The Canon  /  Living  /  Ceremonial Magic & Occult

Living · 1979

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess

by Starhawk

Witchcraft & Chaos Magic

The Spiral Dance is a foundational text of the contemporary Pagan and Goddess revival, blending ritual instruction, psychology, and political consciousness. It famously defines magic as the art of changing consciousness at will, placing the deliberate alteration of one's mental and emotional state at the heart of the operative act.

The book treats ritual, chant, and trance as practical technologies for reshaping belief, emotion, and collective will, and emphasizes that shared ritual amplifies intention through group consciousness. Inner work is framed throughout as a route to personal and political agency.

Within the witchcraft and chaos tradition the work helped found the Reclaiming current and tied earth-based spirituality to feminist and ecological activism, giving modern Witchcraft a durable, mind-power-adjacent vocabulary.

Practices it teaches

Grounding & Centering — The Tree of Life

Grounding is the first skill Starhawk teaches a new witch, and the foundation under everything else in The Spiral Dance.

Relaxation — Progressive Body-Settling as the Doorway to Trance

Before any trance or guided inner journey in The Spiral Dance, Starhawk teaches relaxation as the entry skill.

Casting the Circle — Creating Sacred Space with Salt, Water & the Four Quarters

Before any working in The Spiral Dance, Starhawk teaches you to create sacred space: to transform an ordinary room (or patch of ground) into "a space between the worlds," set apart from daily life.

Raising the Cone of Power — Building & Releasing Energy Toward an Intention

Inside the cast circle, after grounding and calling the quarters, comes the working — and the central energy technique is raising the Cone of Power.

Lineage

What it drew on
Wicca / Feri traditionVictor Andersonfeminist spiritualityGoddess religion
What it shaped
modern Goddess/pagan movementearth-activist spiritualityritual-as-empowerment practitioners

The author

Starhawk StarhawkMagic as shaping consciousness Full voice →

Kindred books