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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Hail! If you want a book on real witchcraft(and let us not forget that the word witch is Old English!), I suggest getting this book as soon as possible. Stephen does a superb job of exploring drycraeft(by the way, a leech is a witch that specialises in healing), or "natural magic". If you combine this book with Witchdom of the True by Edred Thorsson, Call of the Horned Piper by Nigel Jackson, and the Seid Sourcebook by James Chisolm you will have a very powerfull combination. I also suggest The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner(this isn't witchcraft but deals with ecstatic/trance inducing techniques which is used in witchcraft). For Frith and Kinfolk, Isenwulf Wodheart
Rating: 
Summary: Good on textual evidence, weak on discussion/analysis
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone whom wishes to do SERIOUS research into traditional witchcraft(after all, the word witch does come from the Anglo Saxon, or Old English language). This book is a HUGE compendium of herbals, "shamanic" healing, treelore, and all sorts of goodies....and it is %100 historical! All in all, Leechcraft is a MUST BUY for anyone whom wants to learn about REAL witchcraft.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting history
Review: I took a bit of a risk with this book, I specialise in complimentary therapies but tend to use the meridian & chakra systems, and occassionaly the four elements/humours. I am extremely interested in healing & its history, and payday came so I bought it! I have really enjoyed reading it, and discovering a bit more about my own country's healing traditions. It was also nice to see some source material (translation & original)in the book, rather than just hearing anothers opinion on nebulous evidence, thus allowing the reader to make their own observations. As a practicing witch I also found the material on healers as witches & shamans fascinating, and also the chapters on magic, charms & tree lore (an interesting adjunct to my knowledge on Ogham). Another appealing feature of this book is the writing style which is clear, rather than being filled out with pretentious phrases & outmoded words, a rarity in a historical book! Anyone who is really interested in this countrys healing traditions and their sources, witchcraft or just early English history in general could do a lot worse than buying this book.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting history
Review: I took a bit of a risk with this book, I specialise in complimentary therapies but tend to use the meridian & chakra systems, and occassionaly the four elements/humours. I am extremely interested in healing & its history, and payday came so I bought it! I have really enjoyed reading it, and discovering a bit more about my own country's healing traditions. It was also nice to see some source material (translation & original)in the book, rather than just hearing anothers opinion on nebulous evidence, thus allowing the reader to make their own observations. As a practicing witch I also found the material on healers as witches & shamans fascinating, and also the chapters on magic, charms & tree lore (an interesting adjunct to my knowledge on Ogham). Another appealing feature of this book is the writing style which is clear, rather than being filled out with pretentious phrases & outmoded words, a rarity in a historical book! Anyone who is really interested in this countrys healing traditions and their sources, witchcraft or just early English history in general could do a lot worse than buying this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Ignore the Dumezilian prattle, and you've got a winner.
Review: Pollington does two things that make me very happy. He cites his sources, and he tells you what assumptions he is making. So, it is easy to ignore him when he goes off on Dumizilian-style tripartate healing theory (which is utter bunk).The rest of the book is very useful. He brings together a lot of material that is extremely difficult to track down. His translations are reasonable and accurate, if not inspired. It is well organized, and he gives a lot of context from Latin and Greek sources. Pollington isn't New Age. This isn't some Llewellyn "how to be an authentic Anglo-Saxon witch" fantasy. This is serious scholarship. However, it is readable enough to be of use to most Anglo-Saxon reconstructionists, with enough meat to satisfy a true scholar.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the Dumezilian prattle, and you've got a winner.
Review: Pollington does two things that make me very happy. He cites his sources, and he tells you what assumptions he is making. So, it is easy to ignore him when he goes off on Dumizilian-style tripartate healing theory (which is utter bunk). The rest of the book is very useful. He brings together a lot of material that is extremely difficult to track down. His translations are reasonable and accurate, if not inspired. It is well organized, and he gives a lot of context from Latin and Greek sources. Pollington isn't New Age. This isn't some Llewellyn "how to be an authentic Anglo-Saxon witch" fantasy. This is serious scholarship. However, it is readable enough to be of use to most Anglo-Saxon reconstructionists, with enough meat to satisfy a true scholar.
Rating:
Summary: Good on textual evidence, weak on discussion/analysis
Review: This is a history of Anglo-Saxon medicine and medical knowledge. In so far that that knowledge of healing herbs and techniques was considered quasi-magical in Anglo-Saxon times rather than being understood as an applied science or as a kind of philosophy, I suppose there is some connection to the history of witchcraft as the reviewer below suggests. And, in fact, Pollington does touch on the subject of pre-Christian Germanic religion and the role of healers in it (which can be considered witchcraft, if one wants to use that term broadly). Still, on the whole, this is really a book about the history of science and medicine, and readers should expect that *that* is the primary focus. The basic organization of the book is cyclopaedic. It is not so much a survey of Anglo-Saxon healing knowledge or techniques, or a scholarly analysis thereof, as a catalog of sources that provide information on Anglo-Saxon healing knowledge. Several of these works are actually reproduced in full, in both Old English and modern English, while others merely have detailed quoted excerpts. There is little to no commentary on the contents of these works-- they are simply presented for the reader to examine. What little analysis/discussion there is takes place in the opening chapter, which addresses questions of knowledge sources (e.g. how much Anglo-Saxon healing knowledge came from classical sources, how much from biblical/Christian sources, and how much from native folk medicine traditions). Pollington argues for the existence of a thriving pre-Christian, pre-classical Germanic folk medical tradition and seeks to describe its nature and function (which is cast largely in terms of general 'shamanic' functions and techniques). Though interesting, and certainly plausible, the fact of the matter is that there just isn't enough evidence out there to either make or refute this claim-- and it has to be taken as a plausible, but unverifiable, speculative idea. Perhaps Pollington could have added a little more weight to this claim by subjecting some of the texts he presents to analysis in way that supplies evidence for this claim (i.e. to show that some texts describe techniques that weren't part of classical/Christian medical lore-- but alas, he really doesn't give that here. When all's said and done, this is still a worthy book on a subject about which little has been written. Given that the two other major studies of the subject-- Oswald Cockayne's "Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England" (1864) and Henry S. Wellcome's "Anglo-Saxon Leechcraft" (1912)are long, long out of print, this contitutes the best available published source on the subject of Anglo Saxon medical knowledge-- and provides translations of important Anglo-Saxon medical texts that might otherwise be unavailable to readers without access to a good university library. The definitive work on Anglo-Saxon medicine is yet to be written-- if indeed it is writable at all-- butseems likely that Pollington's book will be the best one around for quite some time.
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