Mothers of Magic - by Perdita Finn (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

"This book is not optional reading for our moment. It is essential... Mothers of Magic offers a pathway of reconnection that is both ancient and radically relevant."​ --Dr. Gertrude Lyons, podcast host, TEDx speaker, and author of Rewrite the Mother Code

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.

Review Quotes

"How many of us even know our mother and grandmother's stories? Who amongst us has the courage to really ask--and deeply listen? ...Finn invites us to put away the books of men and thoroughly look at the lives of our mothers and grandmothers before, during, and after patriarchy."

--Trista Hendron, Founder of Girl God

"a powerful and intimate act of generosity and care... If we stand any chance of throwing off modernity's shackles, might we need to re-imagine--through remembering and through dreaming-forward--what mothering means in ways that are both simple and complex, as well as what it means to mother one another and the worlds we're living in, and what it means to be mothered ourselves, by forces both minuscule and grand? I pray that this beautiful book plays its rightful part in that re-imagining, and that Perdita's wise incantation and evocation for Mothers of all kinds is heard across all the worlds." --Tom Hirons, author of Sometimes a Wild God

"Filled with heartrending stories and hard-won wisdom, Perdita Finn's compendium to mothers and mothering is a cri de coeur in androcentric times, a passionate argument for the bring sacred maternity back to the heart of contemporary life." --Mark Matousek, author of Mother of the Unseen World: The Mystery of Mother Meera

"Perdita Finn's magical new book brings both essential challenge and profound comfort to this earthen moment, inviting us to see beyond the overcultural confines of linear time and to ground ourselves in the natural, entangled, eternal rhythms that sustain all life. These pages call us to walk the world fully alive and enlivened--nourishing the earth and all beings even as we are nourished in ever-unfolding reciprocity. We emerge from this book radiant, with a deepened sense of ourselves as both mothered and mothering, always and everywhere, and with the beautiful understanding that we are not somehow falling behind in life. For, as Finn reminds us with rare grace, the story of the soul is very long. This book is a lodestar for anyone seeking to live with reverence, rootedness, and wonder." --Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit

"In Mothers of Magic, Perdita Finn offers not just a remembrance but an urgent summons for our time. In a world where so many of us feel unmothered, unanchored, and cut off from the deep sources of nourishment that once sustained our souls, Finn reminds us that we were never meant to be held by one mother alone. We were meant to be circled by many--human, ancestral, elemental, animal, and unseen.

With exquisite clarity and fierce compassion, she exposes the cultural and historical forces that severed us from these lifelines and left us dangling, disconnected from the vast network of mothers who have always supported us. And she invites us back--back into the lineage of grandmothers who taught through their hands and their dreams, back into the wisdom of the earth-mothers who have steadied countless generations, back into the circle of old women whose presence can soothe addictions, untangle soul wounds, and remind us how to dance again.

This book is not optional reading for our moment. It is essential. At a time when anxiety, isolation, and spiritual hunger are reaching crisis levels, Mothers of Magic offers a pathway of reconnection that is both ancient and radically relevant. Finn's message is clear: we cannot become the mothers, the daughters, or the humans this world needs until we recover our belonging to the many mothers who have always held us.

I am profoundly honored to endorse this work--deeply wise, fiercely truthful, and urgently needed."

--Dr. Gertrude Lyons, podcast host, TEDx speaker, and author of Rewrite the Mother Code: From Sacrifice to Stardust - A Cosmic Approach to Motherhood

"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

"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

About the Author

Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the non-denominational international fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, rabbis, shamans, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Finn now teaches popular workshops on "Mothers of Magic", in which she helps students explore how to draw on our Ancestral Mothers for help and healing--of ourselves and our planet. She is the author of Take Back the Magic (Running Press, 2023), and lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.