To Ride A Silver Broomstick
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To Ride a Silver Broomstick: New Generation Witchcraft (Llewellyn, 1993) is the first book by Wiccan author Silver RavenWolf. Since its publication, it has become one of the most popular introductions to Wicca in the United States.
Silver wrote the book for what she calls the "New Generation of Witches": newcomers to the Craft (another term for Wicca or witchcraft) at a time when Wicca and other forms of Neopaganism were gaining visibility and respectability for the first time. In America, beginning in the 1990s many would-be Wiccans have become solitary practitioners instead of finding and joining a coven for training and initiation. These "solitaries" typically teach themselves by reading books on Wicca and the occult. To Ride a Silver Broomstick was one of the first books to cater specifically to this audience. Its most important predecessor was Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner.
To Ride a Silver Broomstick covers both the religious and practical apsects of witchcraft, but emphasizes the practical side of magic and spellcasting. Silver wrote the book based on her own experience as a solitary and is sympathetic to the needs and challenges of solitary practice. Instructions for ritual design, for instance, assume a single participant, not a pageant as was common in many older books written for coven practice. The book's approach is eclectic, drawing from many Wiccan and pagan traditions. It does not demand adherence to a particular tradition and set of deities.
