Newsgroups: alt.pagan,alt.magick,talk.religion.newage
From: an125978@anon.penet.fi
Date: Tue,  6 Sep 1994 04:36:53 UTC
Subject: book review: Wicca the Ancient Way

If you were collecting obscure literature on Wicca in the early 80's you 
might remember a small privately published booklet called Wicca the Ancient 
Way.  It was written by several coven leaders in Canada who follow a 
pre-Gardnerian European Tradition of Wicca.

The booklet has been re-published by an American publisher (Illuminet Press 
of Georgia) and is being carried by the American distributer "New Leaf 
Publications."

Here follows part of a review of that book, by New Leaf.  I'm posting this, 
because a lot of my friends have been settling for photocopies of the 
original 1980 publication, and I thought a lot of people might be interested 
in getting a new copy.  If your bookstore doesn't have it, you might ask 
them to order it for you from New Leaf Publications...   Here's the review:

...it is my great privilege and most profound joy to announce the 
republication of Wicca the Ancient Way, by Janus-Mithras, Nuit-Hilaria and 
Mer-Amun.

This title has been out of print for the last several years, and it is one 
which I have spent off and on almost a decade of my professional and 
personal energies in several unsuccessful - until now - efforts to achieve 
its reissuance.  All things in their proper times, I suppose.  The new 
publisher is IllumiNet Press of Atlanta and the release date is scheduled 
for May 10th 1994, the new moon.  It will be a quality paper-back edition at 
$5.95 (you might remember the first edition in a saddle stitched format).

You may wonder why I am so excited about this book;  books on Witchcraft and 
Magic are a dime a baker's dozen, right?  Let me mention that even years 
after this book went out of print, we still had, and have, customers 
requesting it.  "But it's on my required Reading List for my students," one 
noted High Priest and published author in his own right, told me, "and I 
have to keep photocopying it to give them!"

What makes Wicca the Ancient Way unique in the existing literature on The 
Craft?  For one thing, it is unusual that a traditional Wicca coven is 
willing to publish any part of their teaching papers.  [Please note, as the 
Foreword of the book states, "it is not the purpose of this book to go into 
any actual detail at all concerning the actual practices and techniques of 
the Traditional Wicca, for these are Secret and revealed only to initiates 
of the Craft."  What Wicca the Ancient Way provides is a penetrating look 
deep into the Heart of the Craft and its philosophy.]

For another thing, my sense is, having read quite a number of books on 
Wicca, from professional need as well as personal interest over a period of 
twenty five years, it is a rarity to find a group with any information worth 
publishing.  Attrition, inertia, and lack of substance takes care of most 
occult groups.  While the Isis Urania coven is not an ancient one in terms 
of coven history, its Teachings have been disseminated to students, by Isis 
Urania itself, and then by daughter Covens, uninterrupted, since 1960.  The 
daughter Covens [Isis Urania became a closed Teaching Coven in the '80's] 
ensure that the Teachings are conveyed through a rigorous, stepped, shared 
curriculum of the papers, exercises, practices and meditational regime, and 
the order in which these are presented to their students.  Almost three and 
a half decades - quite a long-lived Wiccan Tradition, given this day of 
instant "Third Degrees."  And although the Isis Urania Tradition dates only 
back to 1960, its ancestry and roots span centuries and emerge from the 
ancient Witchcraft and High Magic traditions of South-Western Europe.  

You will find in Wicca the Ancient Way an explanation of the philosophical 
bases of many profound and fundamental points of true Witchcraft presented 
in the following papers which are verbatim Teaching Papers of the Tradition: 
 the Attitudes and Qualities of a True Witch, The Gods of the Wicca, The 
Mighty Ones, The Training of a Witch, The Three Degrees, The Protectors of 
the Craft, and The Grand Sabbat [Samhain, or Hallowmas).  The Afterword 
addresses some serious questions concerning the survival of The Craft, and 
the current methods of transmitting the Teachings.

All in all, if you need to recommend just one book to anyone interested in 
learning about real Wicca, not a naive and superficial 'how-to' recipe book, 
but a true 'why-is' work instead; or if you need to recommend a book to 
someone whose Craft activities have outstripped their understanding, and 
this includes virtually all students of Wicca, this is the book.  It's the 
best $5.95 you'll ever spend on any occult book.  The wait is over.


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