Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics

Read it a VERY long time ago, and need to go back and re-read it...

A mix memoirs of social activism, history you weren't taught in school, ideas for cooperative and creative living and working, and thoughts about personal power and transformation.

What to say...? I'm very ambivalent towards this book. It is very good in some aspects, linking magic and politics -in the deep sense of the term "politic". It is very good for the progressist point of view of magic it offers. It's certainly dated. It's VERY 1970s -it was written in the early 80s, but it is 70s. It is VERY American. The American term...more

What to say...? I'm very ambivalent towards this book. It is very good in some aspects, linking magic and politics -in the deep sense of the term "politic". It is very good for the progressist point of view of magic it offers. It's certainly dated. It's VERY 1970s -it was written in the early 80s, but it is 70s. It is VERY American. The American term "community" is impossible to translate to other languages. Mechanically, it is translated, of course. But NO European would never speak about "his community" -or "her community"- like an American do. In Europe, your community means that you are a monk or a nun and you live in a convent. In Europe, you have 'your circle', 'your scene', but never your community, in the American sense. And the American sense always put me 'on my nerves', because I am so truly European and I HATE to be 'in community'... Anyway, it is worth reading.   hide

Starhawk is such a dedicated Pagan who understands how to LIVE like a pagan. This book is about her deepest journeying through a pagan lifestyle. A brilliant composition.

Formative ideas for me when I was in my twenties... still stands up today.

I particularly enjoyed the discussion of group dynamics. I could do without the object-relations theory I might have gotten more out of this if I were pagan but the discussion of group dynamics made it totally worth it.