Book Review - The Wicca Handbook by Eileen Holland

The Wicca Handbook by Eileen Holland. This was the first book on Wicca I had bought (but not the first I had read). Keep in mind that I’m very new to Wicca and come into this with no knowledge what-so-ever.

I really like this book. It’s one I constantly refer to. I have 4 bookmarks in it to mark important things that I go back to. However, I feel that there is too much emphasis on the spells side of things and not enough (actually, very little) information on rituals, casting a circle, and other such information.

The book is divided into three sections.

Part 1: Becoming a Witch

Part 2: The Craft

Part 3: Correspondences

Part 1 deals with the basics, and she does this too briefly. But it is enough to give the beginner an idea of what is what.  However, there are no ritual outlines or suggestions. The Wiccan year is skimmed over with very little information. The elements are described in great detail, but after reading it and looking at all the correspondences, I still had no idea what it all meant.

Part 2 deals with casting spells. There is no information on anything else here but spells and correspondences for various problems. Great if you know how to use them, but if you are just starting out it can be very confusing. Having said that, as I’ve learnt more about Wicca, both online and through books, I have started to understand this section much better. Some basic everyday life issues are looked at, such as health and healing, money and business, and protection. She gives and explanation and then goes through the various correspondences for many of the aspects of the issue, including gods and goddess. Her correspondences are by no means exhaustive, but they are very good and can be supplemented by the readers own research. She does give some spells in this section. For example, there is a very good spell called Blue Justice which is cast when there is a court matter that you want to see come out in a positive way.

Part 3 looks at many of the correspondences in detail. This section at first bewildered me, but now I love browsing through it. She goes through things such as animals, colours, metals, rocks and gemstones, letters and numbers. Overall I like the book. Actually, I think it’s fantastic. It did give me some good information when I was starting and opened my mind to the view that Wicca was much bigger than I first thought. It’s not a book I would give to someone as their first book on Wicca. But it is a great reference book that I know I will refer to again and again.

Out of 10 I give it a 7. If there was more information on rituals than it would get a higher score.