"Element Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells" by Judika Iiles

Many people seem to have a misunderstanding when it comes to this book. I bought it a few years ago, thinking it would be a good investment for me, but found it was only useful for me to press plants, but that's beside the point.

Before turning it into my plant-presser, I looked it over. Some people may have the misconstrued idea that the spells provided in the book are meant to be "Wiccan" in some way, including the "cliche" harm none nonsense littered through the book.

The author warns at the beginning of the book, that the spells provided were gathered from sources around the world, and from various times in history. The spells may not reflect the ethics of today, and that's where people seem to get the idea that it's not a good book.

We tend to forget that Witchcraft and spells are not the same around the world and throughout history as it is here in the West and in this day and age. There were times when people used, less than ideal ingredients for their spells, because that's what they had/have on hand and that's what they saw as successful. The spells provided in this book reflect this. It's perfectly ok for someone to not want to use the spells in this book because of what items it calls for...sure one or two might call for animal urine, or the ear of a dog, but that doesnt mean you can't find a substitute for those items, especially in herbal form (if anything, Mullein kind of feels like a dog's ear).

We also seem to forget that it was perfectly normal to use animal parts in plants some hundreds of years ago. We didn't see killing animals as inhumane because it was a regular part of life (it kind of still is, but the average person doesn't do it themselves on a regular basis, for the simple fact that we now have supermarkets that stock the meat after it's been butchered, so regular townsfolk don't have to witness the slaughter of the cow). So to kill a fox for it's tail to be used in a spell, or it's tooth, meant nothing. We had no "Conservation for the Protection of Animals" and whatnot back then...it wasn't considered inhumane.

So we can't really give flak for the spells we find in this book because they're historical spells; spells used historically by ancestors. Should we condemn them because of what they did, through which we have founded modern medicine? One should be careful before condemning anything and look at the historical value first. It may seem unethical for today, but it wasn't hundreds of years ago.