Blackthorn's Protection Magic: A Witch’s Guide to Mental and Physical Self-Defense

Written by Amy Blackthorn

Narrated by Gail Shalan

This accessible hands-on guide to protection magic discusses spiritual, emotional, and physical security, providing an overview of essential oils, incense, spells, and tarot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666549829

Amy Blackthorn

Amy Blackthorn has a certification in aromatherapy and incorporates her experiences in traditional witchcraft with her horticulture studies. Her company, Blackthorn Hoodoo Blends, creates tea based on old Hoodoo herbal formulas.

Reviews for Blackthorn's Protection Magic

[Fuzbel · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

With how much I enjoyed Blackthorn's other books, I expected this one to be of similar quality. I was very sad to be wrong.

Blackthorn is clearly passionate about the content which is why it was disappointing that much of advice lackluster or straight up wrong. (The two way mirror "finger touching your reflection" myth was debunked by Snopes back in 1999, the Dephic "toxic fumes as source of their visions" has been debunked by archaeologists over and over again since the early 1900s.)

For a book about protection magic, I was shocked to find that almost 1/3 of the book was devoted to personal physical protection either in the home or the self. Again I understand Blackthorn sharing a part of herself in this work, however this is first and foremost a book on protection MAGIC and the magic in these sections felt either irrelevant or short without much detail.

Much of the advice in these sections felt extreme too, ex. if you see someone 3 times in public they might be a stalker (or maybe you just have the same routine?). If someone is staring at you on public transportation they are either 1) sizing you up as a victim or 2) have decided you are going to be their victim. (Or maybe they are mentally ill and harmless? Maybe they're just staring into the void? Maybe they like your style?) Blackthorn tries to make the book very general up to this point, for potentially any practitioner, however the personal protection section veers aggressively American and alienates any reader outside of the States.

The book felt disjointed and many times I felt like I was reading 4 different books instead of one. For example, the section in the beginning on mind went startlingly from discussing magic to trauma—this was another thing that felt off to me, I do not think encouraging people to self diagnose with PTSD is safe or helpful and, as someone with PTSD, was very shocked to see it thrown in seemingly randomly. And as of the time of its writing, C-PTSD is NOT condition listed in the DSM V nor accepted writ large by the American Psychiatry Association. This is NOT to say it's not real, but that it's a discussion to be had by mental health professionals and not in a witchcraft book. I also think the list of how one might have negative thought patterns based on how your "grown ups" treated you lacked nuance and could easily make parents of mentally ill individuals blame themselves. Not cool. Sometimes we are mentally ill based on genetics and situations our "grown ups" had nothing to do with.

I'm not even going to get into the section with Mortellus only to say that it was a jarring addition and lacked the detail it needs to be both safe and relevant—encouraging people to acquire water the recently deceased have been washed with without discussion of the ethics is irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

With the amount of detail put into personal physical protection, I would expect the same attention paid to magical section of the book. This was not the case. Honestly, most of the information I would've gleaned better from her other books or other books on protection.

I felt that the vast majority of the book could've been replaced with a large, in depth further reading and resource section, this would afford more detail and elaboration to the magical sections of the book while providing helpful information about personal security that didn't seem out of place.

In spite of this, I still really value Blackthorn's books and look forward to a more cohesive book in the future.