The Witch’s Book of Spirits – Devin Hunter
Llewellyn, 2017, 9780738751948, 306pp
The Witch’s Book of Spirits is a refreshing book on spirit work and magick. Devin Hunter leads you through a theoretical tour of spirit realms, introduces you to spirits along the way, and teaches you how to work with them.
Spirit work is the cornerstone of most witchcraft traditions, but what Hunter presents is both applicable to most magickal traditions, but also distinct in and of itself. That’s one of the main things I appreciated, Hunter’s system is its own thing, it’s fresh and new, not a rehash of older grimoires or Books of Shadows.
The book starts with a look at the history of spirits and magick, the importance of spirit allies, and explaining the spirit realms. The book felt almost like a spiral, rather than a linear book. Instead of being a straight progression from topic to topic, it felt like topics were introduced, explored, and returned to a while later with greater understanding. From a teaching perspective this is a great way to keep the information fresh and relevant in the reader’s mind.
The book spirals out, looking at familiars, protections, spiritual flight, returning to the various spirit realms, and methods of conjurations. While I might disagree with some of Hunter’s delineations of spirits and realms, they do make a useful model to work from. If the worst thing I can say is that I disagree with some definitions, then I’d say that this makes this a fairly solid book on spirit work.
It’s the last half of the book that really shines in my opinion. Hunter gives us nine “Keys of Hecate” which are a combination of sigils and energy work. These Keys are symbols of power, each one with a different purpose and method of use ranging from establishing authority and protection to helping spirits manifest on our level. I found these really interesting because while the origins and symbols are different, the underlying principle and method is very similar to work I’ve had revealed to me by my spirits, just as these Keys were revealed by Hunter’s work with Hecate.
Now that the reader is equipped with the Keys to handle spirits the book spirals back into a deeper look at the classification of spirits, from angels and demons to the dead and the fae. The book ends with a grimoire of 33 spirits, spirits of the Vexna-Kari. They’re an interesting mishmash of spirits of different types and different origins. Several apparently were spirit familiars to witches in the past, but for whatever reason even after their witch died the spirits remained, brought back into the fold by the Vexna-Kari. The abilities or domains of the spirits are the standard fair: help learning, drawing love, protection, financial aid and so on. The head of the spirits, the Vexna-Kari, are three spirits, progenitors of witchblood, angels who walked the Earth. This section, like the Keys, had a few eerie similarities to my own work, and considering much of that comes from spirits who also claim themselves as bloodline progenitors and angels on the Earth I think it’s good confirmation having similarities arise. I suspect those who follow paths connected to the Crooked Path, Sabbatic Craft, TradCraft will probably find Hunter’s work very resonant with their own.
While I would recommend the book in general, for anyone wanting to improve the connection and work with spirits, I will say it probably will have an extra “layer” to those who walk paths connected with Hecate, the Bene Ha Elohim, and TradCraft. Even if you’re fairly developed in your spirit work, I would recommend the book for the Keys of Hecate and the Vexna-Kari grimoire.
