Hi, I'm Olivia, the Witch of Wonderlust here on YouTube and on Instagram,
and I've got book reviews for you today. Today I'm drinking this vanilla chai by DAVIDs tea.
The two books that we're going to go through are from the October Witches Box the subscription box.
We have The Witch's Whield and The Witch's Coin both written by Christopher Pencek
-Pinzac?Penzac...? I believe? I even looked it up to see if I was pronouncing his name correctly.
So the first one I'm going to run through is the witch's shield all about protection magic
and protecting yourself spiritually and using your spiritual craft to protect yourself it's a pretty
good intro if I'm looking down it's just because I'm looking at my notes. It's a really good intro
book to protection magic and working with that in your craft it covers all of the basics of
what you're protecting from and why you would need protection and something that. He does cover that
I thought was really interesting and helpful was that he covers why practitioners seem to need more
protection than non-practitioners because that's always been something that comes up
fairly often when I tell people, "oh I'm wearing a protective charm, ect. ect." and people who
don't practice they're like well I'm fine I don't practice you know why do you need that if I don't
need that and I don't even practice I don't ever put up any protections he goes through a lot of
different reasonings and really good points on why practitioners need more protection and i mean it
comes down to the fact that when you're practicing you're kind of making waves right and you start to
gain traction and gain the what's the word the attention of entities and spirits so
you're gonna need more protection and also other practitioners and sometimes they don't always have
the best intentions for you another thing that i really liked was that it's not fear-mongering
i think i have read a couple of protection books that make the world seem scary and make the occult
world seem scary and while there are definitely things that you need to be careful of and protect
yourself from and there are things that can be scary it doesn't fear monger the reader it
doesn't make it seem like it's this terrifying jump into the abyss and i think that's really
important especially as a book that's geared more towards people who are in the beginning stages or
just past the beginning stages it's also really in-depth but it's it's an easy read so that's
always a hard line to walk when you're an author of being really really in depth but not losing
your reader halfway through by repeating things or giving too many examples or too many metaphors
for the same thing it's it's quick and to the point and makes the point very prominent but he
dissects a lot of things throughout the book that i think are very important to dissect one thing i
really liked about this book was keep in mind this book was published in 2004 and it comes with a cd
in the back of all of the the rituals the protection i think it's chants and the rituals
and he walks you through them there might be some meditations i haven't put it in anywhere
because i don't think anybody owns a cd player anymore actually my record player does have one
now that i'm looking at it but unless your car has a cd player i just really liked that and then i
thought it was kind of funny because i was looking at the cd and i was like wow that really dates it
i was like oh god that dates me whatever anyway so keeping in mind that this book is written in 2004
or written and published in 2004 he does mention smudging with white sage when he's
referring to smoke cleansing just keep that in mind it's in there there are over 700 species
of sage worldwide so i don't think that you're really limited to just white sage but that's just
a note that i wrote down another thing that i just wanted to touch on was that he talks about
some protective herbs and some of which are poisonous and there's no there's no like
note or star next to them so there's a whole list here right there and on the other side
you probably can't see it but things like belladonna and foxglove and mistletoe
nightshade belladonna again wolf spain or monkshood and you can kill you so
that was just one little thing you know if if newer practitioners or people who just are unaware
go out and acquire these herbs somewhere and use them and just so happen to touch them with their
hands and then ingest it in some way that can be detrimental so that was just a little thing that i
noticed i always love a good source list and this book has a lot of different sources which is
really nice because if you're reading a book and they're not sources to other books or other places
at all other teachers it's not a good book it's always good to have a whole list of other reading
of where they got their information because then you can expand easily you don't have to
finish this book and think well now where else am i going to read about protection magic this
is the only book i have there's a whole list of recommendations and i think that's
incredibly important um there are a lot of wiccan ideas and the the law of three the rule of three
is brought up constantly through this book so just again keep that in mind the practitioner
is using a lot of like a lot of heavy wiccan influences which is totally fine um you just
have to understand that that's that's his faith that's where he is coming from that may bother
some people but it is what it is simple recipes for oils and sprays and infusions are listed all
throughout the book for protection which i really appreciate it's not they're not all
complex ingredients there are some that might be a little more difficult like you'll have to order
them online or something which i personally like to use things that i can easily access
one i'm lazy and two i i think that it's it's good to be able to adapt and utilize the things
that you have at hand i'm not saying that if you order things online it's bad i have guava leaves
i you can't find guava leaves in colorado but i'm just saying that um if you're relying on
those things that's when it's an issue however in this book there are uh common household herbs
that you can use in these infusions and oils and sprays which is nice i liked that part okay so
overall it's a good foundation book if you want a really good protection magic book this is a good
place to start it covers a lot it really covers a lot it covers everything from all the things
everybody wants to do you know such as the the protection meditations the rituals the spells the
sprays the infusions all the hands-on witchy things that covers those things
as well as ideas and morals and it covers everything from those hands-on basic things to
questions that you might have of protection magic or rituals of the morals and the ideas that comes
with that is the simplest way i can put that but it does cover a lot in a very small small book
it's generally a very readable size and it's easy to read too it's not dense
which is really good for beginner books moving on to the witch's coin there's a
slight difference in the sizes here this is the witch's coin i love money magic i like
protection magic and i love money magic if you couldn't tell from my money workings but i have
a very specific view on it and a very um specific way that i go about it and i'm not to say that
it's not to say that only my way is the right way right but i do have a way that i have found
has worked for me the best and i feel good about and i feel strong in so when i do read a lot of
money magic books i get more little tidbits and tips and ideas rather than seeing the whole book
as like a whole of this is the best money magic book i've ever i've ever read so this is also
a good foundational book again it does cover a lot a lot because there is a lot especially
in morals and ideas in money magic because there's a lot that goes into it there could be
multiple videos on that and to be completely honest it kind of exhausts me however maybe
one day but not anytime soon sorry this is a fantastic beginner's book and i wouldn't i would
say even intermediate because it goes into like i said the morals of the ideas and it covers a lot
of things of why money magic might not work and why it does work and how you can best acclimate
it to you and your working and your current life situation no i liked this book so a huge chunk
of this book i want to argue almost half of this book talks all about the ethics and perspective
when it comes to money magic and i've said this before and i'll say it again once you read
intro books intro witchcraft books you've kind of read them all once you read the first one
you can kind of skip a lot of what all the other ones say because they all say
generally the same things however it's always good to read them through because sometimes
there are little gems in there that you're like oh i don't know i didn't think about that
or um there's different perspectives that can make something click for you this is one of those books
that covers a ton of things in perspective and ethics and morals that i know everybody's going
to want to skip over and just go straight to the spells and i know i know that we do that
don't do that because you're going to miss so much of the foundational and the important parts
of actually doing these rituals and doing these spells if you skip over this you're
cheating yourself you're not helping yourself at all sit down read the whole thing and take the
time to do the work that you don't want to do that will eventually benefit you in the future
because he adds a lot of shadow work prompts and money is something that is heavily based
on perspective i will not say that heavily based on or only based on perspective but
there is a lot of how you see money and how you view money so he adds a lot of shadow work prompts
and i suggest that you don't just read them and think about them
i suggest that you actually get out a notebook or your grimoire and write them down and answer them
and it's not fun work a lot of the craft is not fun work but it will be beneficial to you and your
future workings and will make your future working stronger so that's my ted talk on that i do like
i said think it's a really good beginner slash intermediate book because it it's not so beginner
that it's super basic and boring to read if you kind of know all the basics already but it's not
so advanced that it's hard to grasp or difficult to wrap your head around the last thing that i
like about the witch's coin is that it is a mix of ceremonial and folk based magic so you can kind of
be on one or the other sides or maybe you find yourself in the middle and it gives you options
for each of those because sometimes you know i personally lean towards more of the folk magic
tradition but i do use ceremonial sometimes and so it's good to be able to experiment and
see what works best for you and what feels the best for you but otherwise this also has a lot
of really good sources for further reading which you know is a good win on my end those are the
two books that we reviewed this month i hope that you enjoyed these are two of my favorite kinds of
magic to do i love protection magic and i love money magic if you couldn't tell from my past
videos i thought that they were very good reads they were easy to read they were enjoyable to read
at least to me and again like i said they do have a lot of wiccan ideas integrated into them but
if somebody is writing from a wicked stance then that's going to happen and otherwise it was a they
were they're really good i got some really good thought-provoking chunks out of it and some good
tips and there are some infusions and a couple of i guess ideas of how to do the working layouts i
suppose that i'm really interested in trying and experimenting with so i'm looking forward to that
but that is all for this video thank you for watching and as always i will see you in the next
one best of luck be kind to each other and may your gods treat you as you've treated others bye
you