Garden Witchery brings fun back into the garden chores. Ellen Dugan, Master Gardener and witch has written a manual to delight anyone. Dugan writes as if she were speaking to you while wandering though her own garden. This book is extremely practical and fun to read. The stories and wisdom on her own gardening experiences sprinkled throughout the book help to illustrate and remind the reader that gardening is a process and mistakes happen. There aren’t many pictures in the book but it does contain some decorative illustrations and charts. As a new homeowner with a yard waiting to be sculpted, Garden Witchery got me excited about planting and making my gardens magickal.

The book opens with gardening basics. While she lives down south, Dugan presents her gardening wisdom as generically as possible. This section includes a copy of the US Hardiness Zones chart that explains how to pick the best plants according to the weather. Some might find such practicality odd to include in a pagan-themed book. But Dugan points out that gardening and planting is fun and very magickal. She shows readers how to plan their garden, select plants and which ones to avoid. Plants, flowers, herbs and trees are discussed equally in the book. She explains that a magickal garden doesn’t need to include exotic and expensive flowers, or flowers that aren’t native to the area. Instead she invites the reader to look outside and within their local area to see what it has to offer their magickal gardens.

She includes a chapter devoted to different types of gardens that focus magickal energy into different intentions. Shade gardens, cottage gardens, moon gardens, faerie gardens and more. Dugan makes each garden magickal by listing a “witches dozen” listing of plants one can add to their garden. She also gives spell and ritual suggestions for each garden. The plants in Garden Witchery are chosen for their “witchyness” as well as their ease to plant, locate and grow. Like the circle of life, Dugan teaches that with garden magick, everything is interconnected.

Dugan starts imbedding her magickal knowledge by sharing her ideas on planting correspondences tables. She believes that the seasons, time of day and the day you choose to plant something affects the plants, their blooms, and the magick you can draw from them. Then she relates all those correspondences back to the lists of plants and trees the book contains. The spells, rituals, simples and other crafty examples all draw from the plants she includes in the book. The book includes an entire chapter written about the art of florigraphy (the meaning of flowers) and flower lore. Then she ties the magick back into a whole garden by giving the reader ideas on how to construct their own Garden Book of Shadows and spells.

The book ends with a garden journal for the reader to record his or her own thoughts. However, I found that it’s not the end of what the book has to teach. After having read this book I found that I became more knowledgeable and aware of the soil my yard has. I also know more about what plants I do currently own and can get to incorporate into my spells and rituals. Garden Witchery helped me see the value and fun in planting and keeping gardens.

This book is THE definitive guide to working magic with crystals and gemstones. Scott Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic presents a whole curriculum of working with stones and their meanings in this all-in-one reference “field guide”. The first few chapters cover the basics of stones and metals and gives a bit of magical background. He also shares how he collected some of his information and provides some tips for becoming a seasoned rock collector.

Cunningham then dives headfirst into the practical uses for stones and metals. First he explains how to buy stones and how to get the best deals, from haggling in swap meets to store purchases. An appendix in the back of the book lists a few select places to purchase stones. He also suggests ways to interact with stones by in how one selects, attunes and cleanses them. There is even a chapter devoted to divination and another on spells. The exercises are fun to do and do not require lots of pagan wisdom or background training. One could base an entire magical practice just on this book alone.

The rest of the book explores the different crystals, gems and metals. Cunningham divides these sections into two chapters. One contains crystals and gemstones, and the other has the metals. The sections are alphabetized by the rock’s and metal’s common names. For example, to find information on Bloodstones, you’d look the stone up with that familiar name. Cunningham also references the folk names of each item.

Each entry contains a list of stones and their associations to planets, colors, days, etc. followed by a quick summary of power associations. All this information is used to match the best stone or metal with what you intend to use it for. After these quick summaries, Cunningham goes into great detail and depth with his explanations on the magic and background lore of each. The center of the book contains a colorful guide displaying “best” examples of some of the stones. I found this color-inset useful as I was reading through the text and trying to grasp a mental image of what each and every stone looked like. A quick Reference Table follows these chapters summarizing all the book’s information.

Not all stones are covered in this book. Not all stones have the same information either. However, Cunningham does try to thoroughly cover each stone he does list with as much information about it as he can. Some stone lore includes ideas for healing with the stones; some include simple spells one can do with the stone. The book focuses solely on naturally occurring stones and metals; it does not cover man-made or dyed stones (like the Goldstone). I believe that this book should be included in the library of anyone who is interested in the spiritual aspects of stones and metals’ as the information contained is some of the best and most practical information on using stones and metals in magic on the market. I also believe that the lore and stories Cunningham provides for the stones also makes this book fun to read by anyone, not just pagans or witches.

Gemstones and feng shui; the marriage between the two isn’t as apparent as it should be. However, stones and their energies are a perfect companion to the ancient Chinese practice. Sandra Kynes’s book, Gemstone Feng Shui, explores this complex and interesting relationship. I imagined a whole system of feng shui that used gemstones to counter and support the natural energies of feng shui. While the book has a wealth of information on how to use crystals in conjunction with traditional feng shui practices it fell short of that first impression. Instead the book attempts to describe how to use the stones with current good feng shui practices.

The book has two parts. The first part introduces crystals, healing properties, feng shui basics and tools. It then goes into limited exploration of how to use gemstones in combination with feng shui. The book does a great job of introducing the basics of crystals. Ms. Kynes’s gemstone-circle meditation is a great way to introduce new users of crystals and their energies to one another by placing them around a person. The book uses the 9 Square, or Lo Shu Grid to teach readers feng shui. The Lo Shu Grid divides a room up into squares instead of the more common practice of visualizing a room broken down into a circle with each direction representing a piece of the pie.

The second half of the book goes into the gemstones themselves. Over 100 pages are dedicated to explaining the history, lore and energy properties of selected stones. This part of the book is worth its weight in gold. These tables and lists show readers new gemstone correspondences as they relate to the 5 traditional Chinese elements.

Gemstone Feng Shui falls short at teaching readers how to incorporate gemstones into daily feng shui practices. When it describes how to remove blocking or harmful energies it is done separately from gemstones. The two topics seem to have very little to do with each other. When they do interact, it is through descriptions of situations and their blocks and a few suggestions on how to counteract, harmonize or enhance aspects of this element. The book makes a series of statements rather than exploring the rationale behind how the stone’s energies work to produce the desired feeling in a room. It quickly goes from element to element as well as showing how the colors of the stones or one’s birthstone can also produce and affect feng shui energies.

Overall, this book is not for beginners of crystal work and feng shui. Even with the introductory chapters on each topic, the book tries to cram a large amount of study and history of both feng shui and crystals but doesn’t do much to describe the marriage between the two. However, the time and energy spent on describing the stones and their energies make up for the lack of practical applications.