While I wanted to like this, it didn't really work for me. I am relatively new to yoga and there wasn't enough illustrations to easily utilize some of the stuff in this book. I was also disappointed on how much Crowley and his writings on yoga were discussed in this. This book just wasn't a good book for me and I don't think it will be good for most beginners either.

I really, really wanted to love this book. I adore yoga and love witchcraft. I thought the combination would be a dream. In the end it wasn't a well-balanced book...which ideally a book on yoga should be (pun intended).

This is a great book. I think that it made a lot esoteric principles of yoga more accessible. It also provided poses and meditations that can be useful to beginners and more advanced practitioners.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I liked this book a lot. I thought it was pretty easy to follow, and I learned some different types of Magickal terms.

I have to confess right off the bat that I dislike yoga for exercise. I thought I would love it, since I do like to exercise (occasionally). But, I am also pretty stubborn. So in my quest to figure out how to become better at this I do a lot of study and try to immerse myself into yoga culture. Blending yoga with witchcraft seems like a no brainer since they are both considered new age and rare spiritual practices. This is the first yoga/witchcraft book I have ever seen or read thou. Why aren’t more witches talking about this?

The author goes deep into the fundamentals of yoga and witchcraft. There was a lot of technical information about the origins of both and the basic beliefs. I think depending of which side of witchcraft you are on, you’ll find either too much or not enough information. The author sites all the sources so it seems well researched. It may be due to the fact that it was so well researched that sucked the “fun” out of reading this book. I couldn’t tell if the author was just going to test me on the information or just trying to cover all the bases.

I know chakras and yoga go hand in hand so it makes sense that there is an entire chapter on chakras. This chapters seemed for informational purposes only and had zero sequences or poses for yoga. This seemed really curious to me, but if you are looking into why witches might ascribe chakras into their belief system, then this chapter makes sense.

What I did like about this book was that he found some sequences that can help with psychic development and spell work. For me this was really the meat and potatoes portion of the book and I plan on trying some of these sequences out as soon as possible.

Trying to connect yoga to different aspects of a magical practice - which can be a great thing for those who do both. It is more informational.

Magick from the Mat – Casey Giovinco
I got this book as an advanced copy from NetGalley and Llewellyn, in exchange for an honest review.

Magick from the mat by Casey Giovinco is an upcoming book that integrates witchcraft with yoga. It’s quite succesful in doing so and a generally enjoyable read.


MAGIC from the MAT
Rating
💍️💍️💍️💍️
Four Rings To Rule Them All

What I liked about the book
Witches need to take care of the physical body is because it directly impacts the success of a witch’s ability to raise and manipulate energy. The physical body isn’t just a temple for witches. It is actually a magickal tool, like the athame, the wand, or the cauldron.

Casey Giovinco (2021:27)
Kind of weird that something like this book did not exist before, given that the witchy community has happily co-opted chakra theory and some other, often tantric, practices to enhance the magic. Looking at possible other books on the market, I only find Yoga for Witches by Sarah Robinson, but that book is mostly geared at women, and therefore not of potentially great interest to me.

In contrast, Casey Giovinco, who readers may know from the Gala (gay) tradition of witchcraft, his book Garbed in Green (which I would rate Three Rings To Rule Them All), his youtube channel, or the fun “sexy hexe” mailinglist, provides an intro to yoga geared to all genders of witches. The audience is also presumed to be at a beginner level in terms of yoga skills, so that is good as well.

There is a substantial (soft) intro to yoga as seen from the Eastern perspective, with *a lot* of terminology that could be perceived as too much upon first encounter, but which can actually act as jumping boards for the reader if they wish to explore more.

On the other hand, some basic fundaments of contemporary Western witchcraft are also touched on, such as the theory of the 4 elements (+ ether), and ways yoga postures may help with getting to know them.

For instance, for water 🜄 we get the following exercise:

1. Sit with your legs out in front of you. Your knees can be slightly bent or not—whatever is comfortable for your body. Your spine should be straight and your shoulders pulled down away from your ears. This is often called staff pose.

2. Gently round the back and roll forward very, very slowly, imagining that your upper body is like the ripples on the surface of the lake. As you exhale, roll your chest and chin down toward your legs. In yin yoga, this pose is called caterpillar.

3. On the inhale, gently and slowly reverse the motion, gradually rolling your upper body back up into staff pose. Take the full length of the inhale to come back to the starting position before repeating the rounding motion again on the next exhale.

4. Repeat the process of ebb and flow in line with your breath as you visualize yourself becoming the very water within your imaginary lake.

Giovinco (2021:66)

What I like about this exercise is how you are gently introduced to two poses: staff pose and caterpillar pose. I can readily beginner and more advanced witches both trying to incorporate elemental feelings and using these yoga āsanas as a tool may be very effective for some.

And you get more of this type of connecting — yoga meaning ‘union’, so pun intended — in relation to the development of psychic senses (chapter 8), the Wiccan Goddess and God (chapter 9), the sabbats (chapter 10), and some specific purposes (chapter 11). I have tried some of these poses (at beginner level) and I can see the appeal and possible integration into my practice.

So all in all, quite rich in practical information. It didn’t hurt that the foreword was written by the fabulous Thorn Mooney, but did it live up to that hype? Let’s discover what I didn’t like.

What I didn’t like about the book

There are also quite a few things I didn’t like about the book. For starters, it is beyond me why a book on yoga would not include more figures of the sequences. Let’s take the water yoga exercise as an example. This is just purely based on a verbal description, and one that is not really marked as “exercise” in the book. But since this is about yoga and correct posture, just a few diagrams of the positions would have been extremely beneficial.

Related, while there is an appendix of base poses, there is no interlinking between, e.g., staff pose and caterpillar pose, for ease of reference. I don’t know if that is Giovinco dropping the ball or the publisher, but it’s not very reader-oriented.

There are some chapters that could have been left out or greatly reduced, like the chapter on chakras (no yoga postures), and even the ones on meditation or astral travel are kind of superfluous. Like, is this a book about yoga or is this just another Psychic Witch?

There’s also some questionable references. For instance, I think it’s time we let The Kybalion return to the nebulous origins of New Thought it came from.

Continuing, some nitpicks: if you’re going to sling all these Sanskrit terms at the reader, make sure you’re using a good transcription system and not the cheap diacriticless mess that occurs in all other yoga books (or make up for it in the glossary). Also, I kinda hate the spelling of magick with a k. That was good for the Cate Tiernan series but I think we’re discerning enough to know this book isn’t about teaching how to pull a rabbit out of your yoga mat.

Finally, in my advanced copy, there is mention of a youtube channel or website with more instructional videos, i.e., yoga postures. However, this was absent from my copy so I don’t know where to go but obviously that multimedia approach is a great addition to the usefulness of this book.

The verdict
There is more good than bad in this book but you need to sift through it. I wish there had been even more sequences of yoga postures (yes I’m thinking of the dragon dance in Avatar: The Last Airbender here) to connect witchcraft to a yoga practice but I’ll gladly try all of these out as the wheel turns.

Well… I enjoy the foreword more than the actual book which is kinda sad tbh.

I didn’t not enjoy Magick From The Mat but I didn’t enjoy it either. I don’t know I was just so very hyped from the foreword and then quickly losed that excitement.

I’m practicing Yoga longer than I practice magic and I haven’t incorporated one into the other. There had been some grounding through Yoga but more or less in the mundane sense of it. So I was and still am very interested in how to combine those two practices at times.

The book gives some ideas on how to use Yoga to raise energy for magical workings so that was interesting enough.

There is also a lot of talk about Crowley and his writings about Yoga which… disappointed me. It fits into the “magick” spelling of the title though.

What I really didn’t like was the sexism and trans*phobia. Fits into Crowley, again. I’m also on the fence about incorporating sacred texts of Hinduism into a witchy practice. But I need (at least) one actual review of a person practicing Hinduism to be sure about that.

At least there are sources cited?

Disclaimer: I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

A thorough examination of yoga through the lens of the Craft. I appreciated the emphasis put upon understanding the true cultural and historical context of yoga as a spiritual practice, not just for fitness. I also appreciated how the author mentioned that the idea of a witch's body being a temple does not mean that one should body-shame or focus on standards of beauty, but simply taking steps to honor one's body in the same way we honor all other aspects of our Craft.

Once the reader moves past the Wiccan rhetoric a good introduction to understanding yoga begins. This makes for a great book for those new to yoga practice but finding it difficult to connect with the Hindu theory behind it. Interestingly astral projection and developing psychic ability is explored along with the idea of casting circles and invoking Wiccan deities with the use energy evoked from yoga poses. What makes this book a bit of a standout is the yoga sequences provided to celebrate the Wheel of the a year and specific purposes.

All of this is well researched and cited. Shame about the uninspiring cover.

*eArc provided by the publisher and NetGalley

I like the front cover it is vey simple and I like how it tells you some history about yoga . I found the exercise really useful . I like the mediation healing exercises and I will keep using this. The information in the chapters about witches was really interesting.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.