Death's Head: Animal Skulls in Witchcraft & Spirit work by Blake Malliway (book review)
Book's Published Summary:
"This book contains a unique blend of folklore and hands-on Witchcraft, all centered around the use of animal skulls. Contained herein are the manifestations of the author's own personal style of Witchcraft as well as methods for magically finding a skull, ways of purifying the skull, and instructions on how to imbue the skull with spirit presence for the purpose of divination, insight, and other acts of magic. Also included are rituals for the physical manifestation of the spirit and instructions for petitioning magical favors by the way of spirit intervention. The Witch seeking a stronger, more intense connection with the spirit world will find good use of the rituals and methods given"-Blake Malliway
My initial thoughts:
traditional witch with reference page/suggested reading which is always a good sign in my book (no references = sus)
96 pages and very small, makes it a quick read and a good reference book for those on the go 3"x5"
First page is "make sure what your doing is legal as local laws vary for this stuff" which is also a good sign as witches should take responsibility for their own actions
11 Chapters plus preface
Review:
This book, unlike other witchcraft books, stands alone by itself. While I have been practicing for a long time and love to do research on multiple fields of witchcraft, outside of hoodoo and voodoo I have rarely seen mentions of using skulls in one's practice. This was extremally disappointing while growing up as I have collected skulls from the nature around me since I was 6 and have always considered them an essential part of my craft as they tie back to the land I work on. In comes Death's Head, a book that solves this problem. Throughout this book Blake Malliway goes over how he weaves skulls into his own practice, which I find similar to my own. With that in mind, I may be a bit biased for that reason, so please keep that in mind while reading this review. If you have a book you'd like me to write another review about/analyze, message me or send something into my ask box. With that, lets get into it.
In the beginning of the book, it's made clear this isn't the only way to work with bones of any kind. That I personally find a very good sign. No one person (or witch) knows everything. If a book you are reading claims this is the only way, I (as a lover of books) would throw it in the dumpster. There is no one way for our practices, but thousands upon thousands formed by witches of yesterday and today. Back to the book though, another thing that is made clear early on is the skull itself is a house for a spirit, so for those looking into spirit work itself but not/are unable to get a skull, it's still a good read.
My one major complaint though is chapter 2/3 of this book: Finding the skull and The purification of the skull. As someone who has collected bones for most of his life I can tell you one thing. Flesh or no flesh: bones smell. This is since while living, bones have grease attached to them. This grease caused a fowl odor as it sinks into the bones during decomposition, even with no flesh. To clean these, I have left some links below which directions. In my personal experience, I look for bones with no flesh or dried up cartilage I can remove. Once the cartilage is gone, I soak the bone(s) in a solution of 50% water and 50% hydrogen peroxide. This will clean any germs and smells, just make sure to leave the lid cracked if you have one. And whatever you do, don't use bleach. While this will whiten the bones, it will also eat them. Along with that though, there also isn't many tips for finding bones outside a ritual. While rituals can help, so can knowing where to look. I would highly recommend researching this, as it varies from landscape. For example, I usually look behind the dunes of a beach or along the highest seaweed line. I have good luck in these spots as the ocean will leave bones here and/or animals will take them to these spots to eat. With that in mind, be careful of the wildlife around you. I live in an area full of coyotes that come out around dusk, so keep stuff like that in mind when hunting (aka research the dangers of the area your in. Also bring a knife, those dried out tendons are no joke).
The rituals themselves are stepped in traditional witchcraft from the Cornish region of England, which is where a lot of modern traditional witchcraft comes from. The author acknowledges this and you can also see this in references & suggested reading page. Some I instantly recognized were Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways (Gary.G) and Treading the mill: Workings in traditional witchcraft (Morgan. L). One thing I always like is multiple perspectives, which this book more than delivers on. I sense no bias at all, unlike the lack of bone hunting knowledge.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book to any intermediate witch looking to learn more/break into spirit work and bring the nature around them into their practice. A 5/5 in my opinion
Bone cleaning links:
The blog of Jake, a fourteen year old bone collector, naturalist and published author from Scotland.
Most, if not all of us, grew up with an innate desire to bring home things we found in nature. Feathers, rocks, frogs hidden in pockets. It…
We created this step-by-step tutorial on how to clean bones, including bleaching and whitening, walking you through the process for preparin
