The Path of Elemental Witchcraft: A Wyrd Woman’s Book of Shadows

Witch Salicrow (Jump Girl) delivers a meandering handbook for practicing witchcraft with the four elements: water, earth, fire, and air. The author discusses her personal experiences with each element and covers the basics of engaging them with magic, including how to communicate safely with “elemental beings,” make offerings to spirits and places, and build altars outdoors and at home. For instance, Salicrow describes when she encountered water spirits known as undines in a stream, and provides instructions for receiving supernatural messages by dripping food dye into a bowl filled with water as one gazes at it and asks questions of the “spirit of Water.” Other rituals teach how to cleanse one’s “energetic body” by burning herbs, create a “magical hearth” by requesting protection from the “spirit of Fire,” and welcome land spirits known as devas by praising plants in one’s garden. While Salicrow’s exploration of the temperaments of the elements enlightens, the surfeit of superfluous personal anecdotes tends to distract, and cursory explanations of magical concepts, often relegated to footnotes, will leave novices in the cold. Seasoned practitioners will find this fitfully illuminating. (May)