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Raising Witches: Teaching the Wiccan Faith to Children
By Ashleen O'Gaea
New Page Books, 2002, ISBN 1564146316
224 pp.
$21.95 CDN
There aren't many books on Pagan parenting out there. One of the first was O'Gaea's The Family Wicca Book: The Craft for Parents and Children (1993, now out of print), followed by Starhawk et al's Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions (1998). Raising Witches is O'Gaea's second look at parenting Wiccan children. Raising Witches offers a loose curriculum based on age which outlines activities, meditations, lesson topics, and themes to help a parent teach the Wiccan faith to children from infancy through adolescence. It is not tradition-specific, and examines various topics such as ethics, correspondences, relationship with Nature, and the Divine. Different methods of communicating the material are presented as well, such as spells told as stories to encourage positive change, and rhymes and chants as natural tools for teaching children. O'Gaea says that the material is easily adaptable by parents who follow other Pagan paths by substituting names and myths, and the material is loosely structured enough that this sort of adaptation is possible.
Separated into sections by age, the book outlines developmental needs, tasks and challenges for each level, and associates different aspects of Wicca which correspond to those needs and challenges. The exercises do not focus exclusively on the practice of Wicca; it couches the lessons in daily life lessons, such as how to deal with anger, and how to approach trying new things.
O'Gaea's style is easy to read. Her plans and suggestions are based on experience with her own son, and with the children of other Wiccan practitioners of her acquaintance. Parents seeking a concrete lesson plan, however, may be disappointed in the loose structure O'Gaea provides. By its very nature Wicca is a flexible, personal religion; as such, a formal plan for teaching it to children cannot truly exist unless the parent functions within a formal Tradition that already possesses an approach to educating children. The real value of this book lies in the personal anecdotes and examples O'Gaea uses to illustrate her text, which serve to provide context for a parent who might not have readily available peer experience to lean upon, and in her suggestions for incorporating ethical lessons into the day-to-day experiences of a growing child.
(Reviewed Yule 2004)
A. Murphy-Hiscock is a teacher, author and initiated priestess of the Montreal area whose interests include herbalism, mythology, literature and occult research.
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