FREE: Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark Magic Sex & Politics/ Wicca

Starhawk is an American writer and anarchist activist, well-known for her work in Wicca (e.g., the "Reclaiming" Collective in San Francisco) and ecofeminism. She has also written books such as The Spiral Dance.

She wrote in the Prologue to this 1982 book, "This is a book about bringing together the spiritual and the political. .. In essence, this is a book about power. It talks about the differences between power-over and power-from-within, about the stories and thought-forms that convey power, about ethics based on power-from-within."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"The word 'Goddess' makes many people who would define themselves as 'political' uneasy. It implies religion, secularism, and can be mistaken for the worship of an external being... Yet power-from-within IS the power of the low, the dark, the earth; the power that arises from our blood, and our lives, and our passionate desire for each other's living flesh." (Pg. 4)
"Change is frightening, but Witches have a saying, 'Where there's fear, there's power.'" (Pg. 47)
"Years ago, I made a meager living while reading Tarot cards and palms at a succession of 'Psychic Faires.' These gatherings took place at hotels or bookstores, where twenty or thirty psychics of mixed breed, and various traditions, skills, and levels of integrity would perform fifteen-minute readings, often for hours or days on end." (Pg. 48)
"Sex is energy. What gives the physical exchange its excitement, its intensity, is the movement of vital energy, an energy not limited to human beings, but ... in all living things." (Pg. 143)
"Sex was a sacrament in the Old Religion; it was (and is) viewed as a powerful force through which the healing, fructifying love of the immanent Goddess was directly known, and could be drawn upon to nourish the world..." (Pg. 215)