InsaneJournal

Current mood:	discontent
Entry tags:	book review, freya aswynn, leaves of yggdrassil, northern mysteries&magick

Book Review:Nothern Mysteries&Magick by Freya Aswynn
I tried very hard to like this book as I had heard how wonderful Leaves of Yggdrassil is, and that this is essentially the same book with the name changed. In fact this is my second read through of the book because I thought I was missing something. Apparently there were some radical changes to the book as I was told last night by a friend who owns both books. Thank you to ironknot, whom I spent some time on the phone with. Let me start with one of my biggest pet peeves and work my way through some of the other stuff as well. The worst? Essentially, Ms.Aswynn calls Tyr a liar and an oath-breaker. It's in black and white folks. She first accuses him of 'perfidy and oath breaking' in her assessment of the rune Teiwaz and then reprises this her overview of the Gods later on. Frankly, I saw red. Tyr is the deity who upholds all honor and is the blue print for honesty and holding to your word. End of story. I will say one thing. The first time out, when I read this, it did cause me to reasses my relationship to Tyr, because I had been somewhat distant to him up to that time, except when I needed him, as I believe a lot of heathens are who are not fulltrui to him, and I took the time to make closer bonds to him because of my anger so good things came of that. Thank you so Ms. Aswynn. You can turn a negative to a positive it's up to you. But, honestly, I just don't see a lot of benefit in her saying nasty things. Also, she throws Karma around a lot in this book, as she also does a lot of stuff from Crowley's school of magic(k) and philosophy. Ok, great.. She even goes so far as to bring Wicca in on semi-regular basis throughout the book. This did not make me very receptive to the material overall. Seriously. Now here is where things get weird.. From this smorgasbord of pagan and magical ideologies she then decides that only people with a Germanic/Scandinavian background can truly utilize the runes,which I of course seriously take offense to, being that to me this puts it in the regard of a 'club'. She tries to recover from it somewhat, but frankly I don't think she does a great job. It's one thing if one is already acculturated to say that yes, someone who is of a particular culture is going to get more out of a system like I Ching or whatever, but to say that someone's bloodline is going to make them better at something? I think not. Just another load of b.s. She goes from what I would deign to call wiccatru to folkish depending. And I think part of this is due to having to rewrite different editions of the book. Her philosophy must have changed and when the editor cobbled the book together they didn't understand what they were dealing with and just kind of put it together piecemeal. Of course that would be Llewellyn for you. Yeah. Some material in here is salvageable, but trying to wade your way through the morass of 'stuff' is just.. A pain. I have to say that I was not highly into her interpretations of the twelve homes of the Gods as to the zodiac. I felt they were forced. But they might be useful to some. One thing which was very glaring to me, and I have to comment on this as it was a thorn in my side, she kept referring to Depth-Psychology throughout the book, and not once did she define it for the reader. Now this is not something that a layman would know anything about without having a reason to. Personally I find that foolhardy and boring. I have reason to know what this is as my dad is a shrink so ok, great I am lucky, but others? Not likely. If you throw something out at someone on a continual basis and do not give them a definition you are going to get one of a few responses, they are going to get bored and put the book down, they are going to get ticked off and put the book down, or they are going to go look it up themselves. But the amount of folk that are going to look it up may or may not be high. That is a gamble. Again I feel this may have been due to bad editing, but, it also showed a lack of regard for her readers. It irritated me. For those interested here is a link to an artical on Depth-Psychology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_psychology . One of the really big ones, that I cannot refrain from commenting on, is that this book was touted as being about the 'feminine mysteries and powers' and yet, all the information on the female deities and those things associated with them was a the back of the book which of course is where you want to put those things you respect the most, right? The sense came over me that they were riding at the back of the bus so to speak and I was really not happy at all. I seriously cannot see myself recommending this book. I do however have to get ahold of a copy of Leaves as I have been told a lot of the crap in this is not in Leaves. So, if I can get ahold of a reasonably priced copy sometime in the future I will be doing a review of it.