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101 of 116 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
One star is too good for this book..., October 23, 2003
This review is from: Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation (Paperback)
This book is not for those who are serious about their religion or serious about learning about contemporary paganism. This book is for people who like having their beliefs trivialised, sanitised and dumbed-down. This book is not even for beginning witches; it's more depressingly funny than it is educational. Obviously intended to be mass-marketed to teens, this book makes no attempts at providing valuable information. Instead, it focuses on offering a plethora of recipes for spells in an attempt to grab the interest of teens. The spells themselves are not even serious in nature; stopping parents from inflicting harsh punishments on you when you do wrong, getting cute boyfriends and fighting -- get this -- locker elves. On top of offering ridiculous "information" and cheesey spells, Ravenwolf presents a reality of witchcraft that is, in fact, not reality. Her idea and very definition of witchcraft (that which the entire premise of the book is based on) is very limiting and -- dare I say -- inaccurate. This book is not about witchcraft, it's about making money by presenting the author's own ideas as fact in a way that will make teenagers eat it up. In truth, Ravenwolf's 'Teen Witch' is about as representative of modern witchcraft and neo-paganism as Disneyland is to reality. Whitewashed, simplified and often outright incorrect, this book has NO value as a text medium (maybe firewood). Furthermore, when presented from a condescending tone (which we as readers need, since we apparently are not up on par intellectually with the Great Silver RavenWolf) this book should be offensive to any reader and at age. Do yourself a favour and buy a REAL book on modern witchcraft.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not Wicca, December 2, 2003
This review is from: Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation (Paperback)
What RavenWolf is selling in this book is not Wicca. What she's selling is blend of Wiccan-flavored folk magic, new age trends and watered-down Wiccan theology. And hey, if that's what you want your religion to look like, that's great. Good for you. Just don't call it Wicca when it's not. This book is a decent starting point for the study of folk magic--decent, but far from great. The negative points far outweight the good. Her tone is a bit condescending (teens don't need to be spoken to like children). Her information on Wiccan belief is inaccurate, and her historical info is even worse. She seems biased toward an anti-Christian viewpoint, to the point of telling her readers that the Christians in their lives will probably hate them for their newfound Wiccan beliefs. I would not recommend this book to anyone. There's nothing said here that you can't also learn elsewhere. This was my first book on witchcraft, and I spent a while unlearning what I learned from it. Please, if you value your time and your money, don't even bother buying it.
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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Condescending, Sickening and Incorrect, September 9, 2003
This review is from: Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation (Paperback)
I think my rating pretty much said it: don't bother. I am sorry about my other review, I wrote that when I was in the beginning of the book and hadn't finished it yet and hadn't read any other works about Wicca. This book is horrible! It is so condescending; I almost tore it apart. She actually says things like "Finally, a book written on your level and doesn't talk down to you." What the? By saying that she has to write on "OUR LEVEL" for us dummies to understand it she is saying we are too stupid to comprehend her usual "big word, grown-up" style that would make our brains explode. When she listed the 13 Principles of Beleif(s) she wrote one and then below it she wrote "Teen Speak" and translated it for our toddler minds, as if we are not smart enough to understand a simple paragraph. I certainly did and when I read the Teen Speak paragraph, I could actually feel her patting me on the head. Her pathetic attempts at slang were just plain embarrassing and her constantly condescending tone was sickening. She spent way too much time on unimportant subjects without really even explaining them, just ranting, and didn't focus on things of importance. She also did a horribly unprofessional thing: referring to something like "mental programming" without previously saying anything about it as if we already have at least some background in The Craft when she specifically indicated that the book was for complete beginners!!! That has a name: bad writing and really bare experience in The Craft. She also came up with a Teen Seeker Ritual as if she had to dumb it down and make it "teen" for us to do it right, otherwise we might actually die. That was one of the most unprofessional things a person can do when writing. Same thing with the "Teen Esbat" deal. What the? She also made things unclear and vague like when she listed the Theban alphabet. She said in some Craft traditions, first-level students must learn a complete magickal alphabet to translate their entire Book of Shadows into a secret magickal tome. Then she said never translate English to runic as each rune carries a magickal property, but she doesn't tell us if Theban is runic or not. Again, bad writing and bare experience. How are we supposed to learn if we can't write it down and she just said that you might translate the BOS into it and use it in the next couple of spells? I read that page about sixty times, waded through the rest of it, seething, and then gave it to a second-hand metaphysical shoppe. It is also not true that you can be a Wiccan and a Christian at the same. They simply don't suit each other. There are Christians who practice a bit a magick, but Wiccans who are trying to swing one or more religions with Wicca are going to go insane one of these days! Last but by all means not least, most of her history about the Craft and information about herbs and colors and cord magick and almost all of her Spells are wrong. She contradicts herself left and right like nobody's business and I got the feeling like she was hiding something: carefully tiptoeing around subjects as if she didn't want to reveal something when she clearly said there is nothing to hide in Wicca!
There are lots of good books on The Craft by the following authors: Ray Buckland
Scott Cunningham
Edain McCoy
Amber K
Durina Dunwich
Sirona Knight Lauren Manoy
Gwenevire Rain
Jamie Wood
MJ Abadie
Theresa Francis-Cheung
Teresa Moorey
Look those authors and up on this site and stay ... away from Silver RavenWolf!
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