Review: To Walk a Pagan Path

Title: To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day
Author: Alaric Albertsson
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: November 8th 2013
Source: Netgalley

★★★★

Four stars.

---

To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day is a non-fiction guide book on how to not only walk the Pagan path, but how to incorporate your spiritual beliefs into daily life.

I have been a practicing pagan for about ten years now, but even now finding time for religion is still something that I struggle with. I do walk the walk, but it's nowhere near as often or as in depth as I like. To Walk a Pagan Path definitely helped with some great advice on how to solve this problems.

One of these steps has all to do with food. This book includes recipes for things like breads and treats to make any day of the week, or especially for a ritual. There's also a section on crafting things that will become vital to most, like candles and wreaths. Plus, Alaric Albertsson gives insight on how to make daily ritual completely feasible in today's busy (and urban) world- you can feel just as connected to your path with a simple ritual as you can with an ornately complicated one.

I also found the section written about the Wheel of the Year extremely helpful. I'm always searching for ways to better my sabbats and rituals, and I appreciated gaining insight from this book, since it is not strictly focused on Wicca, but paganism as a whole.

The one part of this book that I didn't really connect to was the section regarding familiars and animals. While I respect and understand the importance that having pets and caring for nature has in the pagan world, it wasn't very practical advice for me personally. I live in housing that doesn't allow animals bigger than fish, and I don't have land. I also am not allowed to have multiple kinds of lights used for plants, and I don't have the space to grow them in natural lighting. However, pet people and homeowners will probably find this far more useful.

I would be more likely to hand this book to someone who is relatively new or inexperienced to paganism, because it reads fairly simply and is easy to understand. However, I'm sure that even well seasoned practitioners would pick up a pointer or two from To Walk a Pagan Path. I know that I'd keep it on my Magick shelf, for sure.

Thank you to Llewellyn Publications and Netgalley for my copy.