In 1979 two books were published which changed the whole Wiccan/pagan scene quite dramatically. One was the Spiral Dance, by Starhawk, and the other was Drawing Down the Moon, by Margot Adler. Probably no two books have had as much influence on the changes which took place in the pagan community. Both authors, especially Starhawk, a political feminist, therapist and initiate of the Faery tradition, presented Wicca not so much as secret, authoritarian, hierarchical society, but a self-empowering psychological philosophy -- which was richly pantheistic in nature. Starhawk's book appealed especially to women who found it inspiring and empowering. Wiccans began researching what they had been doing and found that the origins of Witchcraft were not at all what they were first led to believe.
Starhawk wrote three other books after the Spiral Dance, but none caught on the way her first one did. Most of her succeeding books centered around group-structure, therapy, politics and visionary utopian societies.