Llewellyn Publishing

A Minnesota-based Pagan/occult publishing house known for the fluffy and shallow quality of its offerings. Llewellyn is known for putting out poorly researched claptrap that talks down to readers, misinforms them with errors that even the most rudimentary fact-checking could have prevented, and often does grave insult to the very peoples and traditions it’s claiming to document.

Among Llewellyn’s better-known gems:

• Edain McCoy’s Witta: An Irish Pagan Tradition, which:
  • says there was an “ancient Irish” tradition called “Witta” – but there is no W sound in Irish Gaelic (past or present)!
  • uses potatoes and pumpkins in ritual, despite the fact that both of these plants were imported from the New World after 1500 CE;
• Douglas Monroe’s The 21 Lessons of Merlyn, which:
  • claims the Druids practiced celibacy and avoided women (despite historical knowledge that the ancient Celts were a very egalitarian people), and displays such sexism as the line “the female is the deadliest of the species” (ridiculously inappropriate for any modern Pagan book!);
  • claims the Druidic tradition springs from Atlantis;
  • again uses pumpkins in rituals that are supposed to be “authentic ancient Celtic”;
  • Uses large swathes of material shown to come from the Book of Pheryllt, a known forgery by Iolo Morganwg, a 16th-century Welshman.
• Amber K’s In the Shadow of the Shaman, purportedly an introduction to Native American shamanism, which:
  • makes no mention of the existence of over 3,000 different tribes, each with their own culture, language, and rituals, but instead treats “Native American culture” as a monoculture;
  • presents a system that's transparently Wicca dressed up in beads and buckskins

Surprisingly, there actually have been a few good titles by Llewellyn. Donald Michael Kraig’s Modern Magick, for example, serves as an excellent introduction to ceremonial magick. But, by and large, if you find a book by Llewellyn Publishing, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. In fact, reading such a book will usually cost you (even if you don’t have to pay any money) because you’ll pick up lots of misinformation and outright fabrications, which you’ll later have to unlearn.