Recommended books and podcasts for new witches and tarot readers
Books
The Dabbler’s Guide to Witchcraft
This is my go-to recommendation for all beginner witches. It’s a wonderful introduction to the basics of witchcraft and gives you a great foundation for how to vet other sources you come across in your studies.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
This book does an amazing job of showing how different types of “knowing” that may seem at odds can weave together and compliment one another. Kimmerer tells us how she wove together her traditional training as a botanist and knowledge of plants that she learned a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation.
Sacred Actions by Dana O’Driscoll
If you want to learn how to combine sustainable living with Earth-based spirituality, this is the book for you! This is a book that will meet you where you’re at in your sustainability practice and give you a concrete plan for where to go next.
78 Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack
This one is a classic, but for good reason! Pollack goes more in-depth than almost any other book I’ve found on the imagery in and history of the Rider-Smith deck.
The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies. Taylor’s solution of radical self-love offers us a chance to heal. Learning to love yourself as you are is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself.
Podcasts
Placebo Magick
A podcast that examines magick, ritual, tarot all while remaining grounded in a science-based skeptical atheist worldview.
DruidCast
A podcast from the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, it’s a mix of music, poetry and artist and author interviews.
The Tarot Diagnosis
A podcast hosted by two therapists who love tarot that highlights the intersection of psychology, mental health, and tarot.
Oh No! Ross and Carrie
A great podcast to keep you grounded, and learn how to spot a woo scam! Ross and Carrie join religions, undergo alternative medical treatments, and hunt for ghost, goblins, demons, and deities and report back on what they find.
The Fat Feminist Witch
Witchcraft and spirituality from a modern, fat, feminist perspective.
Tara Brach
Tara shares a weekly guided meditation and talk that address the value of mindfulness meditation and self-compassion in relieving emotional suffering, serving spiritual awakening and bringing healing to our world.
On Being
On Being examines what it calls the, “animating questions at the center of human life: What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live?”