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Title: Dreaming the Dark -- Magic, Sex & Politics
Author: Starhawk
Publisher: Beacon Press (Unitarian Universalist Association)
           25 Beacon Street
           Boston, MA 02108
           USA
Copyright: 1982 (Miriam Simos)
ISBN: 0-8070-1001-4
Price: 7,95 USD paperback 

Dreaming the Dark is for groups, and the individuals within them. It's
about power and its distribution.

Contents:
=========
Prologue: Dreaming the Dark
Power-Over and Power-From-Within
Thought-forms: Magic as Language
The Ethics of Magic
Reclaiming Personal Power: Magic as Will
Goddesses and Gods: The Landscape of the Culture
Building Community: Processes for Groups
Circles and Webs: Groups Structures
Sex and Politics
Ritual as Bonding: Action as Ritual
Epilogue

Appendix A: The Burning Times: Notes on a Crucial Period of History
Appendix B: Tools for Groups
Appendix C: Chants and Songs
Notes and Sources


The author:
===========
Starhawk is a very famous Californian witch. She's also a political
activist and a non-violence trainer, not to mention counsellor. Her
most well-known book is Spiral Dance. She's also the author of Truth
or Dare and the utopical novel The Fifth Sacred Thing. Her mundane
name is Miriam Simos, but her books are all published under the name
Starhawk.

The chapters:
=============
Already in the prologue Starhawk's excellent writing skills are
noticeable. The chapter is about how and why Dreaming the Dark (DTD)
came to be, and what Starhawk wants with it.

The first chapter introduces the concepts power-over and
power-from-within.

The second chapter is about language, about how language affects
us. It's about context, abstract and tangible, about how power speaks,
and how we can use the language to further our own purposes.

The third chapter is about ethics. Important ideas are the beer can
principle and the self-hater.

The fourth chapter deals with our personal Will and the choices we
make. It includes the story about how Joy claims her own Will.

The fifth chapter is about goddesses and gods and their place in our
culture. It contains a utopical text about how a private company could
accomodate the children of their employees in their office building.

The sixth chapter gives some processes to help building community in
already existing groups.

The seventh chapter deals with groups structures. It talks about how
roles can be cast within groups, with or without the consent of the
people involved.

The eight chapter is about sexuality and gender. It includes some
powerful sexual/body exercises for individuals.

The ninth and final chapter is about how groups can use ritual to bond
or to get something done.

The epilogue is just that.

Appendix A is called The Burning Times: Notes on a Crucial Period of
History. It's about the burning of women in Europe (mainly) accused
for witchcraft, but also about people of other religions than
mainstream Christianity who suffered. The scholarship in this chapter
is debatable.

Appendix B gives more tools for groups and appendix C contains chants
and songs including scores.

Personal opinion:
=================

Starhawk is an excellent writer. Her prose is smooth and rythmical,
it's a joy to read her, and before you've noticed it you've read a
chapter and a half when you were only looking for a quote.

Quotes is another issue: If you're ever in need for a quote for your
.signature, this book is chokefull of them.

I'm not part of any spiritual group, but the advise Starhawk gives
works well on an individual level, too. I can imagine that it would be
hard to make a non-witch group use the tools and processes in the
book, but I haven't tried.

If there's anything about this book that I don't like, it's Appendix
A. For one thing the scholarship in it doesn't hold water, and for
another I think that just as when Jews dwell too much on the
Holocaust, we tend to become paranoid if we dwell too much on the
Burning Times. Of course this doesn't mean that we should deny it, but
lets remember that it's a long time since, and that if we let our
perceptions of random contemporary Christians be coloured by this
appendix, we are inviting a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Conclusion:
===========
Maybe this book isn't as essential as Spiral Dance, but it is and has
been very influential in the NeoPagan community. I recommend it for
anyone who is interested in how power works and can work.

--Ceci (93-12-11)