Review: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca Craft

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca Craft
by Miria Liguana

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca Craft / 1-59257-262-6

To date, I have found about three guides on Wiccan craft projects, and these guides are all fairly disappointing.

"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca Craft" tries to do a little bit of everything - cooking, brewing, sewing, miscellaneous crafting, and so on. Sadly, each topic is remarkably shallow - in this case "a little bit of everything" means, apparently, a VERY little bit.

The section on sewing a ritual robe basically involves buying a really big bolt of cloth, cutting a robe-sized shape out of the bolt, and then sewing the two sides together and wearing the result. I'm not a professional seamstress, but I do know how to sew a robe and I know how to sew a potato sack; the instructions here are far closer to a potato sack. For the record, if you want to sew a ritual robe, I personally recommend buying a "Christmas Pagentry" pattern for 99 cents and sewing up the ubiquitous "Angel Robe". If you want a hooded robe, check out the Halloween patterns - there's always a good "Elven Cloak" pattern available. These patterns are professional but not too hard, and you'll have actual sleeves and a proper neckline and maybe even a back zipper, rather than a potato sack to slip over your head. I'm just frustrated with why this book doesn't use simple and obvious tips and patterns like this, instead of describing a potato sack as a ritual robe!

Everything else is superficial as well. The full moon cookies are a basic sugar cookie recipe my mom has used for years. The goddess libation is a common non-alcoholic drink mix. The majority of the other crafts utilize very simple and "childish" craft materials - white Kraft glue, glitter, paper plates, Popsicle sticks, and so forth. I think this would be a GREAT resource for pagan parenting, or if you were trying to put together some kind of pagan "Sunday School" class, but since I don't have children it doesn't do much for me.

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of these authors assume that if a person is new to the Craft then they must also be new to crafting. I'm still looking for a good Wiccan crafting book that is really in-depth and professional, but if you're looking for a book to involve children in Wiccan crafting, this is probably a decent resource.

~ Ana Mardoll

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