But even a casual glance at my work will reveal that while my witches are more Baba Yaga than Isaac Bonewits or Fiona Horne, there is a bit of modern pagan thought there. This is no surprise really. I have often talked about how my influences are in line with the occult revival of the 70s and even the Satanic Panic of the 80s.
So in addition to reading a lot of fantasy stories about witches I also read a lot about Wicca, paganism and modern witchcraft.
What I liked about it was how it took each of these religions/belief systems and gave them equal weight. Some books I read at the time were either predominantly pro-wiccan and thus put their system in the est possible light or had a Christian bias and thus looked down their nose on all the systems.
It also avoided what I have come to call "Margret Murrayism" and make claims that could not be supported.
For gamers I would say pick up this book to see how you can run cults and faith in your games. Yes there are other texts, and even some that are better suited for this. But this is a good overall text and also one I think fits the feel that some of us want in our "Old School" games. Either the original 1979 printing or the revised 1986 one would be best for this.
The 2006 revised edition though is the only one I can find for an eReader.
This is also one of the books that I attribute to my cultivation of my own feminist thought (yeah I know that "feminist" is a bad word to some and loaded word to others. I don't care. I can use it to describe myself as I choose). It shares that distinction with Carl Sagan's "Dragons of Eden" and Carl Jung's "Man and His Symbols".
Margot Adler died today after a long battle with cancer. She was 68.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/07/28/336081618/margot-adler-an-npr-journalist-for-three-decades-dies
http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/themediawitches/2014/07/shocking-and-sad-rest-in-peace-margot-adler/
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