Teen Witch (Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation - Silver Ravenwolf)

Member Name: Brooke3

Product:	Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation - Silver Ravenwolf
Date:	06/11/08 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy to read, friendly writing style, good introduction to wicca

Disadvantages: biased

As a teenager with an interest in paganism who had found it very difficult to read the heavier stuff by pagans like Janet and Stuart Farrar I picked up this book and found that finally there was a book on paganism that I can understand.

I consider this to be a great book for a number of reasons.

Teen witch is really really easy to understand. It takes complicated concepts and simplifies them. I don't just think that this is good for teenagers, I'm not trying to be patronising and say that it's a great book for teenagers because it's so easy to understand. It's a great book for anyone who is new to Wicca because of it's simplicity.

Teen witch puts a high emphasis on the positive side of paganism. There are many forms of paganism out there that are slightly darker or a little bit more open to interpretations of what is good and bad but teen witch, and I guess books on wicca in general, is very much about helping people and not doing harm to anyone which I consider to be a really positive message. Regardless of the religious context I think it's good to have books out there that are encouraging teenagers to respect each other and themselves.

However, there are also a number of things that I don't like about teen witch.

It presents things in a very black and white way. There isn't anything wrong with this in itself, it's just a matter of personal preference for me. It's not my personal religious belief that good and evil exist or that everything is so binary and Teen Witch is very much focused in places on polar opposites, for example there being a God and Goddess who are opposites (day and night, male and female). Like I said there's nothing wrong with this, it's just not my own religious belief.

Teen witch is about one form of paganism (wicca), not paganism as a whole so anyone reading this book should keep in mind that it is simply one belief system and not judge all pagans on what wiccans believe. Teen witch presents a very glamourised, glossed over version of wicca, leaving out its conservative origins and giving a very biased view of the religion. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it is after all a book on wicca aimed at young people.

For those interested in wicca I would definitely recommend this book. For those interested in paganism or religion in general I would recommend this book but suggest that you read about other forms of paganism too. It isn't the best introductory book to paganism but I do consider it one of the best introductory books to wicca.

I enjoyed the writing style of this book very much. Silver RavenWolf writes the book as though she is talking to you and I liked that but she does take on a very motherly role which I found a little bit patronising.

Summary: A good introduction to wicca.