Introductory Reclaiming Books

Some people may hear about Reclaiming first from their friends or local Pagan/Witchy community, if they're in touch with such a community, and that community has an awareness of the tradition. In our area here in northeast Ohio, I have found that very few people have ever heard of Reclaiming.

A good amount of people have, however, heard of Starhawk and The Spiral Dance.

If you didn't hear about Reclaiming through a friend, online group, or other similar means, you probably first found out about it by reading one of these books (or perhaps another by Starhawk, or other authors who were, or still are, involved with the tradition). This may be repeat information in that case. But for those who find this page through other means and want to know how to learn more, these books are a great starting point. Some of them are even used as prerequisites for participating in Reclaiming classes or workshops, to make sure people have a passing familiarity with the basics before jumping into work together, or so you can come in with questions for discussion ready.

The Spiral Dance, The Twelve Wild Swans, and Elements of Magic --
Three books that give an introduction to different aspects of Reclaiming

The Spiral Dance

In the upper left of the above picture is a copy of the 20th anniversary edition of The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess by Starhawk. It was originally published in 1979 by Harper & Row (HarperCollins, or Harper San Franciso), with a second edition being released in '89 for the 10th anniversary, and a third edition in '99 for the 20th anniversary. If you can find it, I do recommend reading the 20th anniversary edition, because it includes the author's notes and further thoughts about the original text at both the 10th anniversary, and the 20th. You can read through the book and wherever asterisks have been added, either one* or two**, there are notes about it in the 10th* or 20th** anniversary sections, respectively. I personally think this is really great, because you can immediately get a feel for how much things changed in the first twenty years since the book was originally published, and how Reclaiming tradition was already evolving. Of course if you can only find the original edition, or even the 10th anniversary edition, that's okay! Just bear in mind that what you're reading was originally written over 40 years ago now, and some things may have changed, new information may have come about, and the author's viewpoints have also grown and changed. The practices and basic information, however, are still used to this day.


Starhawk wrote this book in her 20s. According to the Wikipedia article, she finished the book in 1977 but wasn't able to publish it until 1979. She was 28 (-ish, not sure what month that year the book was published) when it was published, so she was in her mid-20s when actually finishing the book. For me (Ember), currently 28 at the time of this writing, it is wild to me that this book was written by someone younger than I am now. Her experiences were so wildly different, in both the decade and the geographical area where she was living, from mine and those of my peers. When I first read this book, I envisioned it being written by a middle aged woman (since Starhawk was in her 50s or so when I first read Spiral Dance). It wasn't until later that I looked at the date and did the math! Now when I read it, I hold the reality in my mind that it was written by a college-aged woman in California, deeply involved in the feminist movement, participating in social justice activism, and training magickally with Victor Anderson of the Feri Tradition among others which all came to influence Reclaiming.

I have seen Reclaiming workshops today ask that participants have at least read the first six chapters of this book as a pre-requisite. These opening chapters cover the basics of the history of Witchcraft, how it fits into the larger picture today, and how Witches tend to view the world, as well as diving into beginning to learn about coven work (working in groups with other people), creating sacred space (and what that even means), and information about the Goddess and the God. Interspersed throughout these 6 chapters -- which are a bit less than half of the entire book -- are exercises that you can practice at home on your own, or with a partner or friends who are learning with you.


The Twelve Wild Swans

The full title of this book -- which was co-authored by Starhawk and Hilary Valentine -- sort of has two subtitles. Online it is listed as The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action. On the book's cover and title page, there is an additional description: "Rituals, Exercises & Magical Training in the Reclaiming Tradition." In The Spiral Dance, the Reclaiming Tradition was not named as such. That's because it wasn't being thought of as a tradition at the time! But by the time Swans (the short version of the title I will use here) was published in 2000, also by Harper San Franciso, Starhawk and others had written several more books about their practices, classes and workshops had brought others into the group, and Reclaiming's involvement expanded to include communities all over the USA, and around the world. By 2000 it was definitely being considered its own tradition, and this book was written with the intention of sharing some of the way the tradition operates, teaches, and learns. For example, it was co-authored by two people to model the way that classes are taught -- multiple teachers share the role of facilitating, at least two but sometimes more.

This book in particular was modeled after the structure of Reclaiming's week-long intensive trainings, known as Witchcamps. Classes are also taught in other formats (we'll talk about that in another post later on), but the Witchcamp format is probably one of the most well known characteristics of Reclaiming. The camps, and also many workshops, typically choose a story of some kind as the theme, and the work is structured around that. Reclaiming Witches work with story often, as a tool for connecting, growing, and creating change. Think of your favorite story from childhood, or your favorite myth or legend, and how connected you feel to it. Think about the way we can immerse ourselves in stories, whether reading books, watching TV dramas, or seeing it performed on a stage. This book uses the fairy tale or folk tale, "The Twelve Wild Swans", as its theme story. Each chapter covers a different section of the story, and the lessons are connected to the story itself.

The structure of this book follows the structure of a Witchcamp, where you choose the path work you'll be doing for the week. But unlike attending an actual camp, you can re-read this book in several different ways, to go back and do ALL the path work multiple times. At the camp I went to (my only one so far, in 2015), there were three paths to choose from. Each path had around 12-15 people in it including two teachers, and during the day everyone would go to their individual path groups. In the evenings, the whole camp would get together for larger ritual. Similarly in this book there are multiple paths you can take.

Each chapter looks at a different segment of the Twelve Wild Swans story, and is further broken up into sections: Elements, Inner Path, and Outer Path.

If you follow the Elements path, the lessons focus on basics of magickal practice (I will talk about Elements more in my discussion of the third book in this post, the new Elements of Magic book!). Moving into the Inner Path, the lessons deepen into work for transforming ourselves and our lives, our inner needs and desires, and personal healing. Finally, the Outer Path expands toward ways of working in the larger world around us, to act on a larger scale for our communities, and the world at large. You can see how these mirror the subtitle, "Magic, Healing, and Action".

You can choose to work through the book in several ways. You can work with Elements for a week, doing one chapter/lesson per day and doing only the Elements section of each, then skipping to the next chapter and its Elements section. Then another week do the same thing but going through the Inner Path sections, and a third week on the Outer Path. This is how I first used the book. You could also, if you choose, spend a few days on each chapter, doing the Elements, Inner, and Outer sections of only Chapter One thoroughly, before moving on to chapter two and restarting with Elements there. It's really up to you. You can even spend much more than a week on each, if you feel the need. The method of following one path straight through over the course of a week is the method that follows a Witchcamp format the closest.


Elements of Magic

The newest book in the Reclaiming world, Elements of Magic: Reclaiming Earth, Air, Fire, Water, & Spirit, was just published in 2018 by Llewellyn Publications. It takes the idea of co-authoring even further, in that it is actually a collection of essays, exercises, and lessons written by 33 contributing teachers and authors. The book as a whole was edited together by Jane Meredith and Gede Parma, two Reclaiming teachers based in Australia. This book is a good example of how far the Reclaiming tradition has come from the Bay Area of California in the late 1970s. Today, Reclaiming Witches and communities can be found in Australia, Canada, various places in Europe, and now in Brazil, in addition to pockets all over the United States.

"Elements of Magic" is the name of the introductory "class" or "course" in Reclaiming. As mentioned in the discussion of Swans above, Elements is often offered as a path at Witchcamps, and covers the basic elements -- or we might say building blocks and tools -- of magickal practice. It is recommended that anyone newly working with the tradition take Elements first. If it's your first time attending a Witchcamp, it is recommended that you take Elements also, even if you've been working with the concepts for years. Even people who have been involved with Reclaiming Tradition for years will go back to the basics, back to the roots, and take an Elements class again. (Because they work with different themes each time, and you may have different teachers each time, and certainly different people taking the class with you, they're always different!)

Elements is a prerequisite for moving on to other classes, as well. There are currently considered to be five "Core Classes" of Reclaiming. Another one of the classes, "Iron Pentacle", also has a book out that was written by Jane Meredith & Gede Parma and was published in 2016. But before moving on to that class, if you were to take it as a workshop, it would be expected that you've already taken an Elements class, or have the equivalent background knowledge/experience. For example, my partner accompanied me to a workshop of yet another of the core classes, "Pearl Pentacle", last year. They were able to do so because I had taken both Elements and Iron Pentacle from trained teachers beforehand (Elements was the path I took at Witchcamp), and taught Elements to my partner, as well as having them read the first six chapters of Spiral Dance (recommended by the workshop facilitators), before we would attend Pearl. This was accepted as having the equivalent experience or prerequisite, and also helped my partner feel more comfortable knowing what was going on!

At the time of writing this blog post, I am currently reading and enjoying the Elements of Magic book! Many of the exercises in it are in fact things I learned at Witchcamp, or at one of the various Reclaiming workshops I've attended since then. It is meant to be an introduction to the teachings of the Elements class itself, and it does its job at that.


Subjects for later blog posts:

In writing this post, you noticed there were a few areas where I said I'll do another post later on. I'm going to list some of those things here both so you know what you may expect more information on at some point, and so that I remember what I said I'd write more about down the line. =)

• Witchcamps, and the different formats in which classes may be taught

• The Core Classes - What they are, where to learn more about each

• Preparing to attend a workshop or other class

• The other books out there related to Reclaiming, written by Starhawk or others (I'm currently reading many more of Starhawk's books, in chronological order of when they were written!)

• Blog Page, rather than a post: I will be adding an "About Us" or similar page where you can get to know more about myself (Ember, or Cara) and my partner, as the people behind this page.

Thanks so much for reading,

Blessings~
-Ember

on behalf of Ohio Reclaiming