Initiated
Memoir of a Witch

Quotes

"Mythic journeys to the underworld, goddesses, ecstasies, fairy tales, ghosts, love, sex, female empowerment, challenging the patriarchy: Initiated is full of my favorite things, told with savage grace by my favorite oracle, the powerful and devastatingly enchanting Amanda Yates Garcia. This book will change your life."—Francesca Lia Block

"Initiated is breathtaking--gorgeously written, fierce, political, personal, and deeply inspiring. I love this book."
—Michelle Tea, author of Modern Tarot

"Yates Garcia takes us on a sweeping, expansive, generous, and beautifully intuitive journey into feminine power in Initiated. She leads us fearlessly into the dark underworld of patriarchal oppression, intergenerational trauma, loss and grief, where, she says, every witch must go to find her magic. This book is a powerful political protest and a call to return to first principles as a nation, a society, and a people. Come to it seeking your own artistic and intellectual path, and leave trusting yourself, trusting others, and trusting in the unconditional love you will find in the collective soul of the world."
— Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star

"A journey through wild beauty and deep wounds, Initiated is the book we need right now-it is an embrace, an awakening, a forging by flame and an enchanted rallying cry."—Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World

"To read Initiated is to undergo your own. Amanda's wisdom and insight into the heart of the witch is complimented by her ability to weave together a story that is also a spell. Somewhere between a memoir and a grimoire, this book invites the reader to reflect on their own cycles of life and death as well as their own relationship to the witch. All in a way that's uplifting, engaging, feminist as fuck and so unapologetically fierce. No one else could have written this story, and whether you identify as a witch or not, you'll leave obsessed."—Gabriela Herstik, author of Inner Witch: A Modern Guide to the Ancient Craft

"Early on in her beautifully written memoir, Amanda Yates Garcia says of her sister, 'I decided to love her forever.' That is precisely how I felt about this gorgeous memoir that refuses to be labeled or to fit inside any kind of box. Part history, part mythology, part poetry, part prose; but mostly: magic. Which is to say: this is a book about love. A book which challenges the reader to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human in a complicated and beautiful world. My copy is dog eared and highlighted and I plan to pass it on to all my friends. This book reminds us that we all are powerful with the capacity to change the world, one witch at a time."— Jennifer Pastiloff, author of On Being Human

"This bold and transporting story of one woman's awakening into her own spiritual power reads as a metaphysical coming of age, bearing gifts for anyone seeking her own alignment in the world."
— Amelia Gray, author of Isadora

"Amanda Yates Garcia's Initiated is the ideal coming-into-witchhood story for our troubled times. It functions not only as a scathing personal critique of patriarchy and oppression, but as a manual for dismantling them from the ground up, told with style, deep spiritual insight, and brutal honesty. Raw, lyrically enchanting, and brimming with feminine power, this is the book of shadows and light our imperiled world desperately needs right now."
— Michael M. Hughes, author of Magic for the Resistance: Rituals and Spells forChange

"In a world desperately in need of re-enchantment, Initiated provides more than its fair share. It is a battle cry, a blueprint, and most of all, a love letter to the traditions of witchcraft, the benefits of co-creation and interdependence, and our innate ability to manifest our collective power as women and humans."
— Leah Dieterich, author of The Vanishing Twins

"As much as witches are warriors, we are also guardians-of a history, culture, and practice that's been erased and persecuted for millennia. Recently, I've watched with apprehension as witchcraft, in a much-needed renaissance, has also become a lifestyle trend on Instagram, ahistorical and commodified. I've been hoping for a visibility that cannot divorce witchcraft from its insurrectionary origins, its lineage of liberation, its blood memory that connects us to its feminist fire. As Initiated luminously testifies, Amanda Yates Garcia is the kind of warrior and guardian witches need: subversive and scholarly, empowered and devoted, a magician and a firebrand."
— Johanna Hedva, author of On Hell