Mothers of Magic

Author of Take Back the Magic and co-founder of the beloved non-denominational fellowship The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn offers a profound invitation to remember and recover the power, presence, and wisdom of the Mother Figure. 

At a time when so many of us feel unmoored from guidance, care, and belonging, Mothers of Magic is a profound call to return to our deepest sources of knowledge, nourishment, and kinship.

When Perdita Finn found herself at a crossroads with her health, she embarked on a search for healing that led her to confront a heritage of misogyny and violence—and to summon the wisdom of her ancestors to unravel the trauma woven into her story and the story of civilization itself. Braiding memoir with cultural history, Finn introduces readers to a pantheon of maternal figures, from the loving spirit of St. Anne and the defiant courage of Joan of Arc to the very Earth itself, who have long offered refuge, instruction, and love. Through these stories and her own journey of transformation, Finn reveals what becomes possible when we recover an ecological feminism that restores our relationship with our bodies, our mothers, and the body of our world. Alongside the narrative, she shares practical ways to summon all of our mothers—ancestral, spiritual, and earthly—to help us navigate our everyday challenges and deepest wounds. 

Radical and restorative, Mothers of Magic is an intervention for our time and a map back to the maternal wisdom that has always been ours—a path toward true connection and the deepest sources of love. 

• "Do not be fooled! This book is more than a book. It is a passport to a wild country and Perdita Finn is a poet, a magician, a myth maker and unmaker, a storyteller of great power, humor, and depth. As you read her alluring tales of being mothered and mothering, you will meet your own mother, your grandmother, your ancestors, and yourself. And as you practice and pray along to her reverent and irreverent incantations, you will find healing and hope." 
  Elizabeth Lesser, author of the NY Times bestsellers, Broken Open, Cassandra Speaks, and other books, and the cofounder of Omega Institute
• "In this luminous summons, Perdita Finn reveals the quirky wonders of her enchanting matrilineal matrix and prompts us to excavate the magic hidden within our own family trees. Her stories are rapturous and real, her writing exquisite, and her connection to the unseen as ordinary and alluring as baking bread. Perdita opens the way for people of all genders to harvest the wisdom of our female ancestors, connecting us not only with our deepest selves but with our place in the entire web of creation to which we belong." 
  Mirabai Starr, Author of Wild Mercy and Ordinary Mysticism
• “We know the feminine has been diminished—but what happens when we face that truth through the raw, complicated stories of our own mothers and grandmothers? Mothers of Magic takes us there. The author turns to the tangled story of her mother, to the startling depth she discovers in her grandmother’s diaries, and to the nurturance she finds in the natural world. Together, these threads reveal what has been lost and what must be reclaimed. Clear, compassionate, and disarmingly honest, Finn's prose reminds us that the gifts we long to offer often rise from histories far older than our own lives. This is a book that leads us back to connection, belonging, and the wild soul at the heart of the via feminina.” 
  Mary Reynolds Thompson, author of The Way of the Wild Soul Woman and The Wild Scribe