If you're lucky, the universe will gift you with exactly what you need, all unlooked-for. Witch in Darkness is that gift in these times.
Subtitled Magick for Tough Times, Bad Days and Moments of Total Catastrophe, Witch in Darkness is a thorough, gentle, and compassionate guide to working your magick to get through hard times. Kelly-Ann Maddox draws on personal experience to offer us deep wisdom and inspiration.
This is NOT a self-help book, although it includes a vast array of versatile and completely non-judgmental ways to deal life's struggles. Maddox talks from a place of awareness about many issues -- grief, chronic illnesses or disabilities, toxic relationships, abuse, addiction, and social justice.
Part 1 offers ways to do witchcraft anywhere, anytime, with the materials you have on hand, or none. Here you will find low- and high-energy ways to practice witchcraft, suiting your current energy levels and emphasizing self-care. Yes, Maddox is talking about witchcraft, but the information applies to many situations.
Part 2 provides the witchcraft: spells, rituals, and spreads in chapters that focus on specific difficulties in different life areas (identity, family, mental health, emotions, body, relationships, intense situations, scarcity, creativity, magickal ability, spirituality, addiction, society, and loss).
Part 3 is a Q&A based on the themes Maddox has discussed with clients over the years. It's there to literally show us we aren't alone in our problems, offering us specific advice.
I particularly appreciated Maddox's intricate relationship with darkness as both a positive and negative in one's life, a perspective that winds its way throughout the book. Maddox is wonderful at reminding us that magick is not necessarily the only source we need to turn to in troubled times. That it is probably part of an overall practice including therapy, loved ones, creativity, and self-care, and more. Yes, its connected, but its not always enough.
Witch in Darkness draws on Maddox's earlier work, Rebel Witch with its focus on having a practice that is exactly what works for you (a perspective I heartily endorse!), reminding us that "the craft serves you," and, "is a resource, not a test."
Highly, strongly, recommended.
~review by Lisa McSherry
Author: Kelly-Ann Maddox
Watkins Publishing, 2024
pp. 367, $22
