Book Review - House Magic

Title: House Magic: A handbook to making every home a sanctuary.

Author: Aurora Kane

Rating: 2/5

Aurora Kane's 2020 released book, House Magic, is the first book I have ever purchased from the author, and I am skeptical if I'll buy any further works. I was initially drawn to the eye-catching cover. The Royal blue and gold foil make a striking combination. However, I wish the publishers had brought the gold foil into the illustrations inside. Instead, the interior art is a dark brownish color. This book is a 175-page book separated into eight sections with an introduction, index, and resource section. While the author's writing style is straightforward, this book did not fulfill my desire to further my knowledge of house magic.

I am a practicing hedge witch hoping for some more profound understanding of hearth witchery, but this was not the book. Instead, it read as if the author only had 30 pages worth of house magic, and she had to fill up the rest of the book with entry-level magic. House Magic would make a competent introduction to magical concepts for a beginner's book, but there's no information to be gained for someone who has already done basic google research.

Now for the parts that left a negative impression on me. The amount of appropriation in this book is staggering. In 2016, the term 'smudging' started to make the rounds. It became the trendy thing for witches and spiritualist people to do, and, of course, big marketing companies jumped in on the cash cow. Everything finally came to a head in 2018 when Sephora released their "witch kits." Afterward, public outcry was heard around the United States as Native Americans came forward to educate people about the sacred smudge ceremony. Considering this book was published in 2020 (two years after), the author would have been fully aware of how the term 'smudging' is not interchangeable with 'smoke cleansing' due to appropriation. If that wasn't enough, Kane continues to give white-washed information regarding Feng Shui. Instead of mentioning Feng Shui and advising her readers to learn more about it, she attempts to provide a how-to in the most basic way, thoroughly watering down this ancient Taoist philosophy. The author had no expertise and was not a member of the closed religions.

So many things were added to fluff up the page count in this book: Norse runes, feng shui, smudging, dream catchers, herbology, crystals, birds, etc. I get that she was out of ideas and needed to make a whole book, but she should have focused on house magic, you know, the book's topic! With such little information gained and so many problems, I would not recommend this book.