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wandering-wizardry · 4 years ago

Text

Book Review: Moon Spells by Diane Ahlquist

Syntax(Does it read well?):

There are several errors an editor should have picked up on. missing punctuation, typos, poor word choice. Overall, the book should have been work-shopped more before going to print.

(6/10) Perfectly usable, but loses some clarity with poor word choice and sentence structure. Also, the syntax errors are annoying.

Content(Is the book is just stuff you could have googled?):

35/243 pages are just lists and/or stuff that is easily available for free online, so 14%. 141/243 pages are spells, which, while content, are formatted in a way that they take up a lot of room, 58%. Only 30% of the book is information. Taking out the spell pages, 65% of the book is information.

(6.5/10) Not as much information as I would like. The references are good, but again, google is free.

Diversity of Knowledge(Does author appears to understand that other cultures exist?):

At one point refers to Diana as the moon goddess instead of a moon goddess, -1.

The tools referenced are all the standard ones we know from ceremonial magic/wicca. I didn’t notice any closed culture ones, so that is a plus. But overall, the tools are bland.

Does have a short explanation of Chinese Astrology in the back along with Numerology and Western Astrology. Honestly, I don’t know why she bothered to put any of these in here, but from what I understand of Chinese astrology it’s accurate.

(7/10) The contents are very clearly England based, however other practices are acknowledged. The author never swerved wildly out of their lane.

Sources(Are there any?):

References higher crime rates during the full moon. I learned this was BS week 1 of statistics. -1

It does have a bibliography at the end. It’s one full page, which is a little short for my liking, but at least it has it. It doesn’t site in the text where each source is used.

(6/10) I really don’t want to hunt down every one of these publications and read them.

Appropriation(Point off for every mention of dream catchers, spirit animals, and chakras):

“Ancient Civilizations were very respectful of the Moon’s power:” -1

(9/10) As far as I noticed there was nothing that came from a closed culture.

Aesthetics(Because none of us want to read a textbook):

It looks great, diagrams and art galore.

(10/10)

Fluff(How much of it sounds like new age bs?):

“I feel that all those who believe in a higher power than ourselves, have respect for each other... all answer to the same Divine” -3

Outside of roman polytheism can we please let this interpretation die already? Maybe it’s just the fact that anything that reminds me of evangelical Christianity give me hives, but I hate this take. It also feel very colonial. This does have historical backing, but it’s mostly shitty historical backing. Here.

(6/10) About that you’d expect. More research should have been done.

Wiccan(How many times is wicca reference in a book that looks secular(N/A when the book is advertised as wiccan)?):

Claims to be non-denominational, however there are clearly some parts that are wiccan. In the introduction, she states you’ll have to believe in some form of higher power, so it’s all right hand magic.

(5/10) It was published in 2002 by a middle age white woman who describes herself as a “third-generation intuitive”.

Hetero/cisnormative(If I see one mention of ‘divine feminine’ outside of an academic context I’m gonna lose my shit):

This book was published in 2002, so it has a bit of an excuse, but still. The moon is refereed to as ‘her’. There are two sections marked for women and men respectively.

Women Only. There is a preamble that kind of implies women are better at magic because they’re more emotionally open. It is stated as an opinion however, so -1. Contains a fertility spells, an easy childbirth spell, and a love spell. The first two are fine, they can be used by any afab person. The love spell however... Feminine intuition and Feminine Power... -2.

Men Only. This has a Love spell and a Fatherhood one. The fatherhood spell seems great. The love spell needs more work, as just by reading it I can’t really tell what it does. It feels more like a general prayer.

(7/10) There’s no ‘pussy to the earth’ moment, but still could have been better.

Spells(Do I think they would work?):

Each spell has the exact same formatting, which takes up a lot of space. The same information is copy pasted into every single spell. Each spell has no explanation other than the title. A lot of them are good ideas, but the author clearly hasn’t done much research into magical theory.

(3/10) Cool ideas, but almost all of them would need to be workshopped to be of any use.

Tone(My opinion of the author after reading):

At one point she talks about one of her clients in a tone that makes me think she didn’t really respect him. It felt like she thought she knew better about his life than he did.

From what I can tell the author offers counseling, but nowhere does it say she has the medical qualifications.

There are a lot of “I feel” and “I believe” which on one hand is good, they aren’t stating opinion as fact. On the other hand, it becomes a slog.

When gender is brought up, it is clear that the author favors women. It’s not brought up much, but when it is it’s very obvious.

(4/10) Please get a medical license before you offer counseling.

Total: 69.5/110

Recommendation: There is nothing ground breaking in here. In you’re a lunar witch, it may be a fun thing to pick bits and pieces out of to incorporate into your practice.

No historical research seems to have been done. The entire thing seems to be personal Gnosis. Overall it’s just Meh. The only really good thing about it is the correspondences are detailed.

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