Recommended Reading
and Listening
If you’ve come this far and are wondering what your next steps might be, the following list of books and websites can give you some suggestions for further investigation. This list is hardly comprehensive, and resources change over time. As we learn more, our understandings of ourselves and the world around us evolve. The commonly held orthodoxies of today become the discredited mistakes of tomorrow, and online resources spring up, flourish, decay, and disappear faster than they can be tracked. Consider this list a starting point, a set of beginnings. Where you go from here is limited only by your imagination, your will, your desire, and your access to libraries and the magic of the internet.
The star symbol (
) indicates a book I consider essential in its category, and an excellent starting place for its category.
Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness
Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele,
Queer: A Graphic History, Icon Books, 2016
This is, hands down, the single best introduction to queer theory I’ve found. It offers a whirlwind overview of the history, psychology, politics, philosophy, and critical theory of queerness grounded in solid academic research and history, presented in an endearing, engaging, non-threatening graphic novel format.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge, 2006
This book was my introduction to Butler’s work … and initially, I hated it. The writing style was annoyingly opaque, and she never seemed to get to the damned point. Once I broke through the haze of her academic English, though, I found her arguments profoundly convincing, even life-changing. If I could, I would make the first chapter of this book required reading for everyone interested in sex, gender, or society.
bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics,
South End Press, 2000
Written primarily as a brief introduction to feminist thought for men and others new to the idea of feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression,” this slim volume manages nonetheless to cover an awful lot of ground. From philosophy to reproductive rights, from class struggles to children’s books, from hegemonic beauty standards to racial equality, hooks outlines a “radical visionary feminism” that is both intersectional and effective and seeks to create a just, equitable, and courageous world for all people of every gender.
Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining
Difference,” in Sister Outsider, Crossing Press, 1984
This essay, written by a self-described “forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple,” directly engages with the binary confines of hegemonic standards of contemporary culture—what Lorde calls “the mythical norm”—and sets them on fire. In ten brief-but-rich pages, she calls out the interlocked nature of racism, sexism, classicism, ageism, and heterocentrism and underscores the need for an intersectional approach to revolutionary change, which she suggests is necessary for liberation both in the world and ourselves. While the essay is focused largely on the struggles faced by Black lesbians in both white feminist and Black communities, the points she raises are well worth considering for any reader.
Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Deviations:
A Gayle Rubin Reader, Duke University Press, 2011
In many ways, “Thinking Sex” was the inspiration for everything in this book, from its analytic approach to the title itself, drawn from Rubin’s charmed circle model of hegemonic sexuality and gender. This essay is worth the price of admission all on its own, but the rest of this collection offers a wealth of revolutionary thinking about sexuality, gender, politics, anthropology, and feminism, and is equally worth your attention.
Magic, Witchcraft, and Sorcery
Janet and Stewart Farrar, A Witches’ Bible,
Phoenix Publishing, 1996
The publication of this book—a compilation of the Farrars’ two previous books, Eight Sabbats for Witches and The Witches’ Way—was one of the final steps in Wicca’s journey from being a sexy mystery cult to being an alternative religious tradition with a sexy mystery cult hiding somewhere inside it. Accusations of oathbreaking notwithstanding, anyone interested in getting a sense of what traditional Wicca looks like from the inside could do far worse than this meaty tome, which displays a surprising open-mindedness toward queerness for its day while refusing to shy away from discussing the sexual or gendered aspects of Wicca.
Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow, Robert Hale, 1993
Of all the books penned by the woman rightly referred to as the godmother of modern witchcraft, this might be the most personal and idiosyncratic. It’s essentially a book of Valiente’s ruminations on the history, personalities, and practice of magic and witchcraft, concluding with a grimoire of her own creation, offered as a set of introductory rites and practices for new witches. While I might quibble with some of her historical data and conclusions, this book is a delightful contribution to the body of modern witch lore, and a marvelous place for someone interested in actually practicing witchcraft to learn what Grandmother Doreen thought and taught.
Laura Tempest Zakroff, Weave the Liminal, Llewellyn, 2019
This book is, hands down, one of the best modern introductory texts on witchcraft out there and an excellent place to start developing your own practice, though I suspect even staunch traditionalists and ceremonialists will find much of value here. Rather than advancing any particular established tradition of witchcraft or encouraging a do-what-you-like eclecticism, Tempest puts forward the radical notion of a curated path, encouraging both experimentation and rigor in a manner that will appeal to anyone with a touch of the Magpie approach to their makeup (as described on page 213).
Sex Magic
Frater U
D
, Sex Magic, Llewellyn, 2018
An updated version of his classic Secrets of the German Sex Magicians, this book provides an overview of sexual magic and mysticism rooted in a syncretic, post-Golden Dawn approach which draws on—or appropriates from—a variety of traditions, Western and Eastern. Queer and trans readers will have to do a fair bit of unpacking to get at the good stuff here, and some may find the level of cultural universalism (if not appropriation) off-putting, though Frater U
D does at least acknowledge the traditions from which he’s adopting his terms and techniques. If you’re interested in a modern take on ritual sex magic, Sex Magic is a decent place to start.
Brandy Williams, Ecstatic Ritual: Practical
Sex Magic, Megalithica Books, 2008
Williams draws on her background as a ceremonial magician and a priestess in both Wiccan and Thelemic contexts to inform her straightforward, approachable, and blessedly inclusive approach to sex magic. Anyone looking to explore an embodied, gender-inclusive, sex-positive practice of magic and devotion would do well to read this book and her other works, The Woman Magician and the Williams-edited anthology Women’s Voices in Magic.
Intersections with the P-Word Community
Yvonne Aburrow, All Acts of Love and
Pleasure: Inclusive Wicca, Avalonia, 2014
This book kicked over some apple carts when it was first released, and little wonder. Writing as a Gardnerian Wiccan priestess, Aburrow explores the boundaries of sexuality and gender in an initiatory Wiccan context and offers suggestions on ways to adapt traditional practices to make them inclusive of anyone—queer or straight, trans or cis—drawn to the Craft of the Wicca.
Lee Harrington and Tai Fenix Kulystin (editors), Queer Magic: Power Beyond Boundaries, Mystic Productions Press, 2018
This anthology showcases a host of queer and trans authors writing about magic, spirituality, sexuality, and gender from a variety of perspectives. For queer and trans readers, this book is a work of revelation and validation, while for readers who aren’t queer or trans, it can be profoundly educational, even transformative.
Christine Hoff Kraemer, Eros and Touch from a Pagan
Perspective: Divided for Love’s Sake, Routledge, 2013
Writing from a perspective informed both by her academic background as a theologian and by her experience as a Pagan and a body worker, Kraemer draws on queer theory, philosophy, and Paganisms ancient and modern to outline an erotic theology of the body for modern esoteric spiritual practitioners. Don’t be put off by the volume’s slim stature or its explicitly academic approach to the subject: this thoughtful and immensely readable text laid the groundwork for a substantial portion of the work in this book, and is key reading for anyone interested in the topics discussed here.
Christine Hoff Kraemer and Yvonne Aburrow (editors),
Pagan Consent Culture, Asphodel Press, 2016
This collection of essays, interviews, and resources for discussing and actualizing cultural changes based in consent should be required reading for anyone whose spirituality falls within the range of Pagan, polytheist, and magical practice. It’s exactly the kind of serious book that people in these communities claim to want, and it’s exactly the kind of book on ethics, consent, sexuality, and philosophy that these communities need. People from other communities, spiritual or secular, will also find a great deal of value in these pages.
Tomas Prower, Queer Magic, Llewellyn, 2018
Prower’s book is a whirlwind survey of queer and trans spirituality throughout history and around the world. He introduces English-speaking readers to global traditions of LGBT+ magic from a variety of traditional cultures and communities and offers myths, rituals, and lessons to be learned from each culture in a deeply sensitive, sympathetic, and respectful way.
Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in
Modern Western Esotericism, University of California Press, 2006
Behold, that rarest of birds: an actual academic text about sex magic, written by an academic who engages with the Western esoteric tradition on its own terms. Urban’s history of sex, magic, and sex magic covers all the usual suspects (Paschal Beverly Randolph, Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, and so on), but his work engages the subject with far more serious attention than most of us are used to encountering from the mainstream world.
Katie West and Jasmine Elliott (editors),
Becoming Dangerous, Weiser, 2018
This anthology of “witchy femmes, queer conjurers, and magical rebels” isn’t a book on how to become a witch. Rather, it’s a book about what it means to be a witch, written by women and femmes for whom witchcraft is as much a part of their identity as their skin, their sexuality, and their gender. It’s an intensely, often uncomfortably personal work, and readers who identify as straight, cisgender, and/or white may find a lot of it challenging. The witchcraft of Becoming Dangerous is an unapologetically queer femme magic which exhorts us to live in the real world of the present, to embrace our own true natures and step into our own power: to become dangerous.
Podcasts
3 Pagans and a Cat, 3pagansandacat.com
Car, Gwyn, and Ode, the titular family of Pagans who create this podcast, bring disparate backgrounds and perspectives together discuss a variety of issues relevant to Pagans and polytheists in a warm, lively, and insightful way. Of particular interest for our purposes, they offer some in-depth, nuanced discussion and analysis of issues of gender and sexuality in relation to Pagan and polytheist praxis and current events.
Circle of Salt, circleofsaltpodcast.tumblr.com
Rune and Felix dish out all the salt you could possibly need or want in their podcast, which is equal parts serious occult conversation, incisive social commentary, and a bottomless well of snark. The targets of their cleansing, banishing sprays of salt have included gender, sexuality, heteronormativity, and poorly handled inclusivity in Pagan and magical communities.
Passion and Soul, passionandsoul.com
In this long-running podcast, sexuality educator and author Lee Harrington connects with sex magicians, erotic priestesses, BDSM practitioners, and other pioneers of spirituality and sexuality. Discussions range in topic from sacred sex and grappling with issues of faith to personal reflections on gender and practical suggestions for newbies to the world of kink. The material in this podcast touches on some sensitive subjects, and it’s emphatically not safe for work (or young-person ears), but it’s a worthy listen which offers some intimate and profound insights for folks willing to go deeper.