The Library
Every coven has a shelf, every solitary has a stack, and every hearth has a pile of books with candle wax on the covers. This is ours, laid out for borrowing.
On the shelves
- Recommended Reading
- The books that made us, sorted by where you are on the path: for beginning, for foundations, for history, for traditional witchcraft, for Brighid, for the garden and the kitchen, and for the wider pagan world. With honest notes about which ones have aged badly.
- Glossary of the Craft
- Sixty or so words that trip up newcomers, from athame to widdershins, explained in a sentence or two each. Searchable.
- Kindred Hearths
- Organisations, communities and websites that keep their own fires and that we are glad to send you to: federations, covens, foundations, coven-finders, podcasts, and the Brigidine sisters who tend the flame at Kildare.
How we read
With a pencil, and not on our knees. The Craft has no scripture, and every book on our list was written by a person with a point of view, a context and a blind spot. Doreen Valiente believed things about history that Ronald Hutton has since shown to be unfounded; Hutton has been corrected in turn. Gardner was a showman. Starhawk is a political activist and says so. Cunningham was gentle to a fault. We read them all, gratefully, arguing in the margins, and we think that is exactly how a living tradition should treat its elders.
Borrowing
The Hearth keeps a small physical library of about two hundred volumes, including some that are out of print and a few that were left to us by witches who have died. Friends and Hearthkeepers may borrow from it at any gathering, for a moon at a time. Write your name and the date in the book at the front. Return it with a note of what you thought.
Donating
If you have books from your own path that you no longer need, or if you are thinking about where your library should go when you are gone, we would be honoured to be considered. We keep what we can use and pass the rest to newcomers, which is what the authors would have wanted. Write to us.