Everyday Witch Book of Rituals

Prominent Pagan author Deborah Blake adds another volume to her "Everyday Witch" series from Llewellyn Books with The Everyday Witch Book of Rituals: All You Need for a Magickal Year, offering ritual and spellwork suggestions for each New Moon and Full Moon in a calendar year as well as the eight Sabbats and selected special occasions such as Wiccaning (baby blessing) and handfastings (marriage/commitment ceremonies).

It doesn't really match the other books in the series, as the various occasions included are more or less by definition not something hat happen every day, but it is nonetheless an extremely useful manual for either solitary witches or groups; the introduction helpfully includes a section on "Adapting rituals from solitary to group and back again" for those who sometimes work in both modes. Also very useful is the advice for including non-Pagan guests, not only in family-oriented rituals like handfastings, but also for some of the full moons where the ritual theme is something that individuals of any spiritual path can apply to their own lives.

I'm not generally a fan of the conceit than an author's pet, or even her familiar, is a collaborator on a book, but the advice presented here by Magic the cat is mostly pretty straightforward and useful, and not nearly as twee as it could easily have been. The only other point I had any reservations about was the lack of a Blue Moon ritual, a relatively glaring omission given that we just had a Blue Moon this past August.

Overall, this book is highly recommended, easily up to the standard set by Blake's earlier Circle, Coven and Grove (a favorite of several Wiccans I know), and should prove every bit as useful a resource.

The publication date is October 8, 2012; thanks to Llewellyn Books and NetGalley.com for providing me with an electronic advance copy. This was my first book from NetGalley, but mostly likely not the last!