Customer Reviews

Spiritual Mentoring: A Pagan Guide

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This book is amazing.
In my opinion, one of the best traits in a pagan author is willingness to draw from many sources, since the pagan community is so diverse. In this work Harrow draws on her own experiences, comments from other pagan teachers, and both secular and religious counseling models. The result is a pagan book unlike any that I've ever read. The non-pagan source material outweighs the pagan source material, but it is all put into a pagan framework, and you find yourself saying, "Yes, that makes sense, yes, that's exactly right!"
Harrow gives no space to lesson plans, assigning students to levels, or how to convince pupils that your way is The Right Way. Instead, she focuses on qualities that mentors need to develop in order to teach, and gives suggestions about skillsets and understandings that students might need to learn to become functioning members of pagan community. Other jewels of the book include its chapter-specific bibliographies and excercises. Best of all, Harrow reminds the reader over and over again that the most important thing for any teacher or student is to listen to the Entheoi, the still small voice within us that is our link to the Gods. Highly recommended for teachers and students in the pagan tradition.

If you are a newcomer to Wicca, this may not be the best book to begin with, however, for covenleaders, Priest/esses, any student who is interested in someday teaching the Craft, and even religious scholars or seminarians--this book is an invaluable and much-needed tool! Without ever losing her Pagan perspective, Judy Harrow examines the skills and qualities required to be a good teacher, mentor and spiritual leader--skills which are *essential* for any clergy member and which are generally overlooked in most how-to Pagan books and traditional priest/ess training. Delving into psychology, developmental theories and mentoring skills (with exercises, even), this is a well-written work with meticulous references (many of them from sources outside the typical Wiccan library). Kudos to Ms. Harrow for adding to the small (but growing!) number of books that elevate Wiccan literature into the realm of serious religious discourse!

This is a pretty good book if you want to learn about mentoring in general without much actual how-to. There are a few helpful how-tos in there, but Harrow mostly talks about the concept of mentoring, why it's a good thing, and how mentoring is different than certain other helping roles like coaching or counseling.

On the one hand, she acknowledges that some people reading the book might not be Wiccan (which is good considering that the title uses the word "Pagan" and not "Wiccan"), but then she goes on to make comments that annoyingly assume everyone follows the Rede or otherwise assume that the reader is Wiccan. This might not bother Wiccans, but it can get very old to non-Wiccans.

Harrow says in the last chapter of the book that "Nobody teaches Wiccan teachers how to teach! (p. 241)" and then goes on to advertise for the next book she plans to write called _Pedagogy for Pagans_. As far as I'm concerned, that's what there should have been much more of in THIS book and less of the space fillers like telling us about tarot card meanings and various other things that aren't mentor-specific, can be found in many other books, and are not relevant to a lot of pagan paths.

If you're looking for a book about techniques to be a good mentor, this book will be rather unsatisfying. If you're wanting a book that makes a convincing argument that it's a good thing to have mentoring and defines mentoring, this book will be right up your alley.

This is one of the most helpful books I have read thus far.
Thank you Judy for taking the time to write about mentoring for our Community!
For anyone out there wanting to start your own Circle, or even those who have been doing it for awhile already, this is a book well worth your money.
This would even be an excellent book for beginners in so much as it will give you a very clear understanding on what a teacher can and can not do for you.

I truly have to say that this is just one of the best books from Harrow. This book is a true must have if you a looking for the "how to" section in pagan ethics. This book will teach how to be a "better" mentor to students who are in the coven and how to look for better "teachers". However, everybody teaches differently than another person, but, this book has great advice and truly cannot be overlooked. Highly recommended !

As a priestess, Judy Harrow examines, weighs, tastes, blends and stirs a potent brew. Using inclusive language and respecting all our intertwining and diverging Pagan paths, the author adds depth, breadth and maturity to our Pagan faith traditions, and she does it with erudition and grace.

-- M. Macha NightMare, author of Witchcraft and the Web:Weaving Pagan Traditions Online; co-author of The Pagan Book of Living and Dying