The Fifth Sacred Thing is a 1993 science fiction novel by Starhawk set in a post-apocalyptic 2048, where a feminist ecotopian San Francisco clashes with a fundamentalist Christian dystopia. The "Four Sacred Things" are the natural elements—earth, air, fire, and water—while the "fifth sacred thing" is spirit, representing the interconnectedness and value of all living things, and serving as the foundation for the utopian society to thrive.

The Spiral Dance by Starhawk (1979) is a foundational earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism work. It blends neopagan witchcraft, Goddess worship, and activism as a ritual guide and manifesto. Emphasizing community, Earth’s sacredness, and feminine divinity, it combines stories, myth, and practical advice to inspire nature connection and social change. The Spiral Dance ritual symbolizes life’s cycles and transformation. Starhawk promotes active spirituality for empowerment, diversity, ecological balance, and gender harmony. The book remains influential in paganism and eco-activism.

Dreaming The Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics. (Boston, Beacon Press, 1982, 1988. 1997) Featuring narrative, chants, songs, and rituals, Dreaming the Dark brilliantly combines the world of magic and spirituality with the world of political and social change. The fifteenth anniversary edition includes a new preface by Starhawk.

Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery. (San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 1988). A rich, complex, and radiant examination of the nature of power. Spinning together myth, history, ritual, poetry, spells, psychology, and activism, Starhawk offers new and creative alternatives for positive change in our personal lives, our communities, and our world.

My tenth book, The Earth Path, was inspired by the realization that even many people who call themselves Pagan and proclaim nature as sacred are unclear on the processes by which nature actually works. The Earth Path addresses the profound spiritual and conceptual disconnect at the root of our environmental destructiveness, and shows how we can re-root our spirits, our politics, and our day-to-day life in deep relationship with the Earth. It also includes much of the synthesis of Earth-based spirituality and practical permaculture that I’ve been working with in our Earth Activist Trainings.

Walking to Mercury. (New York, Bantam, 1997). In The Fifth Sacred Thing, readers fell in love with Maya Greenwood, the 98-year-old writer who helped lead Northern California’s successful 21st century rebellion against a racist, totalitarian regime of the South. Walking to Mercury takes readers back to the 20th century and powerfully dramatizes the forces that shaped this extraordinary woman.

Growing from the smaller, self-published Reclaiming book, Crossing Over, The Pagan Book of Living and Dying (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) is a compendium of information on coping with death and dying. It provides valuable and compassionate guidance for dealing with such varying situations as deaths of small children, of parents, and deaths in battle or by violence.

Circle Round: Raising Children in the Goddess Tradition. (New York, Bantam, 1998) Co-written with Anne Hill and Diane Baker. In our rushed, stressed society, it’s sometimes difficult to spend meaningful time as a family. Now Starhawk, Diane Baker, and Anne Hill offer new ways to foster a sense of togetherness through celebrations that honor the sacredness of life and our Mother Earth.

Continuing the lessons and deepening the knowledge first set out in the bestseller The Spiral Dance, here is the first guide that works for both basic and advanced magical training. Authors Starhawk and Hilary Valentine transform a fairy tale about twelve wild swans into a set of instructions for an initiatory journey into the world of Witchcraft, providing a remarkable roadmap describing three distinct paths into magic, healing, and action.

“The practice of magic rests on the power of the word,” says Starhawk. For circles, covens, and groups, this volume is the power of the word at work — a sourcebook that instructs and inspires on many levels, from the craft of magical training, to inner spiritual development, to outer work in the greater world.

Webs of Power is a call to re-conceive our political and economic systems at the very deepest levels. Writing from the front lines, Starhawk chronicles the global justice movement sparked by Seattle’s 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protest. An activist in many of the major peace and justice movements of our times, Starhawk continues to be deeply involved as a direct action participant and trainer in the anti-globalization movement. (For the latest, see her writings on the WTO Cancun mobilization.)

“Once there was a perfect town, in a perfect world, where there were rules for everything and a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and nobody ever broke the rules-except sometimes.”

So begins Starhawk’s new eco-fable, The Last Wild Witch. When the wind is in the west, and the last wild Witch is brewing her magic brews and singing her magic songs, some of the wildness might get inside you!

Collaborative organizations have the unique potential to harness their members’ ideals, passions, skills, and knowledge—if they can succeed in getting along together. The Empowerment Manual is a comprehensive guide for groups seeking to organize with shared power and bottom-up leadership to foster vision, trust, accountability and responsibility. This desperately needed toolkit provides keys to:

• Understanding group dynamics
• Facilitating communication and collective decision-making
• Dealing effectively with difficult people