Crossed Crow Books has published a revised and somewhat expanded edition of Storm Faerywolf’s book The Witch’s Name, originally published in 2022 by Llewellyn Worldwide. We reviewed the first edition on facingnorth.net in 2022 (see that review here). The re-publication gives new life to this important book and its message about the power of creating and using a magical name, whether that be for limited private use or legally and out in the world.
The Witch’s Name accomplishes a number of things. It has a couple dozen exercises and journal prompts for choosing a name. It’s a bit of a memoir as to how Storm Faerywolf received his own unique, three-part name; and it’s an inspirational argument for why choosing a name for yourself is a good idea.
Based in the San Francisco bay area, Storm Faerywolf is self-described warlock, a Reiki master, a prolific poet and author, an endearing figure in witchcraft circles, a teacher of what he calls “ecstatic” witchcraft in the Faery tradition of Victor and Cora Anderson. In his youth, Storm went through some hard times during which the storm and wolf parts of his name revealed themselves to him.
As for why someone would want to adopt a magical name, for private or public use, Storm’s answer is because names are magic. “Quite simply,” he writes, “the act of taking a magical name is one of the most powerful tools we can ever encounter and use in our work in the Craft. It is a spell we cast each time we use it, and it helps to shape us into the kind of witches we want to be.” Repetition of your name is like casting a spell on yourself. What if the name given to you by your parents comes with sorrowful or shaming remembrances? It may be time to let it go. A name is a sigil as we print, type and sign it countless times if we’re using it publicly. Taking on a resonant name can change your personality and, thereby, your fate.
Many of the exercises presented in the book focus on practicing with feeling fully embodied. There’s lore about animals, plants, stones, numbers, and the deities of world cosmologies. There’s a concise section on the use of astrology in divining a magical name. This new 2026 edition of the book adds rituals for naming a familiar and naming a coven.
The book probes the social implications of using a magical name. Some names will raise eyebrows when used out and about in the mundane world. Storm’s father wasn’t thrilled when his son abandoned their shared family name. “It is a constant reminder that social convention does not define the human experience,” he writes. “Some will find it ridiculous. It sounds out of place because it is out of place.”
The point of name-changing is not to rile up the “normies,” but to find a “phrase of power” in which “there are complex layers of deep and personal meaning unified into a singular utterance.” The process is to “find a name that suits you, that empowers and protects you,” that “stir[s] within you a sense of pride and belonging, of spiritual wonder and authority.”
Reviewed by: Sara R. Diamond
Author: Storm Faerywolf
Crossed Crow Books, 2026
241 pp., $22.95
