🔮🔮🔮🔮/5!
A guide to conscious living through the moon and her phases, incorporating intersectional feminist theory, wellness rituals, spellwork, and witchcraft for the modern seeker.
We all know the moon. We all have a relationship with it. The earliest people obeyed her orbit, timed their months and holidays and celebrations and agriculture to the moon; the echos of that system are still visible today, though the connection to the moon is often forgotten.
Sarah Faith Gottesdiener is the leader of a movement to remind us of that lineage, guiding our rhythms and our sleep, our energy and our emotions, reminding us of our humanity and our magic. In her self-published Many Moons Workbooks and Lunar Journals, as well as her sold-out classes, she has guided over 50,000 readers to a deeper relationship with the moon, and through it, with themselves.
This evergreen book will be an informative and comprehensive guide to lunar living, incorporating radical, self-empowering, and magical tools and resources for the beginner and experienced lunar-follower alike. Depending on where we are in our lives, depending on what we are feeling or what is happening around us, the moon allows us a space to invite ritual into our daily lives. This book will provide a framework on how to utilize the entire lunar cycle holistically, while offering ways for the reader to develop a personal relationship with their own cycles–energetic, personal, and emotional–through the lens of the moon’s phases. – Goodreads.com
I am so excited to share yet another fantastic new book on moon magic with you witches today. The Moon Book by Sarah Faith Gottesdiener comes out November 24th and I highly recommend it to all! As you can see by the above description, this book combines moon magic with intersectional feminist theory and the result is a whole system for combining self-care and development with social justice and consciousness.
🔮 – Let’s start there – this is the feminist moon magic book of your dreams! The author not only uses language referring to gender that is inclusive, but in many points of the book they expanded more on their views – including that trans men and other people who do not identify as women have menstrual cycles, AND that the presence of a menstrual cycle doesn’t make you more or less equipped to work moon magic. This is exactly why I am so excited for new books about the moon! Much like The Complete Book of Moon Spells by Michael Herkes, gender and sexuality are presented for modern witches looking to expand their regular paradigm. Does a witch have to be a woman? Does the moon have ot be a woman? More advanced feminist topics like Audre Lorde’s concept of radical self-care come up throughout the chapters and are clearly explained with their sources cited so that readers of all levels of knowledge can read and learn more.
🔮 – In general, I found this book to be a great middle point between being new to witchcraft, and a seasoned practitioner. For those who are new to magic, the book can help you understand more about it and why people are drawn to it, create your own spells and rituals, begin meditating, and have a basic introduction to some astrological concepts. If you’re a seasoned pro I promise you will learn new things! I’d never read much about what phase the moon was in when you were born means, or how it can affect you throughout other phases! I was blown away by the accuracy! I was born during a waning crescent moon, and the time directly following a full moon is always so good for me. I’m in my element. It’s a time when inner knowing and our relationship with ourselves becomes more important. As a bonafide hermit this really checks out.
🔮 – This might seem like a small thing, but I really needed to hear it so it stood out to me – the book talks a lot about rest, recooperation, and how difficult living under capitalism’s system of “ALWAYS BE PRODUCING” can be multiple times and it honestly made me cry. I have been struggling so hard to both work and find motivation, and feel ok with not getting anything done. I feel so out of sync, really. I found the book very validating and inspiring. It made me re-think this problem and come at it from a different direction. Understanding your own individual needs is a big theme throughout the book, and the author even includes pagan and witchy concepts she does not use, but that she realizes others find useful or empowering. It gave me so much to think about that affects me personally, while also opening my eyes to new ideas and ways of doing things. It felt like it was written just for me, probably because it genuinely was written for ANYONE.
🔮 – The lyrical prose throughout the book is beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. This writer appreciates words and descriptions as much as i do, and I found the flow and rhythm of the book really fun to get into. Certain pages made me jump up and grab my journal or a candle, while others had me GLUED TO THE PAGE, unable to tear my eyes away for even a second. I got an advanced copy in PDF format, but I know I’ll need a physical copy and already pre-ordered one so I can blasphemously mark the pages I want to return to later. This book is LONG. This might be good or bad, depending on who you are, but I liked it. I ended up taking the book phase by phase, reading each phases two chapters (yes!) and then exploring moon phase calendars and looking at some fo my old journal entries to understand how phass link together. The language and rhythm of the book made me get involved with the information and the process. Thanks you to the mentions of rest and self-care, I never felt pressured to DO MORE RIGHT NOW but it did make me think about what I can do, what I’m capable of, and what kind of magical energy is at my disposal. very inspirational!
My only complaint kind of ties in with the style of writing. I found some things a little hard to grasp and I had to keep referring to the book. it’s like the difference between having a lengthy word problem in front of you and a straight-forward equation. One example here is a tarot spread. I found the description of the spread and how and when to shuffle a little confusing. This is just one of those things that is weird and true about myself – I love the rhythmic prose, but once it comes time for a recipe or instructions I like a brief, point form paragraph. As a book to read cover to cover, or chapter by chapter, it was beautiful, but trying to use it as a reference book in the moment would be hard for me. I copied out instructions for the spells and spreads I tried and followed my notes instead.
All in all, the book is beautiful. I loved it. I love the look, the colours, the prose, and the obvious passion of the author. This is a witch who knows what they’re talking about. I felt like a baby witch absorbing this incredible totally new concept, even though you could really say the moon is the oldest magical concept. This is so important! As I discussed with Michael Herkes last month, finding moon magic books written for witches with a more modern practice, or one that falls outside of established traditions, has always been kind of hard. A moon book that doesn’t strictly adhere to the gender binary, even more so. I’m thrilled to have found something with such a strong intersectional feminist presence, that empowers me to empower myself and help the world on a larger scale. I really do see the potential to change my life with moon magic!
About the Author:
“Sarah Faith Gottesdiener is an artist living in Los Angeles. Her designs have been seen in movies, mood boards, photoshoots, and homes across the United States. Modern Women, her studio, creates apparel, printed matter, as well as design and creative direction for individuals and brands.
For over 10 years, Sarah has provided insights for thousands of clients in her practice as a psychic tarot reader. She teaches classes on the moon, tarot, magic, spirituality, and feminist self-help. Author of the cult classic Many Moons workbooks and lunar planners, one of Sarah’s life goals is to empower individuals to tap into their own intuition, creativity and magic.”
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