Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, beautiful and opinionated
Review: As with so many other reviewers, this is the book that started me out in the Craft. The rituals and exercises presented gave me a solid basis for developing my own practice, and five years later much of the basic meditation and ritual material I use comes from Starhawk. Still, I must agree with many of the more negative reviews that characterize this book as opinionated, sexist and completely political. Starhawk had an agenda in writing it, and the agenda was not to simply present Wicca to the world. Her feminist philosophy is founded in a version of history that was weak in 1979, and is just plain wrong in 2000. She ties religion to politics which is something that I am firmly against, but I can say this- she's honest about it. This book is an essential text of Wicca, any way you cut it. You will undoubtedly (and hopefully) disagree with some of it, but the author's views are clearly stated, and the exercises and ritual material is not "tainted" by political sentiment. Read the book as the record of an era, and pick and choose what parts to incorporate into your own practice.
Rating:
Summary: As a beginner.....
Review: I found Starhawk's "The Spiral Dance" an excellent intro to Goddess worship and the feminist aspects of the craft. The book is also political hence the frequent use of the term "Goddess movement" throughout. Starhawk shows us how, in this 20th anniversary edition, feminism, Wicca and personal growth have been so intricately intwined over the past several decades. The book is also Starhawk's personal look back over her life as a Wiccan and her devotion, sense of pride and love for the craft really show through.
I disagree with some who feel the book is female oriented to the point of male bashing. Starhawk makes it clear from the beginning that the "Spiral Dance" is specifically about Goddess worship, but that both God and Goddess are worshipped in the craft. She reminds us of this frequently. She makes it clear that both the God and Goddess have their central place in Wicca. Each are even given a chapter. The book is a phenomenal intro because it starts out by explaining just what witchcraft is, the importance of Goddess worship, and contains beginner's exercises that may be used alone and/or within a coven. It shows one how to create sacred space, contains holiday readings and rituals, beginner's spells and magic and a discussion (with exercises) of energy raising and trance states, among other topics. Those more advanced in the craft who have developed their own rituals, spells, and holiday celebrations may find this book too elementary, but still may enjoy reading about how Wicca and feminism have been interlinked over the past few decades. From this aspect, I think the book is an essential part of the very recent history of the craft.
Rating: 
Summary: a book close to my heart
Review: i met 'the spiral dance' when it was already in it's 10 year edition. i was in my late 20's and reeling from my 1st experience of major loss in my life (deaths of my mother and grandmother, 1st major, bad break-up, etc.) starhawk spoke straight to my mystical soul and the little girl in my heart who'd never stopped whispering to faeries and dancing with the falling leaves. i'd begun a spiritual journey a couple of years prior with quakerism (the religion of my mother's side of the family), and had quickly become drawn to native american spirituality, too, for it's mirror of my own inherent sense of Spirit within Nature. 'the spiral dance' marked the beginning of my understanding that my own, celtic/european ancestors, worshipped the Divine through the Earth, also. and perhaps even more significantly for me at the time, starhawk was the 1st to really show me that my own image - the female form of human, that is - was ALSO the image of the Divine, along with the male. i cannot truly convey the power of the healing this understanding alone brought to me: however, it allowed me to begin feeling unashamed and equal in worth to my male friends and counterparts - for the 1st time in my life. for this i thank starhawk with all of my heart. it's funny to me how so many people seem to see starhawk's work as anti-men, or even just harshly feminist. i've never, ever responded to it that way. certainly she is a feminist, as am i. however, for me, she is a loving, inclusive teacher who's about supporting the (in recent centuries, anyway) here-to-fore sorely unsupported feminine soul. ten years ago, i had the good fortune to study with starhawk (and many other amazing teachers) at a wonderful school in oakland where she's on the faculty. she showed no signs then of resentment towards men, either. and believe me, i looked. it was an important thing to me then, that a teacher be truly balanced and loving towards all - not just women, not just men. in fact, many men are seemingly quite happily involved with the 'reclaiming collective', an umbrella organization of wiccan groups which starhawk and friends created in the bay area. in my last semester of studies, the class starhawk taught had our final meeting at the townhouse she shares w/her husband and several housemates. i recall being viscerally struck by a burst of love when she opened the door to let in myself and the classmates i'd traveled with. i wasn't expecting it. i don't know if she'd cast a spell of love and healing about the premises, or if the accrued energy of the place just burst its seems onto us; either way, i thank starhawk for the beauty of her writing and the healing she's enabled in my (and i believe many others') lives. and i celebrate this 20th anniversary edition of 'the spiral dance'.
Rating:
Summary: Recommended, with some reservations
Review: As many have mentioned before me, Starhawk's "The Spiral Dance" has been one of the great influence on the modern Craft. In that, it has both its strengths and weaknesses.
One of its strengths is a comprehensive, if at times dense, writing style. I happen to enjoy Starhawk's writings, but I can understand why some find her less than clear. Her meditations and exercises are absolutely wonderful, and although most are written with groups in mind many can be adapted for solitary practice. This book definitely is eco-feminist, no bones about it; however, in the endnotes for the 10th and 20th anniversary editions she does expand and correct some of the excesses of the original work.
Now the weaknesses. This is a book written primarily for group use. If you are a Solitary (as I am), prepare to do some mental editing to make it more useful to your practice. Also, the history, as has been mentioned before, is more poetic than factual -- which at times Starhawk seems to stress as "gospel" (no pun intended). The book does have a particularly feminist orientation; as a male, it did take me a bit to get used to (the consistent use of the female pronoun as neutral I understand as empowering, but in fairness perhaps a 3:1 ratio of female to male pronouns would have been more fair).
In all, this is a good read with many useful ideas and much information. I would *not* recommend it to an absolute newbie, but would use it in a Witchcraft 102 course.
Blessed Be!
Rating: 
Summary: So positive an influence, so weak and troubling, too.
Review: The Spiral Dance is not an easy book for me to evaluate. Or to live with either. Add the pluses and minuses together, and the two extremes of what's good and what I find troubling pretty much cancel each other out. First the pluses. Nobody nowhere can *ever* measure just how influential this book has been on the modern neopagan movement. I would guess that just about every pagan I know, myself included, has a copy on the shelf. I'd also venture to guess that it's also been responsible for more women starting up their own covens than any other single book in the United States. (Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner may be the most popular beginner's book these days, but Spiral Dance is still likely to be the #1 coven source book around.) The hugely important thing that Starhawk did was to take some of the basic ideas of modern Witchcraft as it was being exported from Britain to the United States and to marry those concepts with the developing feminist/earth-first/spiritual sensibilities that were active out on the West Coast in the early to mid 70's. Put the two together and in a blaze of white light you've given birth to the Goddess Movement. The Goddess movement, its core ideas and sensiblities, expanded the vocabulary of American Witches and allowed those Witches to continue to develop their own spiritual forms independently from the traditional Garnderian structures. Much of this was going on anyway, (check out the 13 Principles of Wiccan Beliefs, as promulgated by the Council of American Witches in 1974) but the Spiral Dance gave it an immediately accessible shape. However, in that innovation itself lies some of the problems I have with Starhawk's work. Simply put, the Goddess Movement is not the same thing as Witchcraft or Wicca. The Goddess Movement is feminism turned into a religion, and its purpose is essentially political. This is not to say that this makes Goddess spirituality somehow illegitimate. It just means that it doesn't have the same purposes, meaning or heritage as Witchcraft, and it shouldn't pretend to be the same thing. For example, I for one find it disturbing that Starhawk herself admits that she and her associates were *teaching* witchcraft courses at the local university long before they'd ever even met a coven-trained witch. Let me say something here before I go on, because for a lot of people reading this I'm sure I'm opening up a topic that's already caused hundreds upon hundreds of flame wars and arguements. I am emphatically *not* saying that the only legitimate witch is a traditional coven-trained witch. The Wicca that I practice myself is very much in the eclectic, find-what-works-and-make-up-what-you-don't-borrow mode. The thing that bothers me is that in the Spiral Dance, Starhawk is presenting her Goddess-centered, eco-feminist brand of Witchcraft (a perfectly fine thing in itself) as if it were Witchcraft itself, a revival of some millenia-old universal matriarchal belief system. Frankly, she puts a lot of claims forth in the Spiral Dance as if they were Facts and Truth, when they're really just Opinions and Stories. I have no problem with making things up. I absolutely agree with the value of Myth. I just ask that folks admit it when they invent their stories, instead of asserting that they're revealing ancient human wisdom. The other problem I have with The Spiral Dance is that despite all her claims to the contrary, Starhawk is definitely a female chauvanist. For all her talk of valuing men and women equally, I firmly believe that in her heart of hearts, coming through between the lines in almost every chapter, Starhawk really does believe that men are inferior. I don't believe that she either understands or trusts men, and all throughout the Spiral Dance I could feel her unspoken premise that Goddess-worship and Witchcraft are the province of women. She does not see men and women as equal partners, or does so only when men essentially begin acting like women. Starhawk may not be as openly seperatist as some writers (check out Z. Budapest's assertion that Witchcraft is "wombyn's religion") but I got a very clear sense that she's really only speaking for folks who were born with a uterus. So there you have it. An absolute cornerstone of the modern neopagan movement, an immeasurably liberating source-book for thousands upon thousands of women, beloved by mulitudes. And also very weak in scholarship, over-reaching in its claims, and quite off-putting in parts for this male witch. You buys your ticket, you takes your chance. Peace all!
Rating:
Summary: Once Upon A Matriarchy
Review: The troublesome problems that arise when attributing gender to deities hang perilously over Starhawk's often admirable The Spiral Dance (1979). But if "the patriarchy" erroneously or prejudicially attributed the male gender to the concept of deity, has Starhawk accurately corrected the problem by simply taking the opposite position and replacing the concept of "God" with that of "Goddess"? Unfortunately, the question of spontaneous psychological and anthropomorphic projection onto the concept of deity is never addressed, and appears never to have been considered at length by the author. Whether immanent force or transcendent reality or both, the simple truth is that an ultimate deity is unlikely to be gender specific at all. Thus, The Spiral Dance, despite its best intentions, often seems oblivious to its own tone of unhealthy polarity, a tone that suffuses the book in both large and small ways (for example, sentences consistently read "women and men" instead of the more common "men and women"). Starhawk is quick to point out that her "Goddess" and women-centered religion are not oppressive to men in any way, regardless of her repeated and somewhat sly suggestions about female superiority, which she doesn't seem to realize are uncomfortably similar to the historical "patriarchal" position she decries (fellow feminist Camille Paglia has argued that women are the superior sex in a far more convincing, objective, and fact-based manner). The author's religion does recognize a male deity, but, not surprisingly, he is subordinate to and subsumed into the all-encompassing female principal that the "Goddess" represents. Readers may get the sense that Starhawk, blissfully locked into her own womanhood, simply can't see very far beyond her own gender, and really doesn't want to. Early in the work, Starhawk states that "Witchcraft has always been a religion of poetry, not theory." It is also, apparently, not a religion based very much on fact, as Starhawk's "religion of poetry," as outlined and historically defined, is based around a loose mishmash of unproven, discredited, or purely erroneous anthropological, archeological, and historical theories (including those of Margaret Murray and Marija Gimbutas). The author refers to the academic scholarship that has eroded much of the witchcraft mythology as "blatantly biased and inaccurate," when in fact the opposite is true. It is Starhawk who attempts to support her cause by referring dramatically what she feels are its historical linchpins while she simultaneously denies the untidy complications of history as largely irrelevant. She shrewdly defends her approach by stating, "Is Buddhism invalid because we cannot find archeological evidence of Buddha's existence? Are Christ's teachings unimportant if we cannot find his birth certificate or death warrant?" Rather bravely, she also asserts, "the truth of our experience is valid whether it has roots thousands of years old or thirty minutes old...there is a mythic truth whose proof is shown not through references and footnotes but in the way it engages strong emotions, mobilizes deep life energies, and gives us a sense of history, purpose, and place in the world." Needless to say, The Spiral Dance falters whenever the book suggests historical precedents, justifications, and traditions for the beliefs it promotes. As with all systems predicated largely upon belief, the question remains: how potentially dangerous and misguided are the beliefs espoused? Are members of witchcraft covens, particularly women, likely to be wiser, saner, and more capable of personal authority and empowerment if they accept Starhawk's interpretation of the period of the European witchcraft persecutions (here referred to as "the Burning Times")? Starhawk writes that "an estimated nine million Witches," were executed, and "eighty percent were women, including children and young girls," but admits in her notes for the 10th anniversary edition that "actually, estimates range between a low of one hundred thousand and this figure [nine million], which is probably high. The truth, clearly, is that nobody knows exactly how many people died in the persecutions." Undeniably and unavoidably, all organized religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have actively negative aspects, and have historically. But readers may want to refer to J. S. La Fontaine's Speak Of The Devil (1998) and The Abduction Enigma (1999) by Kevin Randle, Russ Estes, and William P. Cone, for other perspectives on the dangers of irresponsibly indoctrinating potentially naïve, vulnerable, and needy people with myth-based rather than fact-based ideas and theories, particularly those that imply special status, persecution, or hidden but present threats in one's immediate surroundings. The Spiral Dance also promotes a heady political activism and what occasionally sounds very much like "compulsive compassion"; when Starhawk proudly announces that decisions within her coven and others are made by "reaching consensus," the shadows of Freud, Adler, and Camille Paglia's "Big Udder" may spontaneously interject themsleves into the minds of more informed and politically savvy readers. In fact, throughout her introductions, Starhawk sporadically adopts both a tone and a voice that sounds suspiciously like a liberal Methodist with radical pretensions. The Spiral Dance also has much to commend it, including its promotion of "life as a thing of wonder" and "love of life in all its forms" as its basic ethic. "The price of freedom," the book rightly says, is "discipline and responsibility." Groundless or undue guilt and denial are discouraged ("The craft does not foster guilt, the stern, admonishing, self - hating inner voice that cripples action. Instead, it demands responsibility."), and a sense of honor and self - respect are seen as essential, healthy and positive. Sexuality "as a direct expression of the life force," is considered "numinous and sacred." Strict hierarchies are discouraged or eliminated, and men are encouraged to know and develop themselves as completely and inclusively as possible. Nature is cherished for both its beauty and its bounty. Starhawk would have been better off promoting the included information as inspired by rather than descending from the various matriarchal and witch "traditions" and mythologies she names. The book's extended exercises on creating sacred spaces, trance, magical symbols, invocations, and rituals will be extremely helpful to anyone approaching this particular brand of witchcraft for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book for Beginners
Review: This book serves two great purposes. It is one of the first major books on Wicca when it exploded into public consciousness, combining the mystical with a lived political ethic. It is also a primer for beginners providing two decades worth of evolution of thought by Starhawk. I enjoyed every edition and Starhawk's willingness to share how she has grown and changed her understanding (and history). Excellent book!
Rating: 
Summary: Divergence by a feminist Jewish woman.
Review: I first read the original edition many years ago when I was just discovering Wicca and it was all the rage. Starhawk's Spiral Dance inspired a huge number of young women to become Wiccan but with a price. Wicca is a religion of harmony and balance between God and Goddess, it is not a "Goddess religion." Nor is there a real place in Wicca for feminist men-bashing and separatist misandry. For two decades many people believed that Wicca was a "women's spirituality" rather than a balanced and harmonious religion for everyone. What was gained by the beautiful writing and poetic mysticism is lost in the divisiveness and misdirection. The original edition of Spiral Dance wasn't as polarized and hateful to men as later works by Starhawk or the more recent revisions of the Dance. If one can get past her misandry she has a lot of creative vision. It isn't another spell book, and that part is good. But in the end she has never given up being Jewish.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Put the Book Down
Review: I've never read the "Spiral Dance" by Starhawk, but hearing of her work, I had to buy the 20th Anniversary Edition. I learned so much by reading this book. Some things I had been wondering about were answered. New ways and things were taught to me. I loved the introduction....the 20th year version, then the 10th, then the original writing begins. At the end of the book, Starhawk writes about differences now in the 10th year and the 20th year. A great read...Starhawk is a wonderful author
Rating: 
Summary: Spiral Dance
Review: The major problem with this work is its questionable authenticity when placed against scholarly requirements for a work of religion. It would be one point if the author only made rfictive or mythical claims, but instead Starhawk offers a very doubtful 'history' (and I do speak loosely hear) of neo-pagan belief. This is problematic in that the author never cites her material and offers no real credible evidence or sources. It would be exceptable to those who are only in the mode of reading myth, but this work is far from credible in terms of history. Now to magic. It is truly amazing that this system seems to be superficicial at best, yet borrows liberally from the Rosicrucians (a sect set forth to find the deeper symbolic science). As for pagan origins, the fact of the matter is there is no real way of knowing what the entirity, or even a small fraction, of the religious systems of pre-Christian Europe were. In addition, the Dyonisian rites, and much of the Chaldeic and Memphite roots that some of this system displays clearly come from the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, or from the speculative humanists such as Ficino, and as such are hermetic in the orgin. If they are hermetic in origin, they are by definition not ancient, and surely NOT PAGAN. It is wholly the choice of those to adhere to any religious belief that they see fit. However, be aware to look a bit deeper, because blind faith is the precept of the blind. As with origin myths, this work is almost entirely unbeleivable on several levels.
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