New books

I promised last week that I would mention the new books I've added to my occult library. Here they are.

Be A Goddess! A Guide to Magical Celtic Spells for Self-Healing, Prosperity and Great Sex by Francesca DeGrandis - Was there ever a fluffier, more market-driven title? Yuck. Nevertheless, this is a serious book with a lot of useful content. DeGrandis teaches Feri Witchcraft and was herself a student of Victor Anderson's for many years. Her description of Feri, like Starhawk's in The Spiral Dance, is lovely and quite appealing. I do wonder what Reya would say, though, given her cogent criticisms of Feri.

All Women Are Psychics by Diane Stein - Stein, a longtime devotee of women's spirituality and a prolific writer, takes a lot of risks in writing about topics that may seem downright loopy. Yet the more I grow on my path, the more I gain from her books. A few years ago, I would never have bought a book with this title. Now I'm fascinated by it.

The Wiccan Wellness Book: Natural Healthcare for Mind, Body, and Spirit by Laura Perry - I adore books about "alternative" modes of healing, and this is the first I've found written from a Wiccan perspective (although its application is much broader). It's a good book for someone new to holistic models of health and healing, but even as someone not new to these ideas, I was attracted to its witchiness, its clear layout, its emphasis on true wholism, and its easy instruction for beginning to work with the Green Ones.

Odyssey With the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete by Carol Christ - A very personal book from this academic writer.

Orders of the Great Work: Alchemy by Manly P. Hall - I picked this up at a used bookstore; it was published in 1949. It's a sympathetic, brief history of the alchemical schools in Egypt and Europe and the origins of the Rosicrucians.

The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino by Thomas Moore - An early book by the author of the well-known Care of the Soul. Ficino, "presiding genius" of the Florentine Academy in Renaissance Italy, is considered the first depth psychologist. That's all I know till I read this book.