The Witch Book: The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism

this book has helped me so much in my wiccan course work . full of information i just flick through it to find many interesting things and facts. a briliant ref book .

Good

AWESOME.. FREAKS THE IN LAWS OUT LOL

This book is awesome and full of so much information from all over. I really enjoyed it and would recommend.

Let's first start by saying that I'm an agnostic and practice no religion. I simply am interested and want to learn.Paganism/witchcraft/the occult has been my interest for quite a while, so I wanted to learn a bit more about it. An encyclopedia to witchcraft seemed like a good choice. There are very many entries here, ranging from events to items to ideas and people, which seemed quite thorough. They are fun and informative to read, but at some point the objective quality of an "encyclopedia" begins to break down.Entries related to Satanism tend to get very subjective, with little to no evidence being produced to support statements, whereas entries related to famous Wiccans/practitioners tend to become fan-service. Instead of deriding Satanism or Anton LaVey, it would have been more productive to cite instances where his community turned against him, or public notions degraded, or the group as a whole was condemned by some other entity. Buckland seems to have a difficult time in preventing his personal biases from tainting his entries, which makes me question a vast majority of how truthful the book is.I would vote that this book is good for a cursory look at the subject, and perhaps a fun read on some items here and there, but a completely objective and historical encyclopedia it is not.