Akiva Reads

by Arin Murphy-Hiscock

Picked it up for free and spent a couple hours paging through it.

All the things that bore me about "witchcraft" books are nicely contained herein:

• wiccan-influenced without understanding just how much so it is. "In general, witchcraft acknowledges a god and a goddess (sometimes solely a goddess)" p. 14; oh, does it now?

• vague claims of continuing a tradition multiple hundreds of years old; no exploration of how it continues from european witch/pagan traditions of the last 150 years. (Or a vague claim that all those traditions actually come from it?? (p. 23)) Bonus points for invoking the image of "midwives, wisewomen, and healers who live on the edge of town" repeatedly. Hey, an intriguing quote from actual medieval scholarship about how the main function of "cunning-folk" was removing curses/evil eye, and how that dried up as belief in curses/evil eye did! But no further information there, or acknowledgement that those cunning-folk wouldn't recognize anything about white north american green witchcraft including the name.

• but really, where does the author get all this stuff about the green witch path? I get that the real history is much less important to witches than the mythical history (p. 21), but I care! I hate the false, insulating sense of timelessness and culturelessness it creates. If it's her own creation or that of a community located in spacetime she should say so.

• puts "earth" and "humanity" before "yourself" as the focuses of green witchcraft (p. 16), but then all the spells/crafts/rituals are about things you can do for yourself and maybe your friend circle and/or customers of your small business. That's not much of a definition of other humans, much less the earth.

• much too brief reference to "Pennsylvanian pow-wow" as a type of "spellcasters who performed folk magic particular to a region" (p. 19). I wish there was more info here, as it's hard to internet search: most of the references that aren't to horror fiction are back to this book. Seems to be some kind of christian faith healing thing with a name appropriated from Native people to make it exotic and dangerous.

• lists of plants and gems with uses/correspondences, but zero interest in botany or geology. This is overwhelmingly common, and so self-centered! Not finding things beautiful or fascinating for what they are and how they came to be that way, only concerned about what they can do for you.

• where do gemstones come from? IDK, the store?? Seems a little disconnected from the earth. The quartzite, mica, and feldspar you can probably find in your backyard or park don't merit a mention.

• exclusive focus on harmony, abundance, and other positive emotions/states of being. (p. 31) Where does justice enter this picture? Productive conflict? Economic scarcity? Other people's needs and feelings?