Dabbler’s Guide to Witchcraft

Dabblers Guide to Witchcraft: Seeking an Intentional Magical Path By Fire Lyte

In this spiritual guidebook to seeking an intentional magical path, Fire Lyte shows us the way to ethically navigate spiritual avenues, ask the tough questions and seek answers from multiple, culturally appropriate sources. He sets out to educate us on not only what it is to be ethical practitioners of magic, but to be ones who will look beneath the surface of the trends and seek a deeply personal and passionate connection to our journey.  

Let me tell you, I have been waiting on bated breath for this book! I preordered it the day it became available for preorder this summer and I have been a big fan of Fire Lyte and his Podcast “Inciting a Riot” for years now. Naturally, the second I was able to get my hands on the advanced readers copy, I practically inhaled it! This is a bit of a long review for me, but only because I simply cannot contain my gushing over this incredible work of art.

The first thing that struck me when I began reading it was how present and authentic Fire Lyte’s voice is in his writing. You can almost hear him speaking the words as you read them and he is so consistently humble and honest that you cannot help but feel like his friend and equal in every way. He gives tons of little glimpses into his quirky personality and the tone of the book is so conversational, I found myself giggling out loud so often my kids started asking what was so funny. You can feel the passion that he has for his work just oozing off of the page.

Fire Lyte reminds us how important it is to take every nugget of wisdom with a grain of salt and dive deeper for taking things at face value. He gives us permission to take his recommendations with a grain of salt and even predicts that his own book will be outdated at some point. He also points out that magic is not the solution to all your problems and real-life witchcraft isn’t as glamorous as Hollywood would have us believe.

Fire Lyte is reframing the way that we learn about magic and paving the way for new witches and pagans to become more intentional and ethical about their practice. For instance, He recommends when looking for information on a particular culture that you “center the voices of the culture of ownership and take your direction from them.”  He takes time to clearly point out many red flags and types of people to avoid when looking for friends and mentors in a magical community that is unfortunately rife with corruption and deceit. Misinformation and misuse of power is a real issue in the world and definitely within the magical community. It is our responsibility as we learn and practice, to make sure we are not contributing the problem and that we are trying our best to leave the world better than we found it.

This is the book every one of us wished we could have found when we were first starting out on our magical journey and frankly, it needed to be written. My honest opinion is that this book and the new generation of baby witches that will be inspired and shaped by it, could help to transform some of the stigma against modern paganism and witchcraft. I see myself buying numerous copies of this book to give and lend out. I already have 2 on the way.

I love the little personal touches, from the smatterings of art on the beautifully deckled pages to the *ahem, NUMEROUS pop culture references. Every detail is so relevant and makes the whole reading experience fun and so easy to feel connected to. As a pagan witch myself who grew up in the 90’s there were references and small moments that had me gasping or giggling until there were tears in my eyes simply because of how *seen I felt. This book truly felt like home to me and even though this is a guidebook and not a novel, I see it being one of my comfort reads for years to come.

I give The Dabblers Guide to Witchcraft a resounding 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

-Jacqui

Author: Fire Lyte
Genre: Spiritual Non-Fiction
Length/Page Count: 255pages
Format & Source: Paperback Advanced Readers Copy via Patreon
Publishing Info: Tiller Press September 28^th 2021