Modern Magic

• Author: Michelle Tea
• Genre: Nonfiction
• Publication Date: October 1, 2024
• Publisher: HarperOne

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperOne for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In this enchanted sibling to the cult classic Modern Tarot, literary and tarot icon Michelle Tea returns to her magical roots, offering stories, little-known history, traditions, rituals, and spells for any witch seeking a deeper spiritual practice.

A self-described DIY witch and professional tarot reader, literary and feminist icon Michelle Tea provides a fascinating magical history and spiritual traditions from around the world, giving us the tools, spells, and rituals to navigate our stressed-out, consumer-driven lives. Witty, down-to-earth, and wise, she bewitches us with tales of how she crafted her own magical practice and came into her own. She also shares enchanting stories from her earliest witchy days as a goth teen in Massachusetts as well as insights from her adult practice. Modern Magic gives us the tools to tap into a stronger, distinctive magic that lies within us, one that incorporates queer, feminist, anti-racist, intersectional values. These include:

Love Magic for the 21st century

Hexes for when you really need them (and an exploration of magical ethics)

Sleep Magic, from dream interpretation traditions to prophetic dreams

Thoughts on why magic practice is spiritual practice

Michelle shares her truth and observations about the world around us as well as her vision for what it could be. For novice and seasoned witches alike, Modern Magic is the essential guide for defining and deepening a practice that aligns with our individual political and spiritual values.

As someone who is just starting to delve into different aspects of magic, I’ve been kind of building an eclectic practice of bits and pieces of what works and what isn’t relevant for me. It doesn’t mean that what isn’t relevant to me isn’t important, it may be super relevant to someone else, it just doesn’t apply to me personally or certain situations. I kind of do this with every area of my life—learning more and applying what resonates to help create a better life. What I learned is that I had to stop reading this book at 28% because it wasn’t the right fit for me. Let me explain my thoughts 

The tone of the author is upbeat and quirky. It was easy for me to like her and the fun vibe that she gives off. She’s also a big proponent of ‘take what works and leave the rest’ philosophy, and encourages readers to do exactly that. I found it a little strange to change the spelling of ‘goddess’ to ‘goddexx,’ but I was prepared to overlook that. Her first spell won me over, especially reading about her ‘F*** This Spell’ on what was Election Day in the United States. I’m pretty sure more people might want to use the F*** This Spell — it’s been a rough week around the world, not just the US. 

After this, the spells kind of went downhill for me. The advice to rub a coin or something on my vulva and give it to someone gave me the ick, and there were also some spells that come across as rambling. I’m used to a list of what is needed followed by directions, kind of like a recipe. This book offers the title of a spell and a little about how to do it, paired with where it came from and how it has worked for her or others. 

Talking about how the brain reacts when prayer, chanting, and mantras are used was a really fascinating part of the book, at least as far as I read. But when I read nonfiction, and there are claims being made, it’s nice to know where they come from. There is an appendix at the end of the book, but it’s really just a list of her favorite books since her teenage years. In this age of misinformation and disinformation, it’s always a good practice to back up the claims you made. This statement, for example, would have been much more powerful if there was a citation:

“Prayers, chanting, and mantras—all repetitions of language—engage the frontal lobes of the brain, stimulating a hyper-focus. For folks in the process of channeling a spirit, the frontal lobes fade and the thalamus, the switchboard of communication between your body and your brain, lights up with activity.”

But what really gave me the full ick was when the author was talking about how the female body is the Ultimate Bad Luck Charm, and provided a bunch of evidence to support her position. However, and this is something I’ve been sensitive to, but something that has become increasingly common in magic books. This is the use of Hebrew words or Jewish practices/literature to justify a point, and it bothers me for a few reasons. This author decided to use a prayer that exists in Judaism and explain the misogynistic meaning of it and how it rolls into how women are viewed as negative or unlucky in cultures around the world. Which would be fine, if she had consulted with a Jewish person or even a rabbi who is familiar with the prayer thanking God for not making him a woman. Here’s how Tea explains it in her book:

“There is a reason Jewish men are encouraged to thank their creator for not having been born with a uterus and a vulva and a couple of teats.”

This is a gross misrepresentation of three prayers of gratitude, thanking God for not making him a gentile, not making him a slave/bondsman, and not making him a woman. There are valid reasons why I hate seeing Judaism tossed into magic books and other books written by people who are not Jews and have clearly not learned much about us. There’s a fantastic explanation of what the prayer actually means here, But the basics is that women are viewed as naturally more spiritual than men, leading the men to be required to do more mitzvot (good deeds) than women. What they’re actually thanking God for is not being made with a peen, it’s being given the gift of being able to complete more good deeds to overcome their reduced spirituality compared to women, and to basically have even more chances to worship God. She also leaves out the corresponding prayer that women say, thanking God, “who has made me in accordance with His will.” It doesn’t come across as nearly as misogynistic, when there is more information offered. 

Judaism is a closed practice. It always has been, and our texts and practices have been appropriated and used against us for Two. Thousand. Years. There’s a reason that we have books full of our sages discussing what everything means in intense detail, and that’s to prevent us from misunderstanding even a word in the Torah. Since it’s a closed practice, and the author clearly explains her Catholic upbringing, she demonstrates a lack of understanding of how it’s just as uncool to appropriate from Judaism as others. She discusses the need to avoid appropriation from closed practices multiple times in the first 28% of the book, and then caps that off … by appropriating information from a closed culture that is still practicing and one of the most marginalized groups in America.

But after seeing Tea compare a practice that actually places women in a highly valued position to the misogyny that is inherent in Christianity, without even recognizing that this is problematic, was a major issue for me. It signifies that maybe the information being presented isn’t all trustworthy, and a few pages later, I came across the misrepresented and highly sensationalized story of Bridget Cleary, a woman who was murdered by her husband in 1895 when he became convinced his wife had been taken by the fairies and replaced with a changeling. It was unable to be determined whether she died from the beating before being burned or not. But in this book, apparently the author has an inside line for info that no one else has (which she conveniently doesn’t cite) because she described the murder as if she was there. And worse yet, despite Bridget Cleary never having been accused of witchcraft or being a witch, the author slips a line into her description about how Bridget also used the ‘rub a coin on your vulva and give it to someone’ by giving it to her cousin.

Overall, this wasn’t an especially enlightening or helpful read. I don’t have vast knowledge of witchery yet, but I do have a good working knowledge of how research claims work in a book, along with the ability to not appropriate from *any* closed practices because it’s something that is fundamentally wrong and doesn’t sit well with me. And as always, when I’ve found one thing that is presented incorrectly with no basis to check the source, another usually follows. So this isn’t a book that I can recommend in good conscience to anyone, because I don’t support a book labeled nonfiction with no source citations and with blatantly incorrect descriptions. 

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