4 out of 5 stars
Thea Sabin, Wicca for Beginners
I'm not sure a book on Wicca has ever been given a more appropriate title. Wicca for Beginners delivers exactly what it promises: truly introductory material for those just beginning to investigate Wicca. It makes no presumptions about what the reader knows, and it doesn't get ahead of itself.
It's meant to be more informative than instructive, which is an approach sorely lacking in available materials today. While there are various basic exercises to assist in understanding, Sabin is far more interested in explaining basic premises and beliefs - the kind of information that will be foundational for Wiccan students as they move on to other books and more complex understandings of Wicca.
Sabin also generally avoids specific ritual. She sometimes gives some examples of phrasings, and she gives some basic outlines for practices, but she steers clear from concrete instructions telling you how many times to turn around or what incense you have to burn. Those details can all come later. Right now a reader needs to understand the bare basics, and this book is superb in delivering it.
By focusing on very rudimentary beliefs, I hope that Sabin's book is also useful for people still trying to figure out if Wicca is for them. If these beliefs simply don't make sense to a reader, that should be taken a very strong hint that Wicca is perhaps not the religion for them. That will certainly spare someone the wasted effort of memorizing a bunch of rituals only to find finally find out that the rituals are based on ideas he or she doesn't agree with or are addressed to beings to whom they have no relationship.
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Why only 4 stars?