By Marion Zimmer Bradley

Even readers who don't normally enjoy Arthurian legends will love this version, a retelling from the point of view of the women behind the throne. Morgaine (more commonly known as Morgan Le Fay) and Gwenhwyfar (a Welsh spelling of Guinevere) struggle for power, using Arthur as a way to score points and promote their respective worldviews. The Mists of Avalon's Camelot politics and intrigue take place at a time when Christianity is taking over the island-nation of Britain; Christianity vs. Faery, and God vs. Goddess are dominant themes.

Young and old alike will enjoy this magical Arthurian reinvention by science fiction and fantasy veteran Marion Zimmer Bradley.

--Bonnie Bouman

By Raymond Buckland

Here is the most complete self-study course in modern Wicca available, written by the person who first went public with "The Old Religion" in the United States. For group or solitary use, it includes rituals; exercises for developing psychic talents; information on all major "sects" of the Craft; sections on tools, beliefs, dreams, meditations, divination, herbal lore, healing, ritual clothing; and much, much more.

-- Amazon.com book description

By Pauline and Dan Campanelli

Wheel of the Year has a down-home flavor reminiscent of visiting close friends or family on a winter evening. Campanelli's poetic style evokes the emotions of the different seasons as she shares how her family celebrates with rituals, recipes, and crafts, from the midsummer festivals of June to the kindling of the yule log in December. Within these pages, you will find enough ideas to fill your entire year with magic.

--Brian Patterson

By Pauline and Dan Campanelli

Celebrate the seasons and festivals with homespun magic.

By Vivianne Crowley

This practical guide provides a wealth of insight and advice on what it means to be a pagan in today's changing world.

-- Amazon.com book description

By Vivianne Crowley

Wicca is the religion of Witchcraft or Wisecraft. Wicca is a magical path which empowers us to grow, change.

-- Amazon.com book decription

By Vivianne Crowley

With their highly developed culture, and wild, mysterious tapestry of colorful characters, deities, superstitions and customs, the Celts have gripped the imagination of people everywhere. Go through the year celebrating Celtic rituals for each season, enjoying Celtic food and drink, and taking a Celtic journey through the ancient cycles of nature.

You'll honor the divine by setting up altars with elements that change with the seasons, setting aside sacred spaces and time for daily observances, and filling your life with the ceremonies for holidays such as Samhain (around Halloween), Imbolc (to mark the onset of Spring), and Lughnasadh. Throughout, recipes, incantations, and practical ideas for creating your own festivals will guide you to life-affirming activities and blessings.

-- From the back of the 1998 edition of Celtic Wisdom

By Vivianne Crowley

Carl Jung is one of the most influential figures of the 20th century and his ideas have become vital to our understanding of the psyche.

-- Amazon.com book description

By Phyllis Curott

When high-powered Manhattan lawyer Phyllis Curott began exploring Witchcraft, she discovered a spiritual movement that defied all stereotypes. Encountering neither satanic rites nor eccentric spinsters, she came to know a clandestine religion of the Goddess that had been forced into hiding over the course of history. Book of Shadows chronicles Curott's remarkable initiation into Wicca, her ascent to the position of Wiccan High Priestess, and her efforts to reconcile her newfound spirituality with her struggles as a woman rising through the ranks of the corporate world. Along the way, she relates the history of Witchcraft and shares many traditional Wiccan practices such as casting a circle, drawing down the Goddess, and casting spells for health, prosperity, and love. Engagingly written and rich with detailed rituals and techniques, this inspirational book traces a modern woman's spiritual journey into a realm of extraordinary experience and enlightenment.

-- From the back of the 1999 edition of Book of Shadows

By Janet and Stewart Farrar

Everything you need to know is here! The Sabbats; Casting & Banishing the Magic Circle; The Complete Book of Shadows; The Great Rite; Initiation Rites; Consecration Rites; Spells; Witches' Tools; Witchcraft & Sex; Running a Coven; Clairvoyance; Astral Projection. This collection includes two books in one volume, Eight Sabbats for Witches and The Witches' Way and is the most comprehensive and revealing work on the principles, rituals and beliefs of modern witchcraft.

By Janet and Stewart Farrar

This is an excellent behind-the-scenes description of what witches really do. It describes the ancient rituals in a candid and comprehensive way as seen through the eyes of a practicing witch and member of an active coven. In this account, the author explores the fundamental beliefs and symbology of Witchcraft, presenting the time-honored texts of its rituals and invocations, and describing exactly what happens as his own coven's esbats (meetings), sabbats (festivals), and handfasting (marriage) ceremonies. Stewart Farrar also outlines the way witches raise and apply psychic power to release the forces of healing and protection, etc. With intimate and entertaining revelations, this practical guide to witchcraft describes a rich and joyous religion. Over 60,000 copies in print!

By Janet and Stewart Farrar

Presents the detailed and dramatic rituals for each of the eight Sabbats--the seasonal ceremonies and festivals intimately linked with the waxing and waning rhythms of the natural year. Using their Book of Shadows (the witch's inherited handbook) as their starting point, practicing witches Janet and Stewart have added mythological and folkloric material, much of it personally gathered. To complete the picture, they also give in full detail the rituals for Casting and Banishing the Magic Circle, and the often misunderstood Great Rite of male-female polarity. They include moving rituals for Wiccaning (the witches' equivalent of Christening), Handfasting (the witch wedding), and Requiem (funeral). Photographs, illustrations.

By Janet and Stewart Farrar

This is the most comprehensive and revealing work on the practices, rituals and beliefs of modern witchcraft since Gerald Gardner's influential but unpublished 'Book of Shadows' triggered the revival movement in the 1950s. The authors explain what Gardner's text actually was, how he used it, and, as far as possible, what his sources were. The book goes on to give in full the first, second and third degree initiation rites, the consecration rites, and the many non-ritual passages of the 'Book of Shadows'. The rest of the book explains what the Craft is all about, covering everything from the rationale of witchcraft to reincarnation; from ethics to sex; from symbolism to spells; from astral projection to psychic healing; from clairvoyance to witchcraft's place in today's world.

By Janet and Stewart Farrar

Exploring the Femine Principle of Divinity.

By Janet and Stewart Farrar

Exploring the Masculine Principle of Divinity, this companion volume to The Witches' Goddess re-establishes the ancient balance between God and Goddess. Part I covers the many concepts of the God examined, including: His faces throughout history; the Son/Lover God; the Vegetation God; the War God; the Anti-God; and more. Part II gives a close look at 12 individual gods of history with an appropriate invoking ritual for each. Part III presents a comprehensive dictionary of over 1000 gods from many world cultures, past and present. The Farrars are among the best-known authors on the Craft, and in The Witches' God have written what is likely to become the standard work on the masculine god aspect.

By Ed Fitch

For anyone needing Pagan ritual guidelines, or seeking the aspect of Paganism right for them, Magical Rites from the Crystal Well should serve as the ideal introduction and sampler. Ed Fitch's Seasonal Rites, with their supplementary rituals, guided meditations, and magical workings speak of the true contact with, and reverence for, Nature equated with Pagan philosophy.

This is a classic primer that I hope will continue to be available for many more years to come --Ray Buckland

Translated By J. Gantz

The combination of fact and fantasy, of myth, history and folklore in The Mabinogion conjures up a magical enchanted world, which is none the less firmly rooted in the forests, hills and valleys of ancient Wales. The eleven stories were composed orally over a span of centuries, before being written down in the thirteenth century. They make up, in their virtuosity and panache, one of the great Welsh epics.

By Gerald B. Gardner

With an introduction by Dr. Margaret Murray

By Robert Graves

The White Goddess is perhaps the finest of Robert Graves's works on the psychological and mythological sources of poetry. In this tapestry of poetic and religious scholarship, Graves explores the stories behind the earliest of European deitiesÑthe White Goddess of Birth, Love, and DeathÑwho was worshipped under countless titles. He also uncovers the obscure and mysterious power of "pure poetry" and its peculiar and mythic language.

By Paul Huson

A clear, complete guide that reveals the rites, signs, omens, and step-by-step secrets of the mystic arts.

By C.G. Jung and Carl Kerényi

Essays on a Science of Mythology is a cooperative work between C. Kerényi, who has been called "the most psychological of mythologists," and C. G. Jung, who has been called "the most mythological of psychologists." Kerényi contributes an essay on the Divine Child and one on the Kore (the Maiden), together with a substantial introduction and conclusion. Jung contributes a psychological commentary on each essay. Both men hoped, through their collaboration, to elevate the study of mythology to the status of a science.

The investigations of C. Kerényi are continued in a later study, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (Princeton).

By John Matthews

Soul work and the quest for the grail.

By Margaret Murray

This is an intensive study of the witch cult in Great Britain. The author uses French and Flemish sources to obtain a clearer understanding of the ritual and beliefs, as the witch cult appears to be the same throughout western Europe. The sources from which the information used within are the judicial records and contemporary chroniclers. In the case of the chroniclers, the author studied their facts, not their opinions.

By Margaret Murray

This celebrated study of witchcraft in Europe traces the worship of the pre-Christian and prehistoric Horned God from paleolithic times to the medieval period. Murray, the first to turn a scholarly eye on the mysteries of witchcraft, enables us to see its existence in the Middle Ages not as an isolated and terrifying phenomenon, but as the survival of a religion nearly as old as humankind itself, whose devotees held passionately to a view of life threatened by an alien creed. The findings she sets forth, once thought of as provocative and implausible, are now regarded as irrefutable by folklorists and scholars in related fields. Exploring the rites and ceremonies associated with witchcraft, Murray establishes the concept of the "dying god"--the priest-king who was ritually killed to ensure the country and its people a continuity of fertility and strength. In this light, she considers such figures as Thomas a Becket, Joan of Arc, and Gilles de Rais as spiritual leaders whose deaths were ritually imposed.

Truly a classic work of anthropology, and written in a clear, accessible style that anyone can enjoy, The God of the Witches forces us to reevaluate our thoughts about an ancient and vital religion.

By Lisa Peschesl

This guidebook will help you discover the oracular nature of the runes and how to use them as a magical tool for insight, protection, and luck.

By Nancy Qualls-Corbett

When the Goddess of Love was still honored, the sacred prostitute was virgin in the original sense of the word (one-in-herself), a person of deep integrity whose welcome for the stranger was radiant, self-confident and sensuous. Her purpose was to bring the goddess' love into direct contact with mankind. In antiquity, human sexuality and the religious attitude were inseparable. The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect Of The Feminine is solidly based on Jungian psychological principles and powerfully illustrates how our vitality and capacity for joy depend on restoring the soul of the sacred prostitute to its rightful place in our conscious understanding. The Sacred Prostitute is engaging reading that provides a great deal of thoughtful observations on the nature of human sexuality and its relationship to the well-balanced personality and the health and stability of human society. --Midwest Book Review

By Ellen Cannon Reed

The Goddess and the Tree is a welcome addition to the volumes of literature on the Qabala. Reed's orientation is highly practical and she presents the Tree as a valuable tool which many pagans have overlooked. Reed's style is clear and readable. This is a perfect book for newcomers to the Western tradition, or for anyone who has ever started the study of Qabala but has given it up as too difficult and dry. With Volume II, The Witches Tarot, this work may well become a standard textbook alongside the more traditional (but less easily digested) classic works. --Council of the Magical Arts

By Scire (Gerald Gardner)

A reprint by the famous English occultist. Illustrated with a new introduction by Patricia Crowther.

By Starhawk

The original book that brought Goddess worship to the public eye has marked its 10th anniversary, yet it still remains an integral part of the Wiccan canon. The Spiral Dance leans heavily toward the feminist aspects of Wicca, but Starhawk's comments on the new edition make it clear that she is aware of the growing male presence in witchcraft. However, this edition is not some watered down, politically correct revision of the original. Very little is changed aside from the addition of Starhawk's observations on how the book has weathered its first decade, and what few changes she would make if she were writing it today. Readers interested in learning more about contemporary witchcraft, whether considering Wicca as a way of life or simply desiring to understand this earth-based religion, will find a wealth of information in The Spiral Dance, and will notice that it becomes one of the most frequently consulted books in their Wicca libraries. --Brian Patterson

By R.J. Stewart

Merlin: The Prophetic Vision and the Mystic Life

By R.J. Stewart

A readable, practical guidebook to using the nature-connected Merlin archetype and Western mystery traditions for personal transformation and enlightenment. Provides individual and group visualizations, dances, rituals, and meditations.

Translated By Montague Summers

The Notorious Handbook Once Used to Condemn and Punish "Witches", by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. This is one of the most notorious books in history. Thousands of innocent people, especially women, lost their lives at the expense of this book. It was first published around 1489, shortly after the invention of the printing press and five years after a papal bull was issued legitimizing the belief in witches. It went through at least 30 printings and became the handbook for witch hunters, both Protestant and Catholic. It gave permission to bishops and secular authorities to prosecute witches if there were no representatives from the Inquisition around, giving full directions. After the witch trials swept through Europe, some villages were left with as few as two women. So if this book is so bad, why should one read it? Because there are lessons to be learned, both psychologically and historically, and there is an ignorance to overcome. This is a fascinating study of mass hysteria, greed, and delusional behavior.

-- Amazon.com book description

By Doreen Valiente

Since the publication of her previous books on witchcraft, Doreen Valiente has received many letters asking -How can I find a witches' coven? How can I become a witch?- This book gives the answers.

It tells you what the old religion of witchcraft has to offer the new age; how the ago-old Craft of the Wise can be practiced in the modern world; how to initiate yourself and start your own coven. The author has been a practicing witch since 1953, and in this book she gives a new Book of Shadows (the witch's handbook of rituals and instructions) based upon ancient magical tradition but geared to present times. Included are spells, incantations, witch songs, and practical advice on how to run a coven and how to acquire your own collection of magical implements.

-- Amazon.com book decription