Pagan Book Reviews

Spirit Herbs: Simple Recipes for Hibachi Herbal Magic & Sacred Space
Amy “Moonlady” Martin
Moonlady Media
eBook (approximately 70 pages printed out)

Lots of pagans use smudge wands at the beginning of a ritual to purify participants and the ritual space. However, there’s much, much more you can do than the usual sage bundle. In this creative text, Martin offers a whole new level of smudging with herbs of all sorts–and all you need is a garden (or barbecue) variety hibachi.

Although the subtitle of the book mentioned recipes, there’s more to it than that. Martin offers a wealth of practical information to get you started. From the virtues of different sorts of tools for burning herbs, to what part of the plant has what sort of energy, to why trying to burn a pound of resins at once is a bad idea, she gives us everything we’ll need to safely and effectively use the herbs. While she thankfully avoids stuffing the book with a bunch of spells and rituals, she does offer up some of her favorite herbal blends and gives information for what they’re best used for. She also includes a helpful dictionary of a good diversity of herbs.

I love the author’s writing voice. While she conveys the information clearly and concisely, she simultaneously slips in a good bit of humor. Neither condescending nor airy-fairy, she’s sensible without boring her readers senseless.

This is exactly the kind of book that I want to see more of–not rehashes of the same old stuff, a bunch of reworked Culpeper and Cunningham. In this book, we get an innovative collection of ideas with enough information to effectively put them into practice, but without a bunch of fluff and filler. In short–this is an awesome book, and I can’t recommend it enough. I know I’ll be keeping it for my own use.

Five pawprints out of five.

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