Not so magical (Witch: A Magickal Journey - Fiona Horne)

Member Name: LittleEwok

Product:	Witch: A Magickal Journey - Fiona Horne
Date:	17/03/05 (1375 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great writing style, Covers topics others might shy away from, There's a couple of naked centrefold pictures!

Disadvantages: Fickle and insubstantial, too autobiographical, No info on meditation etc.

In my early days of wanting to become a witch, I was bought this for my Christmas. I was rather reluctant about the whole thing, it looked suspiciously like one of these “Fluff Bunny” books trying to popularise modern witchcraft, and I was right.

Fiona Horne is a sexy blonde Australian witch…and hell does she know it. This book is more autobiography than info on how to become a witch, and its certainly no better off for it. If you are looking for a book which is supposed to give you information on becoming a witch, then this is probably not the wisest place to start. There is more info about her pet python, how her band broke up and her sexual relationships than anything to do with witchcraft…as you will see.

The book starts with a little story about how Fiona became a witch…something many Witch authors include in their work, except they don’t usually write five pages about it. With such pukey statements as “All the magick [sic] you will ever need is already inside you”, you’d be forgiven for thinking this book is utter trash, if you know anything about the pagan religions.

As is usual in many witchcraft books, a falsified history of the craft is included. For those of you who don’t know anything about pagan writing, many pagans are claiming an old, unbroken line back to the prehistoric times of our religion…it is utter rubbish. There is no evidence for half of what witch authors claim, and it simply provides more fuel for the anti-pagan brigade to try and discredit our religion. To be fair to Fiona though, she does include a statement about it not really mattering where Witchcraft came from, but rather where it is going.

To my dismay there was also a chapter about appearances. A common thing included in modern “Wicca” books, it simply perpetuates the Buffy generation of witches…to quote Willow from Buffy herself “Every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she’s a sister to the dark ones”. Although many witches do enjoy playing with their appearance and dressing up in all sorts of get ups, this really has NOTHING to do with witchcraft in itself. How you apply your eyeliner has nothing to do with what religion you practise. The only information that needed to be covered here was “skycladding” (i.e. witches who perform rite and ritual in the nude). Again, this just seems like a chance for Fiona to rant on about her own life, including some in depth information about a meditation retreat and a labret piercing. One again it all smacks of autobiography.

The correspondences chapter is a pretty thorough one, and its about the best chapter in this book for information. It includes basic numerology, days of the week, phases of the moon, colours, crystals, herbs and oils, animals and angels. I feel the section on deities was far too insignificant however. Like a lot of modern witchcraft books there isn’t enough theology and there is too much information on how to “do” spells. Sadly though, Fiona leaves out two key points. Firstly, she doesn’t discuss the importance of growing your own herbs. Growing and tending your own plant is far more magical than buying a ready-dried one from a store, and this should be made emphatically clear. Also, like many new-agey Witchcraft books, she fails to mention the fact that most “healing crystals” are strip mined from the earth in ways which devastate both the environment and the labour that is exploited in the process. I feel new agers are very irresponsible in buying pretty stones that have been torn from the earth, whilst claiming to be environmentalists. How the hell is a stone supposed to heal if it has been bombed from the place to which it belonged?

The magical hotspots chapter again is heavy on the biography and light on the information. There is a half decent section on creating sacred space, and after that the ENTIRE BLOODY chapter is devoted the Fiona’s life. So far.

The rest of the book goes in much the same fashion. Its clear this book was written for teenagers and young fans of Fiona Horne, and not really for anyone seriously considering the path of the Witch. As in most modern “Wicca” books, information on sabbats and the gods is pretty scant and crammed in almost as an afterthought. Another glaring omission is the lack of any information on how to actually BECOME a witch…e.g., learning to meditate and visualise, learning to be in touch with the world around you and understand the people around you…these things are far more fundamental to any witch than learning a spell from a book word for word, and it’s a shame that more witch books don’t state this from the outset. It is also quite a commercialist approach to religion…it stresses having the right objects, the athame, the wand, the crystals and oils…so caught up in the particulars it is that it TOTALLY misses the point. A witch doesn’t need fancy tools or expensive herbs, what a witch needs is strength, inspiration and sensitivity.

There is a heavy duty amount of information about spells in this book, which always annoys me. Magic which works has to be magic of your own making, doing a spell from a book wont work because its not YOUR thought that goes into it, its someone else’s. This should be stressed more in this book, and the spells sections should probably be omitted altogether. There is also no theory on how the principles of magic are supposed to work, which is pretty important in any book on such a subject.

Although its easy to criticise the material provided in this book, I do think is a valuable addition to any Witchy self. A lot of witch authors these days are very holier-than-thou and far too serious, whereas this book brings out the fun, laughter and joy that being a witch brings to life. Some of the topics covered might be trivial but as the book is aimed at the sort of person who is likely to be a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Charmed” fan, that is to be expected, and the book still has some pretty good starter information alongside all the drivel. It manages to tread the line between serious witchcraft books and the sort of trashy fun witchcraft book every witch secretly has a few of on their shelf, and in that aspect it has to be applauded. If a witch has to have at least one “Fluff Bunny” title on their shelf (and lets face it, most of them do), they could do worse than this.

In Fiona’s favour, she does have a very good writing style. She’s young and funky and easy to read, her writing is sharp, and humorous despite a few dodgy puns and clichés, and unlike most popularised witch books she does avoid the whole “happy fluffy new agey” rubbish that many so called Wiccan authors tout nowadays. Despite being a gorgeous skinny blonde who perhaps likes the sound of her own voice waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much, you have to enjoy her writing because its quirky and idiosyncratic…and above all it paints her as human, something which a lot of witch authors fail to do, especially the holier-than-thou new agey ones like Silver Ravenwolf and Starhawk (although the latter is still a wonderful author). Its an easy read with a chatty, informal style, extremely frank language, and that is a refreshing change in the world of old-fashioned “lets get out into the country” witchy authors.

I cant stand all that love and light crap and its clear from this book that Fiona Horne is in touch with her dark side. She isn’t afraid to tackle the topics that many sanitised Wiccan authors avoid, namely, using tantric sex in magic, and use of hallucinogenics to gain altered states of consciousness…and she has some pretty good advice in that forum. She also covers the topic of hexing very well, as with the drugs she doesn’t condemn it she just advises extreme caution, and I feel she’s pretty strong on this point, mostly fluffy-wuffy wuv-and-wight Wiccan authors decide they are the ultimate authority on such matters, and pass their personal viewpoints on as written law, which very much annoys me.

On the same point, this book is clearly marketed at teenagers and maybe young-twenty-something’s, and its nice to see a book for the younger generation of witches-to-be that doesn’t downplay the darker and naughtier aspects of Wicca that are often skated over in books aimed at young people. Horne happily provides no-nonsense information on such issues, whilst cleverly managing to take an unbiased and sensible viewpoint, probably to avoid angry parents hunting her down and killing her. In this way it’s a good book for younger people as it informs without patronising, it seems as if Fiona is treating her readers as equals not sub-literate idiots like other authors; who shall not be named (Silver Ravenwolf, Silver Ravenwolf, Silver Ravenwolf), might treat the same age group. I feel this is taking the right approach…if you deny what really goes on in the world to teenagers, eventually they are probably going to find out the wrong way (as the mass amount of teen pregnancies in our country will attest to), whereas if you sit them down and inform them properly at least they will know what they’re dealing with. It’s a fairly brave line for a Wiccan author to take towards teens, as pagans are often accused of corrupting youth, but I feel ultimately it’s the correct one.

All in all, this book is great fun to read, perhaps gentle weekend reading for somebody who is young or wants a bit of light reading for the weekend, but it shouldn’t be taken too seriously in terms of content despite some very good points Fiona makes. I feel she may well have the potential to be a seriously good author with a bit more experience, and when she learns that there are other ways to sell books that putting naked pictures of yourself in the centre of the book! If you want a light, fun witchy read without a load of sanctimonious new age rubbish, this isn’t a bad place to start. In read in conjunction with more serious Wiccan authors like Marian Green, Starhawk, Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, I feel this book has a lot to add.

I give the book a three out of five, purely because the writing is so good, and because the dark side of witchcraft isn’t downplayed at all, which make a refreshing change. The content itself is one star, but I’m giving allowances due to the fact that its clearly marketed at a younger audience who do want to hear about some of the more trivial things in the book. All in all, it’s a fun, funny and quirky read whether you’re into the witchy thing or not, so long as you don't take it too seriously!

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