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Recommended Reading

These are the books on the Hearth's shelf that have been borrowed most often, with the notes we would give you if you were standing in front of it. Read the ones that call to you. Argue with all of them.

If you are beginning

Scott Cunningham, Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (1988)

The book that gave a generation permission to practise alone. Gentle, clear, a little sweet. Its Book of Shadows section is a complete beginner's ritual year. Start here if you want to be held.

Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow (1978)

Start here if you want to be told the truth by the woman who wrote most of the liturgy. Includes a complete working Book of Shadows for the solitary, written by the best writer the Craft has had.

Thea Sabin, Wicca for Beginners (2006)

Practical, level-headed, strong on grounding, energy work and the actual mechanics of ritual. The best of the many "for beginners" books.

Rae Beth, Hedge Witch: A Guide to Solitary Witchcraft (1990)

Written as letters to two students. Lyrical, English, and the book that named the hedge-witch path. Beautiful on the seasons.

Deborah Blake, Everyday Witchcraft (2015)

For the witch with a job and a family and twelve minutes. Small practices, no guilt.

Foundations of Wicca

Doreen Valiente, An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present (1973) and The Rebirth of Witchcraft (1989)

The first is an encyclopaedia you can read in bed. The second is her memoir of the revival, told with affection and a sharp eye, and the single best insider account of where Wicca came from.

Gerald Gardner, Witchcraft Today (1954)

Where it began, publicly. Short, odd, and historically unreliable, but you should read the founder in his own words at least once.

Janet and Stewart Farrar, A Witches' Bible (1981 and 1984, combined 1996)

The complete Alexandrian ritual year and the rites of passage, with commentary. The most thorough how-to of traditional Wicca ever published. Dated in places on gender; indispensable otherwise.

Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (1979, anniversary editions since)

Goddess spirituality, feminism, Feri-rooted practice and politics, written with fire. The later editions include the author's own notes on what she would now say differently, which is itself a model of how to hold a tradition.

Raymond Buckland, Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft (1986)

"The big blue book." A full course in workbook form. Old-fashioned, thorough, and still on half the altars in America.

Thorn Mooney, Traditional Wicca: A Seeker's Guide (2018)

What initiatory Wicca is actually like, how to find a coven, what to expect and what to avoid. Honest and recent. Read it before you seek.

Christopher Penczak, The Inner Temple of Witchcraft (2002)

The first of a five-volume course that became the Temple of Witchcraft tradition. Meditation, energy and psychic development as the foundation of the Craft. Thorough.

History, told honestly

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (1999, revised 2019)

The book that changed everything. A professional historian, sympathetic to the Craft, shows how Wicca was made in the twentieth century from older materials. Some witches hated it. We think it set us free.

Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (1996) and The Witch (2017)

The first is the history of the ritual year in Britain, festival by festival. The second is the history of the figure of the witch across cultures. Both will overturn things you thought you knew.

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (1979, revised 2006)

The journalist's survey of American paganism, built from hundreds of interviews. Warm, wide, and the best picture of the movement's variety.

Philip Heselton, Doreen Valiente: Witch (2016)

The authorised biography. Essential for anyone who loves her work, which should be everyone.

Chas S. Clifton, Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America (2006)

How the Craft crossed the Atlantic and what America did to it.

Traditional and folk witchcraft

Gemma Gary, Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways (2008)

Cunning craft, spirit work, the compass and the land, from a working Cornish witch. Earthy and beautiful.

Nigel Pearson, Treading the Mill: Practical CraftWorking in Modern Traditional Witchcraft (2007)

A practical manual for the non-Wiccan traditional path.

Lee Morgan, A Deed Without a Name: Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft (2013)

Scholarly, strange, and good on what the witch trials can and cannot tell us about practice.

Brighid

Courtney Weber, Brigid: History, Mystery, and Magick of the Celtic Goddess (2015)

Goddess and saint together, with rituals and a flamekeeper's perspective. Our most-borrowed book.

Lunaea Weatherstone, Tending Brigid's Flame: Awaken to the Celtic Goddess of Hearth, Temple, and Forge (2015)

Devotional and practical. Especially good on flamekeeping as a daily path.

Morgan Daimler, Pagan Portals: Brigid (2016)

Short, careful, and scrupulous about separating what the sources say from what modern pagans have added. Read it alongside the other two.

Mary Condren, The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland (1989)

Feminist scholarship on Brigid and the transition from goddess to saint. Dense and worth it.

Green, kitchen and herbal

Scott Cunningham, Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs (1985)

The standard reference for correspondences. Our herb table owes it a great deal. Not a safety guide.

Ann Moura, Green Witchcraft (1996)

A family-tradition green craft with a strong seasonal practice.

Arin Murphy-Hiscock, The Green Witch (2017)

Modern, accessible, good on building a practice from your own garden and kitchen.

The wider pagan world

Joyce and River Higginbotham, Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions (2002)

The textbook for a first course in paganism, with exercises. Fair to every path.

Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick, A History of Pagan Europe (1995)

What the old religions actually were, region by region, before the revival.

Risa Dickens and Amy Torok, Missing Witches: Recovering True Histories of Feminist Magic (2021)

Biographies of the witches history overlooked, arranged around the wheel of the year. Joyful and furious.

Tomás Prower, Queer Magic: LGBT+ Spirituality and Culture from Around the World (2018)

Because the Craft has always been queerer than its textbooks admitted.