Data:
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Authors: Janet & Stewart Farrar
Title: Eight Sabbats for Witches
Publisher: Phoenix Publishing Inc.
           Portal Way
           PO Box 10
           Custer, WS 98240
           USA
Illustrations: Line illustrations by Stewart Farrar
               Photographs by Stewart Farrar and Ian David
Copyright: 1981
ISBN: 0-919345-26-3
Price: 14,95 USD for the 1988 hardcover edition I have.

Eight Sabbats for Witches (EIW) is a practical book. It gives some
background to each of the rituals, but the rituals themselves are the
stars of this book.

Contents:
=========
Acknowledgements
Introduction

THE FRAME
Opening the Ritual
The Great Rite
The Closing Ritual

THE SABBATS
Imbolg, 2nd February
Spring Equinox, 21st March
Bealtaine, 30th April
Midsummer, 22nd June
Lughnasadh, 31st July
Autumn Equinox, 21st September
Samhain, 31st October
Yule, 22nd December

BIRTH, MARRIAGE AND DEATH
Wiccaning
Handfasting
Requiem

Bibliography
Index

The authors:
============
Janet & Stewart Farrar are well-known Alexandrian/Gardnerian witches,
who have written several books, among them: What Witches do, The
Witches' Godess and The Witches' Way.

The illustrations:
==================
The illustrations are of varying quality. Every chapter is headed by a
line drawing by S. Farrar, and they're at least okay, but the 20
photographs of rituals in the middle of the book, could very well have
been omitted. Cheesy, is a word that comes to mind. 

The chapters:
=============
The introduction is a fleshy piece of text which talks about many
different subjects, including why they wrote the book, ethymology of
the word wicca, why they chose these names for the rituals, how a
coven is usually organised, and of course their sources of quotes and
inspiration. The authors clearly direct their book at an audience that
is already somewhat familiar and sympathetic with the Neopagan
culture.

The first chapter in the Frame section is about the opening of the
ritual. It gives a brief introduction, delienates necessary
preparations and then goes on to quote the full ritual including
chants, invocations etc. Here, as in most chapters, there are many
footnotes attributing the texts to their respective authors. I get the
impression that the Farrar's have gone to great pains to find out who
really was the author of some oft-disputed lines.

Next comes the Great Rite chapter. The Farrars explain what the Great
Rite is all about and manage to give some great examples of
double-speak at the same time. In my opinion this is a fine example of
NeoPagans confessing to the sacredness of sex, while being scared
witless by the topic itself.

Of course the last chapter in the Frame section is about the closing
of the ritual. This chapter is brief, less than three pages long.

For some reason the Farrars have chosen to start the section about
holliday rituals with Imbolg. All the holliday rituals chapters are on
the same form: introduction, preparations, ritual. Many of these
rituals float around on ftp-sites. Check out ftp.lysator.liu.se in
/pub/religion/pagan/Rituals/Hollidays/Vernal_equ for one example. I
don't know what the Farrars think about this. 

The last section is called Birth, Marriage and Death. It starts out
with a ritual for a small child (wiccaning), separate for girl and
boy, goes on to a handfasting and ends with a requiem. These chapters
also follow the form of the holliday chapters.

At the end of the book a bibliography and an index make a helpful
addition.

Personal view:
==============
So, what do I think? Not being a Wiccan, I still find many of the
texts beautiful, and could very well imagine using at least parts of
the rituals in my own practice. All of the rituals do however rely on
a group enacting them. For some of them you would need at least three
people to act them out. This makes the book less useful for solitary
witches.

I'm less than comfortable with some of the opinions the authors
apparently have, especially what regards sexuality and genders. They
rely heavily on Jungian psychology, which I personally don't like, and
there's a lot of stress on male-female polarity.

Conclusion
==========
All in all, if you're an Alexandrian or Gardnerian and part of a coven
this book is probably indispensible. If not, there are still some
interesting tidbits in it, which you can use to make up your own
ritual, but if male-female polarity isn't your cup of tea, you won't
find much of value here.

--Ceci (93-12-11)