A Mini-Review of Raymond Buckland’s Book of Saxon Witchcraft
Two out of Five Leaves
Originally published in 1974 as The Tree and mostly out of print until its re-issue in 2005, Buckland’s Book of Saxon Witchcraft had been up there with other unobtainable classics like Witchdom of the True for a good chunk of my early pagan life. I originally encountered it online as part of a (somewhat ill-gotten) Book of Shadows and was tantalized by the snippets of rituals, though I knew that the Woden-Freya pairing had long since been debunked (not least of all because “Freyja” should be “Freo” in this case to match the Saxon “Woden”). However, it would be a long time yet before I realized it was back in print, and another year or so before I finally decided to purchase the Kindle edition (as I buy most of my books nowadays). After skimming it quickly, though, I realized that much of the material was dated and was supplemented, if not replaced by, more accurate and detailed works.
My biggest fault with it is how it is a Saxon flavor of Wicca, not the Witchcraft of the Saxons as I might have hoped. The title itself is misleading–I don’t equate Wicca with Witchcraft as the author seems to. Simply, the ethos of Wiccans does not match that of the Saxon Gods: I see Erce (Nerthus) as a “kill-you-and-eat-you” sort of Goddess, and while Freo may embody the sexuality and firey, transformative magic of some aspects of the Lady, she is also a battle-goddess and receives half of the dead. “Love is the Law and Love is the Bond” does not mesh with her other aspects:
The goddess who was most skilled in magic was Freyja, and she was not only a goddess of love, but also a warlike divinity who caused screams of anguish, blood and death, and what Freyja performed in Asgard, the world of the gods, the völur tried to perform in Midgard, the world of men. 1
Woden (Odin) came with the patriarchal invading Indo-Europeans, whereas Ing-Frea, a Wan (Van), supposedly belongs to the indigenous, agricultural peoples of Europe who are more associated with the nature-worship inherent in Wicca. Ing would better serve as a pairing to his sister, particularly in the capacity of a death-rebirth fertility God of grain and beast, so a lot of “translation” is necessary in order to appreciate or utilize the book in the first place.
Ultimately it reads as though it were an abridged version of Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft, replete with the esbats and herbals, sabbats and scrying, only with Woden and Freya draped over where the Lord and Lady had been, and some “history” and “beliefs” added besides. For someone like me, who had consumed “Big Blue” at the tender age of thirteen (my first real book on witchcraft, though I’ll confess that Teen Witch was my initial introduction to Wicca), there’s not enough Northern flavor to really justify the purchase. If you’re truly intent on Saxon witchcraft, better to read Wulfeage’s Lyblác or Albertsson’s Wyrdworking, or better yet, synthesize your own practice based on solid ritual theory, folk practices and beliefs, and your relationship with the Gods.
