Honoring the Wild: Reclaiming Witchcraft and Environmental Activism (Earth Spirit)

This publication is more of a pamphlet than a book. It’s part of an Earth Spirit series by Moon Books, to address the urgency of climate crisis.

Irisanya Moon compiled this very short volume. She explains how members of the Reclaiming tradition of witchcraft have been involved in environmental activism over the past few decades. She calls the booklet “a collection of snapshots – where bodies have been. Where ritual existed and can exist next.”

Honoring the Wild consists mostly of brief recollections by about a dozen and a half witches and pagans of various stripes from their own experiences at various actions and events.  

Most useful is an annotated time line of events, from anti-nuclear power actions in the 1970s to anti-war, anti-racist, and anti-Trump actions in which Reclaiming members have participated. Any successful social movement must chronicle its activities and take stock of what actions were effective, so that they can be studied and repeated. Yet there’s not much analysis in this booklet.

Author Irisanya Moon acknowledges that “this is a short and impossible book. It is an all-too brief compilation of voices that have been in Reclaiming.”

As part of a larger series for “reclaiming witchcraft and environmental activism,” this reads like a good working paper for future activism and writing, a blueprint for what can be done. But given the enormity of our environmental catastrophe and the true passion so many people have for saving the earth, I found this humble volume to be just not enough of a start.

~review by: Sara R. Diamond

Author: Irisanya Moon
Moon Books, 2023
65 pp., $10.95