How To Tell If A Book Is Good || 5 Tips to Buying Witchcraft Books

Here are my top 5 tips or guidance for determining whether a witchcraft book or an occult book is good, before you buy it! Remember to support your local bookshop and avoid buying books from Amazon :-)
Please remember to not take any one of my points in a vacuum, the point of these tips is to combine them and use them as guidance (not rules) for determining whether a book is trustworthy or reliable.
I ALSO want to add that a book may adhere to all of these points and /still/ be untrustworthy or not worth your time reading. It happens! The intention of this video still stands and I truly hope this helps people out there.
Thorn's KZbin channel: / drawingkenaz
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[@Kelsie347]

Great tips! This is important especially now with the sudden rush of witchy and spirituality based books appearing in chain stores.

[@TheOakWitch]

Thank you!

[@juliereminiec4937]

here's my tip : look at the back of the book... there's a synopsis of the book ..& a introduction to the author .. This may help one decide if they want to buy the book or not

[@RottenBegotten]

I have ADHD when it comes to reading books. I find it hard to keep reading and not zone out. I've been trying to read The Modern Guide to Witchcraft and it's something I recommend. Thanks for your tips!

[@TheOakWitch]

Thank you for watching. I too find myself zoning out frequently when reading, I actually made a video about how to improve reading skills and generally read more books if you're interested!

[@RottenBegotten]

@@TheOakWitch I will check it out! Thanks so much!

[@vyvianearmstrong6579]

Past Me "Who buys books based on just the cover?" Me meeting, falling in love and buying Potions, Elixirs & Brews: A modern witches' grimoire of drinkable spells by Anais Alexandre Cashier "This is pretty, what's it about" Me ".....um stuff... drinks maybe....it's about being pretty and drinking things I think" Postscript: It is indeed a gorgeous book AND filled with great witchcraft and delicious well thought out drink recipes"

[@AshHeaven]

Anais is generally not a very good teacher of a lot of witchy things, but I have also good things about her potions book.

[@beautifulenigma1724]

Also, as with anything, if it only has positive reviews - watch out. They could have paid people to leave reviews or had their friends/loved ones do it Thanks so much for making this video! I have definitely fallen into traps before (sadly thinking if a witchy discord server had it for book club, it must be good. Glad they’ll be revamping the books they choose going ahead now), so I’m trying harder now to take a breath before purchasing and do my research. If a title sounds too perfect, it probably is. Saved this to reference when buying books in the future (I think I’ve saved most of your videos haha)

[@TheOakWitch]

Aw so glad my videos have helped!

[@juliereminiec4937]

Also, when there's a review of a book from someone who uses the review to call the author names.. Red Flag ! this person has never read the book.. .

[@thedarkestmagic3337]

Great video! Intelligent and honest.

[@TheOakWitch]

Thank you so much!

[@linsileemoonwillow7922]

Very good video and thanks for sharing this. I will try to keep these tips in mind for getting future books. :)

[@TheOakWitch]

Thanks! I'm glad the video has helped :-)

[@j_4985]

Found you from Amino. Great video!

[@TheOakWitch]

Thank you very much!

[@NoreaLamia]

I guess this comes somewhat naturally to me as I have an associate's degree and I'm working on my bachelor's in anthropology right now, but as someone with an academic background in the humanities, I think it is important to emphasis a few key things. Humans are complex, and in the humanities there is a tendency to say that there is no wrong way of being a human, especially in the context of personal practice such as religion. However there are a few things that the layman do not consider to avoid cultural insensitivity when they research or adopt practices. Firstly, cultural appropriation. There is a difference between cultural appropriation and syncretism. Even in academia this is a hot topic. Generally if one is imposing onto a tradition (for example, insisting that God X is God Y because both are the God of Z, so Y is just culture so-and-so's version of X) that is appropriation. But if you treat the system as separate with similar threads (God X shares characteristics with God Y based on A, B and C's credible analysis so might be categorized under archetype Z but are not equivalent), this is the basis of syncretic practices. I have read books that are respectful and scholarly syncretic works or analyses of possible syncretism but there are a lot of popular books that are appropriative, especially when it comes to living traditions and African deities. Unfortunately some of this is even embedded in some traditional norms to an extent. It is important to study culture and philosophy, sometimes even more so than actual workings. This is important even if the culture is fine with other people being inspired or taking aspects of their beliefs! You can majorly disrespect someone just by having presumptions. People are going to borrow, that happens throughout history, but knowing the culture leads to a deeper understanding and more enriching experience. Secondly, the beauty of books. The prettier it is the more skeptical I'd be of it, with the exception of limited edition or rather unique presses from reputable vendors (which are pricey!). Generally if so much thought is put into a cover, the selling was more in mind than the actual writing. As you said, not always, but the more books I've bought and looked into the more I found this to be an actual trend. So while you can't judge a book by it's cover, you can to an extent judge its priorities by that measure. Also look up the author on google if their credentials sound too good or are unrelated to the book! Some authors try to draw in a bigger reader base by appropriating culture or pulling from old knowledge but end up writing something that comes out their butt. And that thing they come up with is usually based on a harmful ideology or just pure negligence to sensitivity. Unfortunately easier to do nowadays with self-publishing. Informative video, I enjoyed this a bit.

[@KatyReminiec9399]

Read the back of the book

[@leilasworld4573]

I have two books that I highly recommend for beginner witches, The Little Book of Witchcraft (I don't know the author) and The Green Witch (by Arin Murphy-Hiscock)