Compassion, goals and building a practice

These are some short thought on how we, when we set new goals for ourselves in our lives (think new years promises and "I'm gonna change my life for the better"), sometimes feel like we end up failing. So read on if you wish.

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We often set ourselves up for failure by wanting to do too much at a time. We feel like our lives are a drag and so we decide to start meditating daily, doing our devotions daily, pray, go to the gym X times per week, eat healthy, sleep enough, write in our Book of Shadows, or a myriad of other things at the same time. We want change and we want it now.

In September I set a goal for myself to read one book each month. By December I felt as though I had failed. But I did not have a routine in reading. Since then reading has become a little easier because even though I have not realized it, I have been getting a routine. But it has built slowly, little, by little.

Those can all be good goals, but if we lack a previous routine doing them, we are setting ourselves up for failure very effectively, because good and healthy habits take time and dedication to build. It can be your end goal to live like this list you have set up, and if that is so, then good. But start small, with one thing, and slowly change your routine to incorporate this and the other things into your life. And as your life changes, adjust your new routines to suit it. Your goals might even change, and that is okay.

As with learning sports, knitting, playing the piano, or developing any other skill set, we need to give ourselves time and be persistent in learning and getting used to, eg. meditation or going to the gym. We need to allow ourselves to not always succeed, and to recognize that sometimes we simply do not have the time and energy. But if we persistently try we can build new habits to replace the ones we do not like. With time and patience. 

Sometimes it feels like we are getting nowhere with our goals. But as easy it would be to just give up as we feel the path takes us nowhere, it might be good to know that even the smallest steps take us closer to reaching our goal.
Pic from Salamajärvi National Park, Finland, August 2018

The same goes for building your daily Wiccan or magical practice. Above all: Remember to be compassionate with yourself. Be kind and do not demand too much at once. Sometimes life is hard and takes time, and then you just need to be even kinder to yourself at those times.

Love and compassion, not just for others, but for yourself as well. 

Blessed be!
~Stella

Harmony Nice: Wicca - a modern guide to witchcraft and magic

It is time for an other book review. This time I will be taking a look at Harmony Nice's book from 2018 by the title of Wicca - a modern guide to witchcraft and magic. Harmony Nice is an influencer, a youtuber, who makes videos about fashion and Wicca. She is also active on other social media, such as Instagram. She wrote this book after being asked to do so by a publisher Orion Springs (which is not an occult or pagan publisher).

So that is that, now let's get into the book itself.

What did I like about the book?

• Nice has a very positive tone to her writing. Reading the book made me feel like I was listening to her happily telling me about how happy she is to have found Wicca. 
• Although some parts are very floofy and lofty in their description of things, she gives very good practical advice for example on how to celebrate sabbats. There is some very down-to-earth advice to be found in the book.
• Easy to read. This book is very easy to read and it took me only a few hours to do so. There is no difficult language, although at times I felt like it was almost too simplified. But that might be editing.
• The book is beautifully layouted, but that unfortunately adds little to the content. It does look good on Instagram, though.
• Ethics. Nice discusses the Wiccan Rede and ethics in casting spells etc. at some length and returns to these points in other parts of the book. 

What problems do I find with the book?

First off, what is going on in this book in regards to editing? There is no clear structure, and the chapters seem almost at times to be randomly placed in the book. For example, there are two chapters on the moon in completely different parts of the book... I am not certain, but I am willing to think that this might be the fault of editing less so than of the author. But I have never published a book (yet) so I cannot say for sure.

The content is however where I find most issue. Let me summarize:

• A book with the main title Wicca, should be about Wicca. If the second chapter is about divination I will not be able to think it is seriously written. I do however think that this is a symptom of the author's youth and of the fact that divination is a huge part of her own life.
• Nice gets that basics of Wicca right (except for it's history, I'll return to that soon), but mentions belief in deity very briefly. For a book about a religion I feel that it is a huge red flag if deity is mentioned in passing. She does list gods and goddesses of different pantheons, but that has little to do with actual worship, or with the core beliefs of religion.
• Not giving credit where credit is due. Nice cites Lady Gwen Thompson's poem known as the Long Rede while saying that the original author is unknown. A common misconception which is easily rectified through a simple google search.
• The history of Wicca. This point really bugs me. Wicca is a modern religion created in the middle of the 20th Century by Gerald Gardner based off of Margaret Murray's Witch cult-theory which had been definitively debunked by the 1970s. Yet Nice writes that Wicca is centuries old and was "popularized" by Gardner in the 1950s. In the 21st Century we cannot go on propagating this kind of misinformation if we as Wiccans are to be taken seriously. However. This might have something to do with the sources she has read. She cites Scott Cunningham extensively but almost no other authors. Which leads me to the next point.
• Sources. Scott Cunningham is almost her exclusive source. Cunningham's Living Wicca is one of the most popular books written by any Wiccan author still being sold, but it is dated. It is a book that has gotten many a beginner into Wicca, and it still does. But we need newer, better books, more modern ones. That is why I believe so many new, badly written books are surfacing: there is a demand, but the good books drown in the sea of instagram-worthy bestsellers without any substance. 
• Vague language such as "it is believed" and "it is thought". For example when talking about the Gardenerian tradition, Nice writes that "there is thought to be a system of hierarchy ...". This is something that could easily be fact-checked. In many instances she writes about certain things as if they were uncertain. I think this speaks mostly of her inexperience and the fact that she might not (my guess) have read that many books on Wicca yet. But we are all there at the beginning. As we grow and learn we learn more things. And most of us are happy learning the bare basics and that is fine too. However, if you pass your uncertain knowledge on as fact, do not be surprised if someone corrects you. Especially for solitary practitioners of Wicca, gaining quality knowledge about their religion can be a very demanding process (this is also why we need good books about the subject).

From what I have understood from her own comments she was approached by the publishers about writing a book about Wicca and received a fairly short time frame for doing so. This might explain some of the issues I have with the book. However, I think that any serious publisher would fact check the books they are publishing (unless of course they are looking to make a lot of money quickly, which I fear might be the case here).

Harmony Nice has been a Wiccan for a few years as she wrote this book. The lack of experience shows. I believe however that this is a place where she can grow, and that she can produce quality content once she gains more experience in the Craft.

I read this book mostly as Nice's own story about her personal journey into Wicca, but as it is made out as an instructional book about the religion this does create some problems. For example, writing about Wicca and having divination so soon in the book makes it look like divination is an integral part of Wicca. Yes, some, maybe even most Wiccans, use divination, but it is not an integral part of being a Wiccan. And divination is not exclusively Wiccan, but a tool used in many traditions.

Do I recommend it?
I think it is a book that could get many newcomers interested in Wicca. Like Silver RavenWolf's Teen Witch drew me into Wicca as a teen, I believe this book might function as a starting point for so called "baby witches" (by the Goddess do I hate that term).

I hope that if future editions to this book are made, some facts might be corrected and more sources added, or at least a list of recommended reading. In fact, I do hope that in a few years we might see a new, more informed, book by Harmony Nice.

For advanced readers this book has almost nothing to give, but for the person interested in learning about Wicca, and who follows Harmony Nice, I might even recommend this, especially if you can get it from a library or second hand. However, there are better books out there, and Teen Witch is still, despite RavenWolf's many faults as an author, a much better book than this.

~Stella