If you are someone who appreciates a new book that focuses on non physical tools to work magic rather than the latest, you're in for a treat with Thrifty Witchery.
Let's be honest: we live in a time of breathtaking consumerism and it's as easy as clicking a mouse to order everything we could possibly want for our magical warkings. And shiny things are great fun, often bringing a bit of new energy into our practice. Sometimes, however, we can lose sight of the truth that magic works even when we don't have candles in four different colors, a turkey feather, and 10 quartz crystals.
This is a book written from the premise that when we truly own ourselves and our power we need nothing more to enact our will and reshape reality. Yes, that powerful a statement. And yes, that difficult a task.
The first half of the book offers techniques to access the magic we all contain through developing our skills at intuition, wisdom, and intention. The authors discuss this by showing how to:
- recognize and connect with the energetic signatures around you,
- align your energies with those of the elements you choose to work with, and
- examine how intuition, wisdom, intention and self-empowerment feeds and develops the embodied expressions of your magic.
The second half of the book covers the practical skills of foraging, finding, and fabricating the tools, oils, spells, and other items used within your magical practice. Bonus benefit: you'll be actively cleaning the environment and contributing to its health; a crucial practice for the modern witch.
I appreciated how the authors offer a new perspective: that the cost of your magic is not financial, but instead counted in the currency of your time, effort, and will.
Like the authors, I have no judgment about what is, and isn't, in your magical supplies or how much of anything is stored there. For those of us who do like our "shinies," Higginbotham and Capo offer lots of advice for filling our magical supplies inexpensively, but in unusual ways that change one's perspective and allow us to explore innovative ways of doing things.
The authors' teachings are supported through the first part with exercises to develop our skills of intuition, wisdom, and intention. In the second half the reader is offered hands-on practices to create, each activity an opportunity to put what you've learned to create completely personal magical tools perfectly attuned to your will.
Highly recommended.
~review by Lisa McSherry
Authors: Vincent Higginbotham and Martha Kirby Capo
Llewellyn Publications, 2023
pp. 280, $17.99
