Book Review: The Daughter of the Runes by Lindsay Badenoch (1988)

This novel, written by an archeologist for English Heritage, is quite simply the best single resource for understanding the ancient origins of Wiccecraeft, now commonly known as Witchcraft or Wicca. This singular book, in one fell swoop, demonstrates the importance of the Goddess, the importance and authority of Priestesses within the religion (if no longer outside of it), the importance of the Witches’ Runes (which in modern times for most Witches is for all practical purposes the Elder Futhark, although this is by no means a proscriptive list), the importance of herbs, stones, fire and incense, the importance of song and poetry, the importance of woodcarving and metalwork, and the importance of animals both as spiritual familiars, and as beings reverenced in animal sacrifice (i.e. for food). In modern Witchcraft, libations of animal blood are traditionally replaced with libations of ale, mead, or cider shared with the Gods from ritual drinking horns made from the horns of cattle. In lieu of animal sacrifice (as most Wiccans are not farmers or hunters as their ancestors were), some Wiccans have historically chosen to practice vegetarianism as an alternative. The end of the novel even illustrates the importance of the Book of Shadows, and that it be written in “her hand of write” as Raymond Buckland (1934-2017) advocated in Wicca for Life (2001). In a time when the Hammer of Thor (American Veterans Administration Emblem of Belief 55) and the Pentacle of Wicca (American Veterans Administration Emblem of Belief 37) are now adorning headstones, indicating the sincerity with which many Heathens/Pagans and Witches have practiced their faith in modern times, this sadly out-of-print book is perhaps the single greatest resource for explaining the heart of a living religion as it is presently reweaving itself in real-time. For further practical reading for the prospective Witch who enjoys The Daughter of the Runes, I (Beorccen) particularly recommend the following books by D.J. Conway (1939-2019): Moon Magick, Animal Magick, Falcon Feather & Valkyrie Sword, Crystal Enchantments (feel free to skip the Laying on of Stones though), and Magical Folkhealing. While our own coven’s ritual scripts are heavily based on the ritual scripts of Raymond Buckland’s The Tree and D.J. Conway’s Norse Magic, and while we have published earlier drafts of these scripts here on our blog to help educate curious others on the Wiccan religion, I have found in the scribing of our own coven’s actual two-volume book, that the scripts for the tradition we will pass down are not exactly, word for word, the same as the scripts needed for a public, educational, blog. We do not, for example, in manuscript, actually call our book “The Tree” as indicated in the initiation ritual featured on this blog three years ago this October, but we do appreciate Buckland’s poetry here, some of which appears to have been lost in translation. Instead, we simply call our coven book “the book”, although the second volume is, in fact, bound in green leather. While we thought at the time this touch on the blog might be helpful to other Witches, it is not a necessary appeal to authority within the privacy of a singular coven. Additionally, one discovers in the actual work of a scribe (as the nun Hildigyth discovers in The Daughter of the Runes), that handwriting a manuscript is an inspirational act of magic in-itself, quite apart from an easily editable webpage in cyberspace. While I am not a professionally published author myself, I do fancy myself a writer with integrity, and have found that D.J. Conway and Scott Cunningham (1956-1993) are the professionally published Wiccan authors whose thinking on the religion is most representative of my own. I am proud to continue to recommend their books, (Wicca and Living Wicca in the case of Scott Cunningham), so that future generations may continue to learn through these authors’ extensive research and obvious actual practice of the religion. I am just as proud to recommend The Daughter of the Runes by Lindsay Badenoch as a beautiful work of fiction that brings the ancient past so vividly to life.