The Intercession of Spirits : Working With Animals, Angels & Ancestors Book

Book is OK. While, in theory, hearing about how Ted's life and experiences shaped his practice sounds great, the book is extremely poorly organized and its sections poorly integrated, if at all, so most of the time all you're left with is weird chunks of gratuitous autobiography interspersed with his advice without any justification for the former. (And much of it is of no relevance to the topic of the book at all.)

Basically, all of this, plus the grammatical mistakes, and the confusing (and quite frankly useless) organization could have been fixed with a good editor. Unfortunately, I think all this text saw was a rudimentary run-through with spellcheck.

I get the impression that Ted might have shied away from rigorous editing because this book betrays a very specific sort of egotism that would have been toned down otherwise. From the numerous pictures of the author that have no real reason to be included, to the tone and length of his autobio segments, I get the strong impression that this guy knows he's famous and can get away with saying anything he wants.

That said, the actual practical advice parts are anything but that. His choice in terminology (Faerie Realm? Unicorns? Dwarves?) and descriptions of these characters he's supposedly seen makes me feel like I'm reading more of a D&D monster manual than the words of someone humble and trustworthy. Big red flag for me. His entire practice of working with spirits is of a very specific style, the Ted Andrews' School I'm going to call it, that he tries to pass off as being universal and common sense. And it is anything but. His gross, New Age-style racism and appropriation of native cultures and ideas is another big red flag for me, though it's not too prevalent in this book. The final red flag is the tiny bibliography... most of which are his other titles. Ted also makes the mistake of talking about "the seasons" as well, while maintaining that same Northern European chauvinism that plagues so many other neo-pagan books, despite writing for American audiences. (That model is of absolutely no use for those of us in desert or Mediterranean climates.) I'm disappointed that I actually paid money for these pages.

In the end, I've gone through the book with a pen, crossing out the things I think are incredibly stupid, far-fetched, and irrelevant to a pagan perspective that isn't rose quartz-tinted. There are a few useful nuggets in here that can be applied to many paths and many different kinds of practices but I'm beginning to wonder if its a case of him actually being knowledgeable or if he's just another "broken clock" that still happens to be right twice a day.

2 stars: one for getting something out of it, and the other for helping me figure out what I think is bullshit and why.