REVIEW: Book of Shadows, by Phyllis Curott

[Xiao Rong]

Book of Shadows, by Phyllis Curott
Published in 1998 by Broadway Books

[standard disclaimer that this book review is solely my opinion, etc. Feel free to disagree with me!]

I found this book at a yardsale, and paid 25 cents for it. I’m very glad it cost as little as it did, because I’m not sure it’s worth full price!

About the Book:

It’s billed as an autobiographical account of the author’s journey into Wicca as a high-powered lawyer in Manhattan. It’s supposed to read sort of like a novel, but filled with detailed descriptions of rituals and techniques.


The Good:

It’s a generally pretty easy read. It’s nice because she comes from the perspective of a woman who you would never expect to be into Wicca, since Curott’s day job was so vastly different from her spiritual journey. I like that the rituals she describes (and there are a LOT of them!) are much more than just, “This is how you do it.” She talks at length about her personal experiences after performing the rituals, as well as her friends’ experiences. It’s also structured to be sort of a year-and-a-day exploration, beginning with finding and joining a coven, and ending with her initiation. So if you’re exploring the book, you can kind of approach this book as a textbook, laid out with a coherent course of study (she even titles chapters things like, “Air & Fire, Water & Earth”, “Cone of Power”, and “Enchantments”).


The Bad:

As a whole, I didn’t think the narrative was compelling at all. The “plot” was primarily about her conflict with her boss, and in the end it just wasn’t that interesting. Plus, it didn’t even feel like a believable story; when she’s not talking about her spiritual journey, her “real life” consists of basically nothing but yoga in the park, scented baths, and museum visits. No drama in her coven, no doing laundry … her life just seemed too perfect and unreal. So it was sort of alternating between a substandard plot with a Wicca 101 instruction manual, which I found disjointing. And structuring it as a plot just made it harder to find the rituals she discusses for future reference … so I guess you should have a stack of post-it notes handy if you’re planning on using this book as a study tool.


The Verdict:

I found this book to be sort of dreary, to be honest. Boring and unbelievable “plot”, not the best Wiccan reference book (although to be fair, I’m not Wiccan anyways), doesn’t really do much diving deep into the mysteries. I didn’t get a whole lot out of it, but that’s just me. Maybe worth a read if you find it for cheap at a used bookstore.

2 out of 5 stars



PS: I know I totally just gave this book a less than stellar review, but if anyone else thinks they'd be interested in this book and can give it a happy home, I'd be happy to send it to them (preferably to members of this forum who might have trouble accessing a pagan bookstore, can't afford pagan books, or need to acquire pagan books discreetly). Otherwise it'll just collect dust somewhere on a bookshelf. PM me for details!