When I picked up this book, I thought it looked very good. I don't think however, I was quite prepared to be as impressed as I was with the work. It is not just a work about herbs and Witchcraft and their history, but a treasure trove of world cultural traditions and the folk healing modalities.
As a professional herbalist, I was really very happy to see the amount of research and documentation that went into this book. It really delves into the European shamanic traditions and healing arts and folk religions attached to them. This is something, which is sadly quite lacking in alot of literature that is about "shamanism". So much of of it is a hodge podged mess of European and Native American practices and lots of urban legend. Not so with this book. You get a clear idea where the lines of the histories of Witchcraft and folk medicine practices got blurred and blown far out of proportion by way of legend and outright lies. And you also get an in depth look at how many of these plants were used. The authors pull no punches, poisons, halucinagens and abortifacients can be found listed in this book. I think this is the first time in many years that I have seen an herbal book which dared to list them, let alone discuss them. I also learned about some plants that I had no knowledge of before and I am always up for that! This, I believe is how Witches in the past truly practiced, and how many still practice to this day throughout the world. The focus however is on European Witches and Western herbalism.
Witchcraft Medicine is clearly a scholarly work, but it it is not so much that the subject is at all dry and uninteresting to read. It was for me quite the contrary. I couldn't put it down! There is no relgious-centric slant to it at all. There are no sensationalist claims about 8 million Witches being murdered during the so-called Burning Times, for example. It's just lots of very straight facts, which is important. There may be a few nit-picky inaccuracies as far as mythologies, but when is there not? To be completely honest, there is a lot that is junk out there, and this book I would count among my top ten historical herbals on my personal bookshelf. This book is a very impressive body of work. Note that there are not really recipies or proportions as to using these now.
EDIT: The Print Version is Better Than the Kindle Version:
I stand by my original review of this book. It is an excellent guide into the herbs that are legendary within traditional witchcraft and shamanism. Cerrtainly, there are other books out there that will give you more how-to's than this one will as this one is a general, historical overview. As both an occultist and an herbalist, I think you can do far worse than a book like this one and Christian Rasch is probably one of the foremost authorities in the world on the topic of herbalism as it pertains to shamanic and witchcraft practices.
I have the print version of this book and naturally because I travel a great deal and I want to have it available to me in electronic form, I purchased the Kindle version. One of the nice things about the print version are the wonderful watermarks of each page based on old witchcraft woodcuts, etc. Amazon, has not yet worked out all of the kinks in the electronic version for Kindle, so it is easy to feel as if you are being deprived of the many many images that are in the print version. I also own Chrstian Rasch's book, "Psychoactive Plants" in print version, however with the Kindle version of the same book being $60, I am going to wait until the technology catches up to where what is on my screen loooks closer to what I have in print form.
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FeralMom
Better than the lengthy review would lead one to believe
Reviewed in Canada on April 26, 2023
