Witch Crafting by Phyllis Curott

While not strictly a book on Tarot, Curott's Witch Crafting includes a chapter on divination, including recommendations for reading the Tarot. A friend let me borrow her copy, which I'm paging through right now. I'm just curious if other people have read this, and what they think about Curott's approach to Tarot.

Kim

I found this book at our library last year and was really happy with reading it. The solitary excercises in the various chapters are excellent. The divination chapter was pretty basic though, from what I remember. It was definately a good read, as a book, and I'm very surprised our conservative library carried it!

I am a big fan of Phyllis Curott, to me she stands out as a person whose books add something new to the paganism. There are dozens of Wicca 101 books that all say the same thing whereas Curott will put something new out there for debate. For example the book WitchCrafting was fairly controvercial because she questions whether or not Wiccans should use the Law of Threefold Return as a model for behaviour. Her position was that the model was a reward/punishment and that rather than not to bad things because we fear karmic punishment we should do good things because it betters all of humanity.

I agree with Shade and loved this new approach to witchcraft and paganism. I really enjoyed her chapter on the threefold law. The only parts I didn't like were her views on relating quantum physics and magic, but I have issues with that in general for some reason! I can't really remember the divination section, but I do raelly recommend and rate this book.

I used her book for my wicca class that I ran a few yrs back. The book had just come out. Maybe I should look at it again.

I also like Phyllis Curott's books. And oddly - our public library also carries her books ! But I bought Witch Crafting myself. I like it because it is not a set of rules, but she allows you to think and feel for yourself.

She does not write much about tarot, she takes different forms of divination together in one chapter. I just looked at it again - she writes with a lot of respect about tarot and other divination tools. Hm, I am beginning to take my cards a bit for granted, it is inspirational to read how she feels about them

I like this book a lot. I feel she has done something that some other books I've read (which focus mainly on spells or materials) fail to do, which is put the "Spirit" back into "Spirituality". I know several folks who don't like the quantum physics references either, but as for me, personally, I see an awful lot of correlation between them. I also like her writing style, and the excercises are really great. Her chapter on divination is good, I think she deals with divination in the same way she addresses her other topics, and this seems to me to be a very balanced, effective approach.

Well, I waded through the chapter on divination, and had to put the book down for a few weeks after that. I just can't get with her attitude towards the cards. Not to say that such reverence doesn't work for others, just that it doesn't work for me.

So then I picked it back up today and moved on to the next chapter, where I read this:

"All places have spirits. The Greeks called them genius loci."

Click to expand...

I had to give up.


Kim