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

Love the darker twist

I've been reading a lot of books on witchcraft and other spiritual matters lately, and it has been nice, but something a lot of them have lacked is the darkness. We want to dare! This book goes into those topics and isn't afraid to discuss them. I'm so glad because I was beginning to wonder where I'd be able to learn about that sort of thing. Can't wait for the next book from the Blacktree Coven.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Less about Witchcraft more about Black Tree's path

This was a pretty decent book, not sure why people are hating on it. The narrator gets a little over the top but it's tolerable.

should be labeled as satanism over witchcraft

I am a Nordic pagan and looking to explore more aspects and after hearing a review was drawn to this book. I am fine with the focus on your current area and working with the land I already so that and was excited to hear that. I was not into at all and turned off by the constant talk about things with the Lord of witches Satan. during the chapter I was turned away as they'd previously put that they're not for any gods, but then spend longer justifying him as an archetype and did most things to connect with him. that sounds a lot like worshipping a god to me. I think if they'd avoided the whole constant Lord of the witches it would be more enjoyable and stick to what they'd original said.

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.

the narration...

the narration made this nearly impossible to finish.. very robotic/AI sounding. like Microsoft sam or early AI

great information

As someone who practices a BTW path, I found this information super enlightening, as there's practices from old traditional witchcraft that may or may not have been mentioned but not passed down to me or that I've read before. I'm finding these books on traditional witchcraft have good info on the Devil/Witch Father, familars, and other unfamiliar practices or more in depth than other sources. I ordered the book to be able to reference these things better.

But as others have mentioned, the writers did have a tone of 'we changed this in our tradition and think this is better because...' , however it may just be the tone of the reader. if they didn't change anything and didn't have a reason to do so, they wouldn't have created their own path. I chose to take it more as explanatory for what made sense to them. But funny that this is a traditional witchcraft path, because when you change something from the tradition, it's no longer traditional - it's what you made up.

not bad for an American interpretation of British woo

so there was a little nonsense, but believe me, there's less than most books on folk magic. interesting to rename the moons, don't quite know how that is sitting right now, need to sleep on it.