HAMILTON-GILES, PETER. - Standing at the Crossroads. Dialectics of the Witching-Other. Illustrations by Carolyn Hamilton-Giles.

United Kingdom, Atramentous Press, 2018. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo, original burgundy buckram boards heavily decorated in black and gilt on both the upper and lower cover, spine titled in gilt, decorated endpapers, and bookmark ribbon. 180 pp, bibliography. 20 colour illustrations by Carolyn Hamilton-Giles. Issued in an edition limited to 333 copies, hand-numbered and signed by the author. A fine copy without dust jacket, as issued. Fine ¶ Truth is based on censoring that which might undermine alternative rationales, and so it is with how the existential witch has been accommodated by practitioners as the icon for folk based practices. Typically this stereotypical inclusion has up to now involved the appropriation of the most revered historical opposition to Christian patriarchy i.e. the witch, so that he or she might become a conduit for justifying rationales for qualifying alternative occult belief systems. Challenging the common consensus on engagement, we find Peter Hamilton-Giles in “Standing at the Crossroads: Dialectics of the Witching-Other” addressing ongoing silences embedded within the connectivity being felt towards the existential witch. Appealing to novices and experienced veterans of witchcraft alike this work casts a new light on the conditions informing how we come to embrace the witch. At the same time this work should not be regarded as offering a simple explanation, for this most insightful book adopts an advisory position on how practitioners should engage with the witch. It goes about achieving this by addressing how interaction, based on apprehension and perception, informs the understanding of the subject by interjecting the motif of Otherness. As a result, “Standing at the Crossroads” looks to liberate practitioners from the shackles of inexplicable constructs, while at the same time suggesting an altogether more promising alternative on how to successfully accept the existential witch. But the reader must be made aware this is no simple or straight A to Z on what to do, for the narrative invites the reader to act as the iconoclast to any taken for granted notions that he or she may being holding onto. Consequently, the text contains within it the insightful principle of deviation, making Standing at the Crossroads: Dialectics of the Witching-Other an instructive platform for engaging with the metaphysical. Moreover, comprehending the important role the witching-other has to play in developing witchcraft discourses has a further ramification in developing contemporary occult philosophy, for it is from this intellectual discipline that the flow of consciousness is unleashed, this being a valid and vital contributing aspect to all witching activities.