Customer Reviews

The Witch's Dream

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I can't leave this marvelous book with a couple of limited reviews here at Amazon, even though it's been ten years since I last read it. Donner's story is simply a great human story; it's really about becoming more human. It's about the simple necessities in life, about the choices we are forced to make when choices are most limited, and about the life we find through that "cubic centimeter of chance." It gets outside -- thank God! -- the crime and punishment limited mentality of America....and of course that is why such a book will bore some readers and frighten others.

Donner-Grau tells the story of her adventures in Venezuela under the tutelage of a local witch and healer. We follow her blossoming from an uncertain traveler with muddled purpose to a healer in her own right; one who appreciates the magical nature of interpersonal relationships.

This book would be highly recommended to anyone with an interest in shamanism, healing or wichcraft. A foreword by Carlos Castaneda cements the book into the matrix of others written by Castaneda himself and by the other members of his party.

...this book works. You don't have to believe Florinda Donner experienced or witnessed everything in this book to find something useful about her portrayal of the life of a Venezuelan healer and spiritualist (our modern, American terms). Read it like a novel that certainly feels like it was thoroughly researched. You'll find it an excellent journey to a place you've never been before.

Each chapter of this book takes you to one of the "lessons" Florinda was exposed to under the witch's tutelage. It's amazing that some of those lessons were just stories, not actual experiences lived by Florinda but by somebody else who tells her the story. In that sense, just reading it is like having the same input she had, taking the same lesson up to some extent, and that reading put me into deep philosophical and meditational mood. Really interesting and really deep for me.

Florinda Donner, antropologist, delicatly shows us the traditional world of Venezuela magicians.
She makes us to be involved; we are not a strangers here, we look at this world through eyes
of mediums and witches.
That makes the book really great - an outstanding
writer's skill of the author. Just concentrate - and you feel like in web of other world.

I am a fan of several of Carlos Castaneda's books, and of Taisha Abelar's The Sorcerer's Crossing: A Woman's Journey (Compass) (like the author of this book, Taisha Abelar is a woman member of Carlos Castaneda's tradition.) I picked up this book because of that, hoping that it would have more women-specific teachings. It did have some, but really that was not the main thrust of this book, and I wouldn't recommend buying it just for that. Also, it is not really centered on the teachings of Don Juan or the other naguals of the Castaneda group, although there are similarities.

Instead, it is about Florinda Donner-Grau's time with a Venezualan healer, witch, and spiritualist. The lessons shared in the book revolve around the idea of the links that can be formed between individuals, and the impact certain individuals can have on the fate of other's based on this link. The link of a natural witch is especially potent, and can 'turn the wheel of chance' for another. It's too hard to describe straight up really, and so in the book is told through a series of stories - the stories of various individuals in the Venezualan town they are in, who are selected by the healer herself. The healer's story itself becomes part of the process, and Florinda turns the 'wheel of chance' for her.

I didn't really like or connect very well with the initial set of stories, and that is partly why I wasn't sure I wanted to finish the book. For the most part, they were very dark and somewhat disturbing, and I just didn't enjoy them, although they did elucidate what they were supposed to. In the second half however, the stories were tied to the healer herself, and to another young woman, and it all became much more interesting and readable to me. I also liked some of the occult and healing knowledge shared, although this was minimal. The town setting was fascinating also, and Florinda is an apt writer.

So that's my take - in the end a fascinating and unique book, but you do have to get through certain parts. Which actually is how I feel about many of the Carlos Casteneda books too, so perhaps it is just part of the package...

This book was a wonderful experience to read, like a protracted lucid dream. The way the book teaches so much while leaving me unable to quite elucidate it is exactly what makes it so fascinating to read. The author and her characters describe and teache things that cannot be talked about, but only intuited through seeing the events through the perceptual position chosen by the author. The learnings are important in a most profound and at the same time in a mundane sense.
One could not possibly write these learnings into a 'how-to' manual. One enters the story and learns just like in the bigger story -our lives. It is like soaking up another's experience and getting to keep it.
Well written, sharply focussed and most insightful, this is definately a must read to 'get' the context or worldview from which curers, shamans, and the like perceive reality.
I would prescribe this book to any students of healing. It does not focus on how to heal, it does tell one something one needs to know before that: the space where dis-ease comes from, the minds, the events, the surroundings, the stuff of life that affect people. This understanding is a most precious gift for any individual and any healer, and this book takes the reader behind the eyes of those who do see these things.
A book that contains similarly succinct and relevant learnings is The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception: The Living Tapestry of Lujan Matus by Lujan Matus -which I highly recommend.
Finally, The Witch's Dream is a fascinating read.

Great read, kept me going. Not meant to be everyone's taste, but if it is, you will enjoy. Fiction or non-fiction... we may never know. Why do we have to classify? For about the same price as going to a bad movie, you will almost certainly get more out of it, whether you liked it or not. Go for it!

One of the best, written by one of Carlos Castaneda's cadre. Was very good to get the feminine view of the Toltec path taught by don Juan Matus and his companions.

I did not find the book all that appealing. I purchased it, in hopes it would be simualar to Carlos Castaneda's work. It wasn't. It was very different from the work of Castaneda. It takes you to a whole different world and way of viewing the world. I did enjoy the book but thought it was very unspecified in making the points clear. It left me with a feeling of going nowhere. That's just my personal opinion though.