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The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 10th Anniversary Edition
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 10th Anniversary Edition
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 10th Anniversary Edition
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The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 10th Anniversary Edition

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The twentieth anniversary edition of The Spiral Dance celebrates the pivotal role the book has had in bringing Goddess worship to the religious forefront. This bestselling classic is both an unparalleled reference on the practices and philosophies of Witchcraft and a guide to the life-affirming ways in which readers can turn to the Goddess to deepen their sense of personal pride, develop their inner power, and integrate mind, body, and spirit. Starhawk's brilliant, comprehensive overview of the growth, suppression, and modern-day re-emergence of Wicca as a Goddess-worshipping religion has left an indelible mark on the feminist spiritual consciousness.

In a new introduction, Starhawk reveals the ways in which Goddess religion and the practice of ritual have adapted and developed over the last twenty years, and she reflects on the ways in which these changes have influenced and enhanced her original ideas. In the face of an ever-changing world, this invaluable spiritual guidebook is more relevant than ever.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateSep 13, 2011
ISBN9780062125224
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 10th Anniversary Edition
Author

Starhawk

Starhawk is the author of nine books, including her bestselling The Spiral Dance, The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, and Webs of Power, winner of the 2003 Nautilus Award for social change. She has an international reputation, and her works have been translated into many different languages. Starhawk is also a columnist for beliefnet.com and ZNet. A veteran of progressive movements who is deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism, she travels internationally, teaching magic, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism. Starhawk lives part-time in San Francisco, in a collective house with her partner and friends, and part-time in a little hut in the woods in western Sonoma County, where she practices permaculture in her extensive gardens and writes.

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Reviews for The Spiral Dance

Rating: 3.9884260266203704 out of 5 stars
4/5

432 ratings14 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this book very inspiring and loved the practicality of it. A powerful book by a powerful woman.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great beginner's book to help get you off your feet LOL. Easy to read and rituals are easy to follow. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone new to the craft.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Pivotal for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great beginner's book to help get you off your feet LOL. Easy to read and rituals are easy to follow. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone new to the craft.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great beginner's book to help get you off your feet LOL. Easy to read and rituals are easy to follow. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone new to the craft.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this again and again. It informed my own practices.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    THE book to read if you want to find out about paganism, and how to change reality through magic (yes, it really does exist). No hocus pocus here - just a primer on ritual and how it can transform your life. If you want to get the whole story on modern day witchcraft, you should contact the folks in Reclaiming or see your local Druid/Priestess. Central message in a nutshell: you create your own reality.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amazing book. Absolutely amazing. One of the best I have ever read on basics of Wicca/Paganism.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Basically, I'm an atheist and thoroughgoing rationalist, but one that not only seeks to better understand spirituality but wishes I could find a way to express myself within it rationally. I thought a form of paganism might do, since it seeks to root spirituality within the earth, ie reality. So I bought this book, wanting to learn more about Neopaganism, since I had read this was the classic in the literature.I'm afraid I found that there isn't much of a line between this kind of "spirituality" and the supernatural and just plain superstition. Invocations, herbal charms, spells? I found this was no more to my liking than mainstream Christianity. And if was filled with its own myths, it's own distortions of reality and history. Nine million died in the persecution of witches? Reputable historians think no more than 100,000--and that's at the high end. Nor was it exclusively women--a majority condemned as witches were women, yes--but not anywhere near 80 percent. Yes, sexism and racism has had a horrible number of victims. But whether it's witch burnings or the Middle Passage of the Atlantic Slave Trade, we do no honor to those victims to so exaggerate the numbers we discredit their real suffering, and cause people who learn the truth to dismiss what they went through altogether. Similarly, I find Starhawk's claims for Modern Wicca having any continuity with a Pre-Christian past dubious. Yet parts of The Spiral Dance called to my young self--as demonstrated by the number of lines I highlighted and pages I do-eared. The idea of the whole universe as what is sacred--and we're a part of it. Also, I've known many fine people who call themselves Pagan or Wiccan--including one of my closest friends. This book and the movement have had an influence. If only for that, to understand that phenomenon and its adherents better, this is a book worth reading.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    exercises and meditations are excellent for a beginner. "history" is completely revisionist and upholds murray and others' errors. the good points are really good, the bad points are really bad. the 4 stars are just for the exercises - the historical errors bring the overall rating down to 1.5 but the exercises deserve far better than that.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If you try to sit down and read Spiral from front to back you will probably fail. But if you take it in sections, and think about the section before you move on, you'll pick up good info from it!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This wise woman's arguments are delivered in poetry and expression so heartfelt and passionate, even the naysayer can't help but shake their heads, whether it's in amazement at the deeds of our plagued race, or just in shame for the current state of the earth. Starhawk is clearly a political activist, although not much of an extremist by today's standards. If you're familiar with the work of Daniel Quinn or other counterculture authors, this is a pretty tame perspective which you can easily argue is driven purely by love.I recommend this for women of course, and for men who are not so conditioned that they can't walk around with a book on Goddess Spirituality. It has its flaws, such as the history which relies on some oudated anthropology, and a little of the author's self-righteousness shows through from time to time. But this is a great starting point for the countercultural, anti-paradigm, modern feminist novice. The version I read is the10th anniversary edition including separate sections with many new notes and comments from the author on the subsequent editions and the reasons for them. All of it is very readable, moving, interesting and worthwhile - even for the Christianfolk (hi!). A good book to lend to your womanfriends.readerswell.blogspot.com
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    First read in 1994 -- one of the first books on The Craft I ever bought, and remains the one I use the most.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While I felt that almost every chapter was incomplete somehow, the book was inspiring and made me hunger for more in my personal practice. More passion, more goddess, more earth, more spontanteity in ritual, just as she describes!

Book preview

The Spiral Dance - Starhawk

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