Ritual: An Essential Grimoire by Damien Echols and Lorrie Davis

Description From NetGalley:

Damien Echols and Lorri Davis share a beginner-friendly treasury of their most valuable practices for weaving magick into your everyday life.

The promise of magick is both simple and extraordinary: it is that magick can support you in any aspect of life, from helping you succeed in everyday tasks to enabling you to achieve your most cherished dreams. What’s more, you don’t even have to believe in magick to make it work. The only thing that’s required is regular practice—and the easiest way to practice is to make magickal rituals part of your daily life.

With Ritual: An Essential Grimoire, magicians Damien Echols and Lorri Davis share a broad selection of their most effective rituals, meditations, and prayers—presented in terms accessible to all. “You won’t find a lot of arcane terminology or lengthy ceremonies here,” says Damien. “What you will find are simple practices to develop your own connection to the energy and intelligence of the universe.” Here you’ll discover:

• Essential breath and concentration techniques for working with subtle energy

• Grounding practices to cleanse your body and environment from stagnant energies or thoughts

• Everyday meditations for improving sleep and dreams, blessing food, inviting abundance, and more

• On-the-spot practices that include invoking protection, relieving pain and anxiety, and seeing goodness in difficult situations

• Methods to amplify and reinforce your ritual work with talismans, celestial forces, and angel magick

• How ritual work can advance your spiritual evolution and openness to divine guidance

• Moving stories from Damien and Lorri about how magick changed their lives—and how it can change yours

Damien and Lorri learned magick to help them get through the most trying times—to help free Damien from his wrongful incarceration, then to help both of them heal from the traumatic aftereffects of his imprisonment. “Many of these rituals are the very same we used to rebuild our lives,” Lorri says. “We share these practices in the hopes that you will use them to survive, thrive, and create the life you desire.”

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My Review:

I received this copy from NetGalley in exchange for my review. I am not a beginner witch by any means but I like to scout around for beginner-friendly books for friends that are interested in getting into the craft. This is not the first book I've read from Damien Echols. I was a little underwhelmed by his book High Magick, but wanted to give him another chance.

First off, this book is heavily religious. For beginners who don't know, witchcraft is not inherently religious. I have met Catholic and Christian witches. I am personally not a fan as I have had a bad experience with both religions. I do wish there was more of a disclaimer that let people know they could separate the two. Not only that, they randomly have spells or rituals involving other gods. While I am all for eclectic information, it felt very out of context since they mentioned how their practice brought them closer to God and angels. While it is a grimoire that shares both Damien and Lorrie's experiences (though this felt like it was only written in Lorrie's voice) they added in a lot of extras that did not need to be there.

The spells and exercises were pretty decent. They went over a lot of good basics that I have used and some I still use regularly. In my opinion, I felt they included some spells that are more advanced and would not give to a beginner. That was one of my main issues with the other book I read. For example, I would not say cord-cutting is a beginner ritual. That is just my opinion as others would disagree, but feel that it is important to say.

Overall, I would recommend that if you are not of the Christian faith or similar religions, to just borrow this from the library and only read the exercises and spells. I also would recommend to all readers to do your research on the cultures behind some of these practices and make sure you aren't accidentally appropriating or practicing from a closed practice. If you're a Christian witch looking to start out, this is the perfect book for you.