Overview

Featuring narrative, chants, songs, and rituals, Dreaming the Dark has helped many thousands of women use magic, spirituality, and community to bring about political and social change. This anniversary edition of the best-selling classic includes a new preface reflecting on the fifteen years since the book's original publication.

Full Product Details

9780807010372

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Reviews

<i>Dreaming the Dark</i> is [Starhawk's] best book; it offers myths of fulfillment, rituals of healing, an unusual but perhaps ultimately pragmatic cultural perspective, and a vision for survival and growth. --The Bloomsbury Review This book is the story of a journey, its author's movement from a place of despair to one of action. . . . It is ultimately a message of hope and optimism, for Starhawk shares not only a vision but tools for personal empowerment, the building of community, and the transformation of culture. . . . A thought-provoking book that is a pleasure to read. --Carol Haber, <i>New Directions for Women</i> Reading this book is in itself transformational. . . . You're sure to come away from [Starhawk's] work richer, deeper, and more truly informed. --Pam Pacelli, <i>New Age</i> These are recipes for real change, filled with humor and good sense, protected with safeguards against the reassertion of our old habits of using power and against the temptations to overload and burnout. --Judith S. Harrow, <i>Association for Humanistic Psychology Newsletter</i> A marvelously empowering and energizing book. --Aunt Edna's Reading List

Dreaming the Dark is [Starhawk's] best book; it offers myths of fulfillment, rituals of healing, an unusual but perhaps ultimately pragmatic cultural perspective, and a vision for survival and growth. --The Bloomsbury Review <br> This book is the story of a journey, its author's movement from a place of despair to one of action. . . . It is ultimately a message of hope and optimism, for Starhawk shares not only a vision but tools for personal empowerment, the building of community, and the transformation of culture. . . . A thought-provoking book that is a pleasure to read. --Carol Haber, New Directions for Women <br> Reading this book is in itself transformational. . . . You're sure to come away from [Starhawk's] work richer, deeper, and more truly informed. --Pam Pacelli, New Age <br> These are recipes for real change, filled with humor and good sense, protected with safeguards against the reassertion of our old habits of using power and against the temptations to overload an

"Dreaming the Dark is [Starhawk's] best book; it offers myths of fulfillment, rituals of healing, an unusual but perhaps ultimately pragmatic cultural perspective, and a vision for survival and growth. --The Bloomsbury Review ""This book is the story of a journey, its author's movement from a place of despair to one of action. . . . It is ultimately a message of hope and optimism, for Starhawk shares not only a vision but tools for personal empowerment, the building of community, and the transformation of culture. . . . A thought-provoking book that is a pleasure to read."" --Carol Haber, New Directions for Women ""Reading this book is in itself transformational. . . . You're sure to come away from [Starhawk's] work richer, deeper, and more truly informed."" --Pam Pacelli, New Age ""These are recipes for real change, filled with humor and good sense, protected with safeguards against the reassertion of our old habits of using power and against the temptations to overload and burnout."" --Judith S. Harrow, Association for Humanistic Psychology Newsletter ""A marvelously empowering and energizing book."" --Aunt Edna's Reading List"

Wisdom from a witch: a thoughtful but sometimes sloppy-minded blend of manifesto (down with the patriarchy!), grand Manichean vision (soulless technocracy's war on Immanence), historical primer (how the Protestant ethic, the Enclosure Acts, the Industrial Revolution, etc., cut the umbilical cord binding us to the earth), personal memoir (the Diablo Canyon blockade), and practical advice on running a coven/consciousness-raising group. As in her 1979 The Spiral Dance, Starhawk (Miriam Simos) shows herself to be a passionate but sensible radical, a leading light in what she hopes will be the glorious pagan renaissance - to end the Dark Ages of hypermasculine barbarism, militarism, devastation of nature, sexual persecution, and so forth. All this is fine, especially since Starhawk has a realistic awareness of how San Francisco-weird her sermons about union with the Goddess, and her stories about blissful naked worship, must strike the average feminist. Still, there are problems with her argument. She often oversimplifies: all power-over' hierarchical structures are bad. (Has she tried raising kids in her role as an egalitarian facilitator ?) She's as naive as the Playboy folk in imagining that sexual guilt can or ought to be wiped out in our lifetime. And once or twice she loses touch completely: the Diablo Canyon power plant never opened because the rituals and many focused powers of the protestors, past and present, put a beneficient whammy on it. Such lapses aside, Starhawk is an eloquent spokeswoman for many good causes (which, she plausibly insists, are really a single cause). Flawed but forceful. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

A writer, activist, and witch, Starhawk is the author, most recently, of The Fifth Sacred Thing and Walking to Mercury. She lives in San Francisco.

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