Author: Robin Wood
Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Livingtree
Publication date: January 1997
ISBN: 096529840X
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The subtitle on the title page explains this book well: "An Ethics Workbook." Rather than a boring lecture on a personal subject, we are instead treated to a series of thought provoking questions that cause you to take a serious look at what you truly believe and even more importantly, why you believe it.
For most Pagans and Wiccans, training on the subject of ethics begins and ends with such items as the Rede and the Threefold Law. We have no ten commandments to steer us around the rocks in the Path. In claiming a direct line to the deities, we have also taken onto our own shoulders the duty to act in a moral and ethical manner. However, saying and knowing that doesn't make it any easier to figure out answers to the questions that plague us all.
Often ethics is a subject that many people don't want to deal with. It can make them feel uncomfortable, or perhaps the subject confuses them. Sometimes they just don't know the correct questions to ask. We all want to think of ourselves as ethical, but how many of us go through a crisis of mind, heart, and soul when life throws us a fast curve ball?
The beauty of this book is it forces you to take a hard look at yourself. In this case, knowledge is a wonderful thing, giving you guidance when the waters are rough.
Subjects covered include honesty, self, love, help, harm, sex, will, and ethics. The questions in the exercise part of each chapter are rarely easy and often less than comfortable to answer.
Would I recommend this book? Well, my coven is currently halfway through the book, and it is now on my reading list for new students. I have been shocked, startled, amused, and deeply confused by this book. Much of what I thought I believed has been turned upside down. I definitely am looking at things in a very different manner.
And I am a better person for it.
I highly recommend this book.
Reviewed by Elspeth
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