Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings.   For today’s blog post, I am sharing my review of The Silver Wheel: Women’s Myths and Mysteries in the Celtic Tradition by Marguerite Elsbeth and Kenneth Johnson!   

Okay, so I will be very honest in this review, as I always am.   Firstly, I did not like this book or enjoy reading it, and I was even more disappointed because the actual concept was really good.   I gave the book only two stars (and it barely got two stars) on Goodreads, which is very low for me.   I mostly give four and five stars, partially due to knowing my taste in books and partially because I appreciate all of the effort it takes to get published.    Now, that being said, I almost did not finish this book, and I very rarely DNF books, but there were parts of this book that were awfully difficult to get through.

So, clearly, this was not the book for me.   You may wonder why I would even read it?   Well, the answer to that is that I found this book rather randomly, and it is a book on Divine Feminine Archetypes from a Celtic Perspective.   This is a subject that is of great interest to me, and one that factors deeply into not only my personal practice, but also my work as a Priestess.   I was actually quite delighted to have found a book such as this one, given that there are not enough archetype books written from a Celtic perspective.   I was also surprised that I had never heard of the book before, as it was published in the 1990s.    Before I chose to read the book, I did see some Goodreads reviews stating that it showcased a lot of old and outmoded views on Paganism, Goddess Work, and the like.   That did not deter me, as this is pretty common for Pagan and Magickal books written three decades ago; ideals change over time, after all.   There is a reason that the best Pagan and Magickal books stand the test of time, while others do not.     

So, when I began reading the book, I had middling expectations, thinking that I would find interesting parts while not jiving with some of the more dated aspects.    Well, I was in for a rude awakening.   The book being dated is not the part that got to me; it was how incredibly mean-spirited the tone was!   Beyond the mean-spirited and judgmental tone, there was also the discussion of hot-button issues in a quite sensational way.   I will give two examples that seemed to be discussed here, just to be extreme, and did not fit into a book on archetypes.   Firstly, the use of True Crime cases, in particular the discussion of the Lorena Bobbitt case (which was a recent and highly publicized case at the time of the book’s publication).   This was done in poor taste, and I did not see the point of including this, other than to be sensational.   The second example of an instance of discussing a hot-button issue, the one that truly upset me, was the discussion of female genital mutilation.   That one really got to me, as there was no preamble to working this topic into the book; it was jarringly inserted, seemingly for shock value!   Now, I want to be clear, I think that we should read and discuss hot-button issues and things that make us uncomfortable; otherwise, how would we raise awareness?   Yet, there are ways to do these topics justice, and inserting them into an archetype book, seemingly only to shock the reader, is not the way, especially when the topics are not discussed with any nuance!   Both of the hot-button topics I just referenced being discussed in this book were subjects I was familiar with, having researched both of them when I was in college, as I have an Associate’s Degree in Psychology.   This is probably why I was so put off by the way these things were handled, because I had already read academic works that treated the subjects with respect.

Now that I have covered the issue with these topics that seemed to have no real place in the book, I want to acknowledge the way psychology is discussed.   You cannot really write an archetype book without touching on psychology, given that most books on archetypes have a basis in Jungian Psychology.   That being said, the way psychology and mental health were discussed in this book was severely lacking.   I was not surprised, as some of this can be chalked up to the dated nature of the text.   However, I did not think specific personality disorders and eating disorders needed to be brought up in the way that they were.   It was another instance of wondering why this is being brought up in an archetype book.   Sure, discuss the Collective Unconscious and the Shadow, as those topics apply to the subject of the book, but personality and eating disorders, not so much.   Beyond that, it truly seemed that the authors were actively blaming a connection to certain archetypes on why you would develop an eating disorder, or why you may be involved in a True Crime case.   I wish I were kidding about that, but I am not!

That leads into the mean-spirited nature of the text, which I mentioned above.   It seems that the authors believed that certain archetypes were better than others, and if you did not work to hone those archetypal energies in your life, bad things would happen!   Now, I will admit that this was offensive to me because one of the archetypes there was disdain for is the Lover, which is the primary archetype present in my own personality.   However, it went beyond the fact that I had a connection to an archetype they disliked.   The language used to discuss the negative aspects of the archetype was vile.   “At her worst, she is an immature, clinging, and emotionally dependent slut.”   That is a direct quote!   Look, again, I know this book is dated, but I think there is no need to discuss an archetype that is naturally active in the personalities of many people this way.   Quotes like that are why I almost DNFed the book several times.

However, I powered through, and I am glad that I did, as I think books like this are important to discuss.   We need to acknowledge that this is not okay and explain why others should not read a book.   Now, you may be wondering, how on earth did I even give this book two stars?   I have to admit that, through the worst of the mean-spirited energy, I thought it was a half-star, or maybe one star read, but it ended up being just barely two stars.   The two stars come down to the concept being very good, the stories chosen for the book being well-suited for Celtic Archetype discussion, the book being interestingly formatted, and the artwork within the book being nice.   This book is a perfect example of a great concept done terribly wrong!   All of that being said, the reason I was able to power through and finish the book is that it gets a bit less mean-spirited as it goes on, as the discussion turns to the archetypes the authors like.   Here is the thing about archetypes: there are no good or bad archetypes, but there are positive and negative aspects to all archetypal energies.    That is not clearly communicated for most of this book, and it clearly plays favorites and demonizes other archetypes.   Oh, and it is quite clear that this book is written by two authors, as the change in tone when it went from incredibly mean-spirited to more academically-based information almost gave me whiplash.   I truly think one of the authors was very mean-spirited, while the other was not, hence the uneven tone!    

At the end of the day, I think that when an author writes about archetypes, it should be done in a more nuanced way, discussing all aspects of this archetype, the good and the bad parts, when it is active in a person’s personality.   Honestly, I would say skip this book and just read Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen, as that book is incredible and very nuanced!   I wish so deeply that this book were better, as the concept is great.   I would love to see the concept of Divine Feminine Archetypes from a Celtic perspective be done well one day, but this is NOT IT!

I hope you have found some interest in this very honest, if negative, review of The Silver Wheel: Women’s Myths & Mysteries in the Celtic Tradition.   Have you read this book?    Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! 

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the book cover.   I found the art on https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/694187.The_Silver_Wheel.            

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Further Reading

• Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen