Besom, Stang & Sword

A Guide to Traditional Witchcraft, the Six-Fold Path & the Hidden Landscape

By: Christopher Orapello, Tara-Love Maguire

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Regional traditional witchcraft is an animistic form of witchcraft that moves away from the religious harvest festivals and fertility-minded practices associated with the more common Wiccan form of witchcraft. Very few of us in this age are farmers or dependent upon crops and harvests. Regional traditional witchcraft teaches people to find their craft in their own backyards, in the uncultivated land or urban cityscape alike, and in their ancestors rather than in ancient foreign deities or in a neopagan-styled religious form of witchcraft. It's not about where you're from but where you are.

The material is adaptable to any region in which the practitioner lives. Although the lack of deity worship and holy days is a significant part of the authors' nonreligious approach, this book presents a complete system of practice utilizing ritual, chant, trance, the six paths of witchcraft as defined and explained by the text, and the practices associated with traditional witchcraft.

©2018 Christopher Orapello and Tara-Love Maguire (P)2019 Tantor

great

informative, reliable, and engaging. this reaffirmed a lot of things that I already knew about some of the things in my own practice. great book about traditional witchcraft

Very helpful and easy to follow

The reading is very clear and and pairs well when going along with the book to see what the diagrams are that are being spoken of.

Interesting indeed

I learned lots of new things I didn’t know about witchcraft. Some were good and bad, overall it was a great learning experience! Thanks again

More structure than typical Witchcraft books.

Although all the practices and description of the witch lord don’t appeal to me, I can appreciate and respect an actual structure of lore which is not often provided in typical witchcraft books. Some of it smells of Christian roots, which is not appealing to me as well. Some of the information is contradictory but they on the fact that they have just created some thing that is most meaningful to them, and conclude that you can be flexible as well.

Good book, Narrator a bit mmmmmm

This is lovely writing about Black Tree and the practice of magick. The narrator is a little pretentious sounding, but if you can get past the drama, you can find very useful spells rituals, and rites.

Meh

Everyone's path is different. For the most part, this wasn't for me, but there were a few nuggets of wisdom that stuck with me.

Unique

Besom, Stang and Sword: A Guide to Traditional Witchcraft, the Six-Fold Path, and the Hidden Landscape ensorcells witchcraft back to its primal roots, still hidden and alive beneath the surface of the dark soil of mainstream magickal traditions. The book reorients the Craft to return to the primordial forces, animism, baneful plants, folk magic, ecstasy, and hedgewitchery without gatekeeping, armchair pseudo-academia, pretension or pomposity; making it incomparable to other books in its niche. The unclouded and grounded manner in which Orapello and Maguire write displays that they not only fully understand what they're writing about but that they are well-seasoned, knowledgeable, and insightful regarding the cosmology and praxis contained within its pages which allows them to teach it with crystal clarity.

The book's practices, exercises, rituals, and spells are easy to follow and easy to implement in your practice or start a brand new one. Nothing within the book is too obscure or impractical as can be the challenge with some other books on Traditional Witchcraft, except perhaps the baneful plants. The beauty of this book for me was the emphasis on working with local spirits over the spirits of the region a book was written. Orapello and Maguire help you to connect with the land and the spirits that inhabit it, regardless of where you live - instead of trying to figure out why you aren't getting fantastic results while trying to connect and work with Cornwall regional spirits while practicing in Los Angeles. Before even reading the book I made a list of what I would like to see in an introductory book on Traditional Witchcraft, and to my delight, the authors touched upon every single aspect. Because of all of this, when I recommend a Traditional Witchcraft book to seekers of that path, from now on it will Besom, Stang and Sword.

immersive and very interesting.

this book had a lot of information in regards to the particular folk magic of North America. I love how it incorporates hoodoo practice and rituals into the daily life and ritual of their practice and how they go to explain the many aspects of astral projection and spirit animals as well as familiars in a very knowledgeable and clear way thus dispelling many of the misconceptions that people might have as to what those mean. and though there's much of this particular path that I do not agree with, it is well worth the read and I will definitely be trying some of these rituals moving forward even if I tweak them a bit to fit more of my practice.

Accompanied PDF

I really wish it would have came with the Accompanying PDF like I've read other people had received... I heard there's alot of important pictures and sigils and such. So a bit hummed abiut that. Good book though, just will have to buy the paperback so I can understand what he's talking about when it comes to layouts and such.

great book, bad narrator

Great book, really not crazy about the narrator though... just his voice.

also, can't listen to it a second time for some reason.