Ecclectica

So you’ve found an aesthetically pleasing cover for a book in your local New Age section and you want to know if they’re worth that $25 price tag? You’ve come to the right place! Vetting witchcraft books can be super tricky...especially if you don’t know what to look for! 

My process for vetting is pretty simple, but it covers enough bases to see if it might be something to glance at. 

Look at who endorses the book! Who has raved about it? Do you know anything about that person? For example when looking at a folk magic book with an introduction from Starr Casas I immediately know there might be some Hoodoo appropriation involved because that’s what she is known for! Having an idea of who the ‘big bads’ are in the type of magic you’re looking at helps considerably. 

If the first step isn’t applicable...then I always go to Amazon, Goodreads, Tumblr, etc and look up reviews for the book and author! If there’s even one negative review I read it first then go to the rest. 

I look for ‘trigger words’ in reviews or just by flipping pages of the book itself. Words such as (for what I want to avoid in a book): Kabbalah, mixing together wicca and witchcraft as the same thing, sour jars, smudging, totems, white sage, starseed or indigo children, honey jars, voodoo dolls, shifting, claiming magic can cure illnesses like epilepsy or cancer, having ‘control’ over a deity, can cause cataclysms like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. Astral Projection being for beginners, not suggesting cleansing/protection methods, Atlantian races, ‘sacred feminine’ without the opposite/masculine.

Check the authors social medias/websites! I can’t stress how easy it is to spot someone using hoodoo work like honey jars or (specific) cow tongue bindings when they post all their spellwork on their insta or website. 

Do they have a shop? Check out what the shop sells and where it’s located! A lot of Hoodoo and Vodun appropriators have French Quarter ‘conjure’ shops.

Check their bibliography! Is it decently sized for the amount of pages the book has? Does it seem small? Who have they referenced? Is it someone on your personal no-no list? (A decent bibliography for say a well-researched 300 page book would be about 10-15 pages minimum. A lackluster one would be say 5 pages or less.)

Of those references used in the bibliography...are any of them major problematic individuals? Have they referenced the Frosts? Or other big no-nos? If not, you might be good!

If it’s a small bibliography, flip through and see if any of the information sticks out as UPG (unverified personal gnosis) which means things they can’t verify as accurate? If so it might not be the book you need! (Unless you are looking for personal accounts of something.)

Is the author associated with controversy in other areas? A quick google of “Author name controversy” will likely pull up some results if so. Check over the author’s stances on important matters like race, religion, etc if applicable via their social medias. 

Heru-wer, Great One of the Speckled Plummage

O Luminous Queen of heaven,

You whose Father fashioned you in the image of Ma’at,

Whose heart is of faultless justice, embodying righteousness,

I offer you my praise, O Sekhmet.

All glory is yours, O Lady of the Knives,

Whose reckoning is swift and sure;

The stroke of Thy weapon sunders all evil

Which you cast underfoot for all perpetuity –

All things Thou destroy shall never again rise up.

Most venerable daughter of the One Most High,

All evil trembles before Thy name,

Knowing its day soon approaches.

Exact is your justice, O Fire embodying the holy wrath of your Father,

Thou Retributor most righteous and mighty,

Repaying evil sixfold.

O Thou One Most Terrible,

I prostrate myself before you,

Knowing my iniquity goes not unseen.

O Mother Sekhmet, Lady of Plague and Healing,

Empower me to cast all wickedness within and without underfoot,

And let me never compromise with isft.

Purge within me by Thy holy flame all evil,

That I might serve you most faithfully in Ma’at.

On the top - Gilbert Baker rainbow flag, bisexual, pansexual, the pink/orange/white lesbian flag, trans, intersex, asexual, and aromantic flags.

On the bottom - the Bear flag, the 2021 Disability Pride flag, polysexual, blue/green/white gay flag, the 2022 polyamory flag, Leather flag, nonbinary, and genderfluid flags.

Jewish Amulet: ‘the sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night’

This amulet draws on Jewish verse, traditional art and mysticism. The text ‘the sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night’ is taken from Psalm 121 (Shir Lamaalot). Inside the amulet are three mythical characters some believe to have protective powers: Sanvai, Sansanvai & Semangelof… These angels first appeared in a Kabbalistic text and have been around for hundreds of years. 

One idea for a devotional act to your deities could be a journal. It could be a great place to put things like:

tarot readings done in relation to them

any dreams you think were messages from them

any upg

updating them about your day

things that reminded you of them

pressed flowers and herbs that remind you of them

photos of things that make you think of them

poetry

doodles/art

research about them

offerings you’ve made to them that they especially liked

perfume samples (those little sticks they give you in perfume departments) that remind you of them

01. Gypsy is a slur & there is no “positive” or “acceptable” way of using it if you aren’t Romani. It should not be part of your vocabulary – the same goes for the term “gypped”. If you want to talk about the slur censor it or simply call it “the g slur.”

02. Anti Romani racism exists everywhere and there is a slur for the us in every language. Gypsy is the slur used in the English language but there is also Zigan, Tigan, Cigan, Gitano, Zigeuner, etc. - a lot of them stem from the Greek word for “slave” and are considered even worse than the Gypsy slur. However all of them are still slurs and shouldn’t be used by you if you aren’t Romani.

03. Gypsy has never been anything other than a derogatory slur against Romani that has been screamed at us while we have been branded, enslaved, hunted down, murdered, put through a genocide and a holocaust, segregated and discriminated against. 

04. Romani is the proper name of the people that are being targeted by the G slur. Some people write it as Rromani which is also correct. The term Roma/Rroma can be used too, however not all Romani are Roma.

05. Romani and Romanian do not mean the same thing. Romani are the people that are being targeted by the G slur and we are brown people originally from India. Romanians are people from the European country Romania.

06. The official term for racism directed towards Romani is called “Antiziganism”, that term however is offensive since it includes the word “Zigan” which is a horrible slur against Romani. Please do not use that term and instead use “Anti-Romani racism”, “Anti-Romanism”, etc.

07. Anti-Romani racism is very extreme in Europe (segregation in housing, education and health care, forced sterilizations, evictions and demolition of settlements, police brutality, etc), which is why we even received the title of “Europe’s Most Hated”, but it’s not an exclusively European thing. Anti-Romani racism exists in America and Canada as well. (Canada even has an immigration ban on Romani.)

08. “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” does not display actual Romani people as far as I have heard so it does not represent Romani people/culture at all.

09. Your believes that Romani “don’t want to work”, “don’t want to send their children to school”, “steal children”, “are dirty”, “genetically prone to crime”, “are lazy”, etc. are nothing but racist stereotypes and left over Nazi propaganda. All of them are untrue as well. (Also: Romani would love to work and go to school but the extreme discrimination against us in the field of education makes that very hard. And the widely spread traditional anti-Romani attitudes and prejudices don’t make it any easier either.)

10. Stereotypes such as that all Romani women are “sexual temptresses” and promiscuous disregarding of age are obviously incorrect too. Virginity is actually considered important in Romani culture. Believing in those stereotypes is very harmful and dangerous as well because despite Romani being only a minority in most European countries we make up the highest % when it comes to sex trafficking victims.

11. Romani culture doesn’t have anything to do with witchcraft, wicca, paganism, etc. We didn’t create tarot, palm reading or crystal balls either. You can stop calling yourself a “Gypsy Witch” and faking Romani heritage now. The only reason why assumptions like that came to exist is because of racist believes and lies spread by the church. Our skills with medical herbs and palm reading were seen as “evidence of heresy” and from the 16th century onward we were outlawed, expelled and persecuted, culminating in the organized killing of our people. 

12. Fortune teller costumes are racist. Romani women have always been stereotyped as fortune tellers which is why the stereotypical image of a fortune teller is always linked with Romani women - dark skin, messy black hair, a big nose, a “weird” accent, a headscarf, big hoop earrings, gold coins added to clothes and an “untrustworthy/deceiving” nature, etc. (A lot of people even use the term “fortune teller” like a synonym for the G slur nowadays.) A person’s race/ethnicity is not a costume, so if you ever consider dressing up as a fortune teller chose something different.