Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner is the essential primer from one of the best known authors on Wicca. Focusing on the importance of individualism in your spiritual path, Cunningham explains the very basics of Sabbats (holy days), ceremonies, altars, and other nuts and bolts of Wicca that a solitary practitioner may have trouble finding elsewhere. While Wicca shouldn't be your sole point of reference when considering Wicca as your way of life, it is one of the best starting points. --Brian Patterson
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
I love it!
Customer Rating:
This book is very informative, which I believe that we all expect from a Scott Cunningham book.
Quick shipping
Customer Rating:
Product arrived quickly and in very good condition. Includes a good introduction to what Wicca is and where it came from. Would recommend to anyone who is at all interested in learning about Wicca.
New Seekers look elsewhere
Customer Rating:
I wanted to write a review of this book in an effort to help those seeing their path find a better direction to go in. White this is a popular book and has been on the market for a number of years, it is not a book about Traditional Witchcraft and the Old Religion, this is a book on Wicca, a new-age, watered-down, neo-modern version of witchcraft which has very little to do with the Old Faith.
To quote from a well respected Traditional source, "Traditional Witchcraft is a Craft separate from the `New Age' self-help ways and the popular and religion of Wicca. The path of Cunning and Witchcraft is always one that by its very nature will be trod by the few because it is not about gaining powers or position, it is first and foremost about spiritual awareness and a true connection with the agricultural cycles of the Land. The old `Wise Craft' is a way of natural and instinctive responses to the spiritual reality of the land, a remembering of regional Agricultural ways and of renewal and transformation for the Agricultural Craft has always been a very individualistic way."
In Scott Cunningham's work you will find very little of this, and much more of a new-age outlook which combines all sorts of pantheons and mythologies to create a religion. Traditional Witchcraft does not do this, rather, it works exclusively with the very Land on which each individual witch resides, local trees, local herbs, local spirits, and not foreign Gods and Goddesses from all over the world.
If you are looking for book which will help you get a good start in Traditional Witchcraft then please check out The Witching Way of the Hollow Hill by Robin Artisson, The Horn of Evenwood by Robin Artisson, Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Huson, Call of the Horned Piper by Nigel Aldcroft Jackson, and Masks of Misrule by Nigel Jackson. These books will provide a far better place to begin your journey into the family of witchcraft than Scott Cunningham's work could ever hope to do.
In closing, the basic foundation of Traditional Witchery tells us that the tradition you draw upon is native to the land upon which you stand, solely because the power must ever be drawn direct through the Earth wherever you might happen to be. The circle is the gate which opens in the Earth and allows ingress into the mysteries through the powers of the land. By observing your local natural cycles you will grow in communion with the Land and grow in the ways of witchery.
I hope this helps.
Classic book on Wicca still holds up
Customer Rating:
I've been recently re-reading this, and I have to say it still holds up well 20 years later. I love how it is clear without speaking down to the reader. It gives enough detail on what to do and not to do with Wicca, but leaves it open-ended enough that one is inspired to use our own imagination instead of just follow some cookie-cutter recipe.
Perfect for any practitioner's shelf!
Customer Rating:
Scott Cunningham's book is exactly what it says it is, A guide for the SOLITARY Practitioner. The fact is some people can't find covens, or some people prefer to do things by themselves-and for those people new to Wicca in general it gives a very loose and nice base for Wicca.
The first section is all on theory, which is a big part that is usually left out of a lot of books. It seems many Wicca books leave out on the why and jump into the how, which I find rather silly-why would you do something if you don't know the theory behind it or how it actually works? My favorite part about this section is the tools. Cunningham actually takes his lovely time explaining them and what they're for, this is one of my big pet peeves is books that just say, "Okay you need a wand, a censer, and a cauldron." And this is even in so called "Beginner" books. How are beginners supposed to know what these are unless they've had previous occult experience?
The second section is practice! Which makes sense Theory then Practice, as it should be. This is pretty much your usual practice section. It's short and laid out nice. Cunningham explains thing in good detail for anybody new to understand the practice.
The last part includes the "Standing Stones Book of Secrets" it includes nice information to help people get their own BoS or Grimoire going. I found the symbols section a bit lacking, although Cunningham goes over them nicely in his sequel book, "Living Wicca".
Select button not working? 
