Living Wicca: A Further Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (Llewellyn's Practical Magick)

Rating:
Summary: Essential to Solitary Wiccans..........
Review: ........if you enjoyed Cunningham's "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner", you'll love "Living Wicca", a guide for solitaries which further brings Wicca into our everyday lives and experience.

Cunningham further delves into the topics of learning (tools, secrecy, self-initiation, Mysteries, and everyday Wiccan spirituality) and practicing (prayers and chants, offerings, rites, magic, deities) Wicca and to establishing your own traditions (from ritual design, to the Book of Shadows, adopting beliefs and rules). This book, like the first, is really for beginners like myself and reflects the "newer" Wicca and not the Old Ways or any particular modern Wiccan path. This allows the solitary practitioner to be more eclectic while still holding onto basic Wiccan traditions, albeit not strictly.

I particularly enjoyed Cunningham's ideas for bringing Wicca into my daily life.........those long stretches that occur between the esbats and sabbats. His ideas for daily prayers make Wiccan expression a regular, daily experience. I also like his practical ideas for enhancing spirituality: gardening, volunteering time, meditating, etc. Cunningham shows us how to add to our rituals with our own ideas that are meaningful to us, making Wicca a more personal experience. He also shows us how to better write our Book of Shadows, by adding in basic beliefs and rules as well as our own rituals and magic.

This book is also one that I can see drawing beginners into Wicca, helping them love their new religion (as has happened to me) and thus compelling them to delve much further into it, be it by exploring more about more modernized versions of Wicca, by seeking out the Old Ways and our origins, by searching for a coven and a teacher or all of the above. I highly recommend this book to eager beginners who are just learning about Wicca and just starting to practice.

Rating:
Summary: Cunning profit making
Review: Cunningham is one of the better known of Neo-wiccan authors - I do stress 'Neo-wiccan' not Wiccan - he is usually relied upon by a large number of Pagans starting out on their path and a source for some valuable information, however I feel like a lot of his work he comes across as arrogant as well as disrespectful to Wiccan religion.

Cunningham goes for an eclectic 'wiccan' approach to his teachings, at the start of this book he emphasizes the importance of what 'feels right', if it feels good it's Wicca?
However one not only has to call into question this idea of doing 'what feels right' in general but also how 'what feels right' fits in when talking about Wicca, a highly structured religion which if only working on 'what feels right' is no longer a religion of any sorts, least of all Wiccan.
Furthermore this idea of 'what feels right' is contradicted when Cunningham goes on to mention a line from the rede or as he calls it 'the Wiccan law', to one moment support a new age approach of Wicca and an approach of ignoring Wiccan practice in praise of doing what 'feels right' to then lay down a 'law' of not harming.
As well as contradictory it is putting the Wiccan rede out of context as a littoral 'an if it harms none, do as thou wilt' rather than a matter of cause and effect - which seems to be a very common occurrence in this book. Cunningham seems to effectively miss out not only the rede as is take literally with only giving a law of Wicca as 'Harm none', but also misses out any underlying meanings of the rede as a Wiccan ethical/moral stand point, or any other Wiccan moral/ethical approach. He carries this on in chapter seven with Karma and law of return, but with difficulty fully explaining either in context and effectively carrying out religious theft.

Cunningham effectively dismisses Wicca in praise of his doing what 'feels right' which from here seems to mean 'ignore all practices of Wicca, as long as it feels right then you are Wiccan' which is the equivalent of telling readers to take tradition out of which simply does not make you Wiccan no matter how hard Cunningham would like to make it into a meaningless term. Cunningham seems to pass off Wicca throughout this book, the start alone (p5-p6) seems to effectively make out that Wicca isn't Wicca, that the traditions and practices, or even the religions origins are worthless of even thinking about let alone respecting, studying or following.
He later discusses 'self-initiation' (Contradictions again), that you can initiate yourself into this initiate only oath bound religion, by the same logic I could well go and initiate myself as a Catholic priest and ignore anyone who dares to call me anything but a Catholic priest. He fails to see the difference between initiating yourself into your own spirituality and initiating yourself into a specific religion, which insists on someone initiating you into the religion.
He seems to nicely bypass any question of 'How do you grow comfortable with a system of Wicca if you just made it up yourself?' or 'How would you feel if someone stole something of yours which you had created, altered it to their liking and proclaimed it theirs?' or 'Do you now think you are special?' again adding to his disrespect to Wicca and it's followers which leads one to wonder - Has he even heard of Gardner?

Cunningham fits into chapter two a lot about victim mentality, 'self-proclaimed Christians' labeling Wicca as Satanic, which not only calls into question his tolerance/acceptance of Christianity but also begs the question - If Christians can't call themselves Christians, what on earth makes him think that after picking up one book his readers can suddenly proclaim themselves as Wicca, a religion dependant on initiation?

To keep this little review brief (I am sure you understand my point by now) Cunningham is a fluffy writer with a lot of arrogance who seems to have no ethical obligation of totally carving up Wiccan religion in praise of his ideas and a few extra coins in his pocket.
Although there is useful information I would recommend if interested in Wicca then look elsewhere rather than this, if you are interested in Neo-wicca then I would recommend to you that although this book might be useful it's arrogance is hardly helpful.

Rating:
Summary: Good information for newcommers on way of life of Wicca.
Review: If you enjoyed Cunningham's "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner", you'll love "Living Wicca", a guide for solitaries which further brings Wicca into our everyday lives and experiences.

Cunningham further delves into the topics of learning (tools, secrecy, self-initiation, Mysteries, and everyday Wiccan spirituality) and practicing (prayers and chants, offerings, rites, magic, deities) Wicca and to establishing your own traditions (from ritual design, to the Book of Shadows, adopting beliefs and rules). This book, like the first, is really for beginners like myself and reflects the "newer" Wicca and not the Old Ways or any particular modern Wiccan path. This allows the solitary practitioner to be more eclectic while still holding onto basic Wiccan traditions, albeit not strictly

Still not a end all on the craft but this book with referances in back are nice for those who are new to craft

I found this book was good to read and give people new to craft more on wicca way of life still is one of better books, I have seen and I think for your money this book is worth it.