would really begin to start questioning the need for half of this stuff.
Paganism … too many authors with too little to say about a subject that is wider than any university degree.
Not good for nubies
When she introduces energy work she does it in a way that people with no experience of energy work are able to pick it up. You need to already be competent at energy work to learn from her quick guide “think of the energy… pour that feeling”. This is great for people like me who don’t need to learn energy work because I’ve done it for years but it’s a little too quick for a beginner.
Fantasy land
I am slightly concerned that she might be the sort to live in a romanticised history of the witch. She certainly has an idea of a Green witch which she goes on about trying to make it enticing. I wonder if she’s read the historians such as Ronald Hutton. He doesn’t appear in her bibliography which consist mostly of books read by baby witches like Silver Ravenwolf, Kate West and Janet Farrar. Luckily at least one book by Doreen Valiente shows up in her bibliography.
Vague understanding of magic
She spends forever trying to explain that it’s sort of not magic because it’s not manipulating energy… but then writes most of the book about tapping into energy, being sensitive to energy etc. So what is it? The author talks about harmonizing herself to nature, by being sensitive to it. The language she uses is entirely passive, there’s no active vocabulary in there. No doing words. So this book isn’t really about witchcraft then is it? More like witchwatching, but she chooses good ingredients for a “room purification” incense consists of some good ingredients.
It seems she’s not sure what her idea of magic is. Her idea of magic is making a cup of tea… This also raises concerns for me that she can’t present exactly what she hopes to teach in a clear way because she is trying to avoid certain ideas or words. This wreaks of the fear of appearing to be what one really is. Perhaps she should try shadow work?
To make it even more confusing she says what the Green Witch does is not really magic at all it’s all natural and a page later she says what the Green Witch does is sacred. The very definition of sacred is the process of setting something apart from natural for a special ritual purpose. Is it something natural? Or is it something set apart? This author doesn’t know. She’s just saying the words she thinks sounds nice to make the book sound good without giving you any meaningful meat.
In a description of tools she mentions a staff which she then equates to the world tree, the axis mundi, the tent pole in a shaman’s tent. She even mentions the practice of a shamans mind climbing up the world tree. I find it a little frustrating when people speak about things they don’t know about. This is a common line in many witchy books reproduced over and over… someone ask this lady if she has ever known a shaman who practised in a tent with a pole. The word shaman comes from Tunguska and is often used to refer to Native Americans rather than people in Siberia yet sadly within the Witchy world nearly everyone who talks about Shamanism has never met a Tunguska or Native American person in their entire lives and learned some pseudo neo-shamanism from a white person with very little understanding of the foreign tradition.
Natural is not Necessarily Healthy
First we have a mention of a broom and ye gods forbid you use nylon one. Okay so plastic isn’t the best conductor of energy, but you’re not pushing energy through it. The broom is for doing the dramatic action of cleaning to help the ritual of cleaning… a blooming leaf blower would work. There’s no reason a typical nylon broom won’t do if you already have one. You don’t need to go out and spend money on a straw broom in order to banish your house. Ye gods the number of pagans that are always broke because they need to buy these awesome crystals and all natural everything and then they can hardly afford to pay their bills and do anything good with their money. It’s stuff like this that does it. All natural, all organic, no toxins are all sales pitches honey and often they don’t mean what you think they mean. You don’t need to fork out a lot of money to be a witch.
Disclaimer: Natural is not necessarily healthy. Deadly nightshade is a natural growing plant and as I am sure you can tell by its name, it is poisonous. We have some laburnum trees in our garden that are toxic too especially to children. A lot of people hear all natural and think it is good for you, but nature is full of nasty bits and bobs that humans were never supposed to come across. People talk about modern remedies as “chemicals” as if it contains something dangerous except there’s far more chemicals in a plant that are undesirable than a lab synthesised compound. In fact normally when we make a health/beauty product we start with a plant which has a beneficial ingredient and then we try to strip away the toxins and undesirable chemicals to leave only the desirable ones. Sometimes working from the plant is bad for the environment, so a synthesised version is used. The problem is that financial incentives in companies often encourage bad decisions with regards to a product, but this is just as likely with a plant based product as with a synthesised.
Conclusion
Overall this book is pulp. It feels good for pagans with low IQ to read. It doesn’t push them or challenge them. It doesn’t grow them. It regurgitates stuff they already know or at least stuff that would create a feeling of hindsight bias, so they feel good about what they already know. It’s an ego boost. It essentially is like paper on the fire. The fire will go through them quickly, but not stay sit for long because they have no content, no meat, no log to heat the room or cook the pot. Give this book away. Buy something to help you learn an area of magic you lack knowledge. Buy something specific. A specific form of divination, mysticism, spirit communication or conjuring. That will offer far more growth.