Wish I could give more than 5 stars honestly, the historical description, art, & poetry throughout this book was beyond amazing.

My landlord texted everyone through all the properties she owns that a resident who rented 2 apartments has passed away and if anyone would want to go through his books and take them for free. He owned thousands of historical books, mythological books, folk lore, etc. This book was among a few that I grabbed to take home. I do not regret it at all. I feel honored to have the opportunity to have gotten this book for free. It took me 3 hours to read and I loved every second of it. I was so intrigued that I couldn't put it down.

Kinda superficial but nice pictures.

I thought I would learn quite a bit about witch lore and symbolism (and I diiddddd), but there was quite a bit concerning Christianity (the "Inquisitors") and patriarchy, more than I thought an illustrated book would mention.

Author does touch on the following: witch essentials, herbs, love spells, coven organization, Sabbats, etc.

The author did a nice job of explaining how the witch myth probably came about - how the "Horned God" of paganism became the Christian devil and how "Mother Goddess" turned into the witch. Essentially, the gods of the old religion (paganism) become the evil of the new religion (Christianity).

I loved the illustrations!

An interesting read; bought about 20 years ago and finally read through from cover to cover. I'm guessing when it was first published (1981) it was a lot more powerful, and, no doubt, helped open up many discussions and helped draw religious zealots and many intolerant people out of the shadows they lurk in. I wouldn't call it a particularly serious tome, though it is interesting in the range of topics it covered.

Condescending and tiring. Added extra star for pretty illustrations.

The books artwork is what got me interested as it's very much in the vein of Brian Froud. The context leaves much to be desired. A mix of research and silliness it seems this writer tried to base her writing in some facts then goes off into Fantasy. Beautiful but take the information within with a grain of salt!

I just love everything about this.
Everything. Witches.
More witchy witchcraft witches please.

A magical collection of prose, poetry and history on the stereotype of the witch - why we worship her, and why men fear her. « Witchcraft was heresy — thus punishable by death. Ironically enough, “heresy” comes from a Greek word meaning “free choice.” »

Working from the premise that "witches are, above all, the first liberated women" Jong attempts to articulate the "communal mythology" of witches and witchcraft (in the west) through a diverse collection of writing, poetry and illustrations. At times I thought it was self serious about its claims, and at others it seemed to have a great sense of humor (and she never shied away from nudity/expletives) . I thought the position/perspective she was writing from was confusing. She would go from being open to the differences in practices and perspectives to making strange and specific assumptions. Seemed inconsistent and unspecific and I was never quite sure what was the purpose.

My main concern though was her uncomfortably racialized language ("Mohammedanism was used in place of "Islam" for example) combined with her lack of racial or sexual perspective (appropriative and heternormative at times).

I wasn't personally into this, but I imagine it has an appeal the same way many tumblr aesthetic blogs do!

Ciekawe

The artwork is fantastic but the text is, as others here have said, all over the place tonally. Jong often goes from being deadly serious to cracking bad jokes within a single paragraph. And for the love of the Goddess, please do not take what is written in this book as historically factual! Just as one example of this: there is way too much reliance on Margaret Murray's theories. (There's a pretty significant bibliography on the last page, but Murray's name comes up throughout the book far more often than any other.)

Seriously though, the art rules.

Cool art.