Practical Protection Magic

[Grymdycche]

Just finished Ellen Dugan's Practical Protection Magick.

 

My first impulse was to simply pan this book mercilessly, but upon further reflection and some doublebacking, I decided to give it a Pros and Cons list instead.

Obviously, the book is about protection magic. I found it amusing that Ms Dugan felt compelled to try and convince the reader that curses and hexes really exist and that -heaven's to mergatroid- some witches may not follow wiccan ethics. Oh yeah, it's a wiccan book. There's mention of the rede, one or two of the "Goddess and God", and plenty of calling on elements along with their compass direction correspondences.

 

 

Pros

• Decent correspondence tables for gems, herbs, colors, planets, etc
• Good coverage of psychic and emotional vampires (she does differentiate between the two)
• An .. interesting test in the beginning to discern your psychic proclivity- clairvoyance, clairaudience, intuitive, empathic, or intuitive.
• Possibly the best point, she covers physical fitness, and how feeling healthy and fit can go a long way towards repelling mental and emotional negativity. In this, I agree 100% with her, and I think not enough meta-physicists acknowledge this. Most try to divorce mind or self from body, but I think that's wrong.. your body is you too, own it! I give her points for this.

It started off well enough.

 

Cons

*The biggest problem with the book by far are the spells- I mean, the actual wording she gives, and as though these are age old spells written in stone. They are, without peer, the most childish and poorly written bits I've ever seen. A great many of the words are 3rd grade level filler words that are there just to effect a rhyme, and at others times, I've no idea why they're there at all, because the meter is also usually very off. This seriously turned me off this book and made me almost throw it out. Really, it's like someone's watched too many reruns of Bewitched. It's a saving grace that, in reality, most people probably don't recite spells verbatim but make up their own or at least customize them. It would've helped if she'd left just a framework to work from maybe, but as is, they are, IMHO, godawful.

Here's an example :

By the strength of witchery, this crystal spell is cast

My protection and security will surely last

 

Seriously? By the strength of witchery?? lol!

 

*For every spell or procedure, she instructs one to first "ground and center", yet nowhere in this book does she actually tell the reader precisely how to do that, or at least, a best or preferred method for doing that. One page very near the end does make a vague reference to putting roots down into the ground, but that's all. From every other perspective, this is a beginner's book, so why leave out something apparently so central to all the workings?

 

*Wiccan ethics - you get hit with this quite a bit. In fact, she doesn't even believe (she says) in sending negativity back to the sender, but just diverting it into the earth and grounding it.

 

*A great deal of the book is personal anecdotes (as well as mention of the other books), which I perceived as not only serving to illustrate a point, but unfortunately also to add filler, as they often went into unnecessary length or detail. Some of those details had me rolling my eyes, such as when she claimed to be embraced by a dangerous psychic vampire, but she put her hand on his back and "..scrambled his chakras", saying "..suddenly he stiffened and his eyes got big and round". Uh.. okay.... how the hell do you scramble someone's chakras? Maybe that's a Reiki thing? But then I tend to roll my eyes whenever I hear the term "chakras" because to me that's all become such a trendy new age thing, which has been greatly

misrepresented

by new-agers.

She then said something I find very contradictory- she said that "she let him feel her pulling out a loose piece of his stringy hair" because "the last thing you want is for a pissed-off witch to have a piece of your hair". Oh wait, what happened to all that business about the rede and doing no harm? If he knew she was a "real" witch and not a "dabbler" (thus, read: wiccan), then he oughta know she'd never do anything like that. Hmm..

 

*Another big gripe here, the wiccan condescending attitude. According to this book then, by definition (not direct accusation) many of us here must be mere "dabblers", akin to children playing with matches, who just mess around with witchcraft's magic because we don't acknowledge the "spiritual" side of witchcraft - i.e. Goddess and God. Dabblers have no "spiritual practices", they only want to do magic. This was brought up several times.

 

 

Overall, a big :down: .. except for the physical fitness thing.

Funny thing is, I have other books by the author that I never got around to reading.. and now I'm pretty sure I won't even bother. I'm glad I have a bookshop nearby that deals in used books, they buy as well as sell.

[Whiterose]

Thanks for the warning. Seems to be alot of books out lately that are not worth the money.

[Stacey]

Truthfully, I'm surprised you're surprised at how it was laid out. Ellen is well known Wiccan author so of course her books would have that flavour. I saw you wrote you had some others by her? Which ones? I have her books and to an extent I enjoy her work. I take what I need and make it work for me. Garden Witchery and A Garden Witch's Herbal is great, I've used them quite a bit in building my own gardens and whatnot. Natural Witchery is good - Wiccan flavoured yes - but it does have some great information. I may still even get this book despite your review because, as I mentioned, I do like her work, I enjoy her conversational writing style, I actually prefer it to some of the more formal writing of other books.

[Grymdycche]

Truthfully, I'm surprised you're surprised at how it was laid out. Ellen is well known Wiccan author so of course her books would have that flavour. I saw you wrote you had some others by her? Which ones? I have her books and to an extent I enjoy her work. I take what I need and make it work for me. Garden Witchery and A Garden Witch's Herbal is great, I've used them quite a bit in building my own gardens and whatnot. Natural Witchery is good - Wiccan flavoured yes - but it does have some great information. I may still even get this book despite your review because, as I mentioned, I do like her work, I enjoy her conversational writing style, I actually prefer it to some of the more formal writing of other books.

 

II had to double check- I have Garden Witchery and Cottage Witchery. I've only thumbed through them. I have a horrible habit of buying more books than I can read. I'm addicted. You know how some people's eyes are bigger than their stomach and they can never eat all the food they order? I'm like that with books.. I guess my eyes are bigger than my ... umm...eyes.. Okay, that analogy didn't work out so well! As a result, I have a lot of books I still haven't read yet.

 

It's not so much the wiccan slant that got to me, I can usually filter those things out okay. Lordy knows I have quite a few wiccan-esque books, actually. That said, the several comments about "dabblers" did rub me the wrong way, that was a little too condescending for me. Scott Cunningham was also very wiccan but never came across with the haughty attitude. I've read yet other books by wiccan authors and you almost wouldn't even know it, though these are far and few between.

But just in case other some members here didn't know she was wiccan, I wanted to cover it in the review.

Mostly, it was the silly, cartoon-esque spells that got to me, as though they were thrown together to get the book published by the deadline. Though there was the inconsistency in her ethics thing as I mentioned above.

 

Hey, if you still want it, go for it. There were some useful tidbits, like the psychic/emotional vampire section, if you find yourself dealing with them, and the quiz in the beginning that was interesting. It wasn't a total loss. But I think for most trads, it's probably not their cup of brew.

[Kupala]

Her gardening books are pretty good (I have Garden Witchery & GW's Herbal). Some of Natural Witchery isn't too bad either. I usually like "filler" though, if the rest of a book is particularly bad (lol). Thanks for the review, it sounds like a "borrow from the library only" sort of book.

 

(I also hate badly rhyming "spells"--it's like, don't people ever buy a rhyming dictionary or have a writer friend read over it before publication? Jeez.)

[Grymdycche]

This might be a good topic all on it's own, but I think some of the best spells don't rhyme at all. I've never viewed rhyme as a necessary component of spells.

Why rhyme for the sake of rhyme? Rhyme is mostly a mnemonic device, and can also help to punctuate the end of a line and or verse. There are other methods and styles however, such as Old English poetry which is mostly alliterative. Sometimes that's just as, if not more, effective in evoking the right mindset.

And other times, just a simple repetition of a short, sweet, to-the-point declaration really nails it - no rhyme or alliteration. There was an old spell here posted earlier this week that I thought was eloquent in this way.

 

I

[luceaschild]

1332380320[/url]' post='123383']

This might be a good topic all on it's own, but I think some of the best spells don't rhyme at all. I've never viewed rhyme as a necessary component of spells.

Why rhyme for the sake of rhyme? Rhyme is mostly a mnemonic device, and can also help to punctuate the end of a line and or verse. There are other methods and styles however, such as Old English poetry which is mostly alliterative. Sometimes that's just as, if not more, effective in evoking the right mindset.

And other times, just a simple repetition of a short, sweet, to-the-point declaration really nails it - no rhyme or alliteration. There was an old spell here posted earlier this week that I thought was eloquent in this way.

 

I

 

I've always viewed rhyming as a good way to easily memorize something (as you've pointed out) which in turn sometimes makes it easier for me to focus on my goal and raise energy around it instead of having to stop and look at a piece of paper. That being said I can't rhyme for shit. LOL I mostly use what you've described, "a short, sweet, to-the-point declaration that nails it" because it's more practical for me and works fine. I have a friend who almost can't speak without rhyming and she writes beautifully. When I work with her everything rhymes really well. LOL I don't think it's necessary, it's just nice sometimes.

Edited March 22, 2012 by Lucea's Child