A review by laurareads87
The Witch's Name: Crafting Identities of Magical Power by Storm Faerywolf

informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

A solid book on considerations related to choosing a craft name, Storm Faerywolf's "The Witch's Name" covers a lot of ground in not many pages: reasons for choosing a name, contexts one might use (or not use) such a name (or names!), sources of inspiration (constellations, animals, mythology, deities, legends, etc.), exercises to try to find elements of one's name or see how a particular name feels, and additional considerations like signatures and self-protection. I would describe this, in craft terms, as intermediate; there is definitely the presumption here that the reader is familiar with some magical basics (protective work, grounding and centering, raising power) but no expectation that the reader do these things in any particular way. Inevitably, some parts of the book will be more relevant to any reader than others - for example, I don't work with the 'three part self' but the divination and sigil-crafting sections are highly relevant to my practice. I appreciate the author's mindfulness re: cultural appropriation, pronunciation of languages, and related issues. I would absolutely read more from Faerywolf based on this book, and I know some of these exercises will be very useful to me as I work on crafting a public-facing name for some writing/publishing I hope to do.
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