Hello Melusine. I've just started to read 'Traditional Witchcraft and the Pagan Revival' and it has already helped to clear up some of the misconceptions that I've held. I have been exploring the Old Ways for years but I have been making mistakes and doing research to educate myself. I've found it a slow and worthwhile path and I'm glad that gradually, falling down and getting up again, I feel more and more comfortable on my way. I recently finished 'The Coarse Witchcraft Trilogy', which also helped to show me how Neo-Paganism and Wicca are not areas in which to just accept the first thing I read. The forgoing is a longwinded way of saying that you for your books, I think they will help me in more ways than I imagined. Thank you and kind regards, Claudine ~ Claudia Bulpitt, Word Press

REVIEW: The Traditional Witchcraft series by Melusine Draco – published by Moon Books www.moon-books.com It was Andy Lloyd Book Reviews that first put this series into its proper perspective: “The ‘Traditional Witchcraft’ series provides varied information about what it means to be a practising witch in modern times. In places, it feels like a guide, or self-help book. But there is much more to it than that. What strikes me is the amount of science running through the book. To understand nature is to live as a part of nature, and ultimately to become one with its changing patterns and cycles, to synchronise one’s own psychic or magical energy with natural tidal forces and the elements. So a witch, like no other religious practitioner that I’m aware of, must study her environment carefully, and attune her life to it … The learning is multi-disciplinary, and feels almost as if one was studying a textbook written by a poet … it has that sense of quiet wonder about it, supported by education, knowledge and, above all, wisdom.” In fact, the whole Traditional Witchcraft series has been structured along the lines similar to a distance learning course (in both paperback and e-book format), so that the would-be traditional witch has a step by step guide to follow. Traditional Witchcraft for Urban Living (originally published as Mean Streets Witchcraft) is the first in the series and as the title suggests, is aimed at the majority of pagans who live in an urban environment rather than insisting that a witch must live in the country before he/she can learn about traditional British Old Craft. The second step is revealed in Traditional Witchcraft for the Seashore teaches us how to work with those natural tides within our own environment, even if we don’t live by the sea. Step three, Traditional Witchcraft for Fields and Hedgerows, covers what most of us would think of in terms of traditional Craft, and brings us back into the comfort zone where we feel safe and secure – before step four casts us back out into the more hostile world of Traditional Witchcraft for the Woods and Forests. As our tutor tells us, the magical energies differ quite considerably between these four environments. It was intriguing to learn why the historical view of Traditional Witchcraft and the Pagan Revival was left until step five, but Ms Draco doesn’t look at things like normal mortals! “It’s not until we’ve been studying traditional Craft for a while that we start to notice both the differences and the similarities between the various disciplines. We want to know where our beliefs come from; to trace our antecedents; and to understand why some of our ways are often diametrically opposed to those of other traditions we read about. That is why the fifth book in the series was written as a magical anthropology; simply to make sense of some of the things we’ve never recognised before.” Not all her books, however, are favourably received. Some reviewers claim there is nothing new contained within them, or that there are no great revelations in the text. “Craft learning is about forty percent information and sixty percent intuition, but it’s also about realising when intuition is telling us that we don’t have all the information. There are books claiming to reveal the ‘secrets’ of traditional Craft - but intuition should tell us that if the secrets can be revealed in the reading of one book, then the author can’t have that much to tell. The real secret is that there are no secrets, only a system of revelation that eventually leads us to a series of guides or teachers, to further our progress along the Path to the Mysteries.” Martha Gray ([email protected]) Author of Grimalkyn: The Witch’s Cat also published by Moon Books ~ Martha Grey, Pentacle

I am a firm believer in the idea that we cannot fully understand who we are until we understand how we came to be here, and as a result I heartily recommend this book to anyone with a genuine curiosity about the history of witchcraft and it's influences on 21st century practices. ~ Witch Hazel, http://www.witchhazelsmagick.com/2013/07/book-review-traditional-witchcraft-and.html

“The ‘Traditional Witchcraft’ series provides varied information about what it means to be a practising witch in modern times. In places, it feels like a guide, or self-help book. But there is much more to it than that. What strikes me is the amount of science running through the book. To understand nature is to live as a part of nature, and ultimately to become one with its changing patterns and cycles, to synchronise one’s own psychic or magical energy with natural tidal forces and the elements. So a witch, like no other religious practitioner that I’m aware of, must study her environment carefully, and attune her life to it… The learning is multi-disciplinary, and feels almost as if one was studying a textbook written by a poet…it has that sense of quiet wonder about it, supported by education, knowledge and, above all, wisdom.” ~ Andy Lloyd Book Reviews