Early Pomegranates Now Available Free Online

Issue 1 of The Pomegranate, February 1997.

The first eighteen issues of The Pomegranate, back when its subtitle was a still “A New Journal of Neopagan Thought,” are now available in in PDF form from Valdosta State University in Georgia.

Spanning from 1997–2002, these are the issues produced by its founding editor, Fritz Muntean, in Vancouver, BC.

Fritz and I spent some time at the 2001 and 2002 annual meetings of the Americab Academy of Religion seeking an established scholarly publisher to help it become a recognized, peer-reviewed journal, listed in all the databases.

Instead, after a short hiatus, we ended up with a start-up publisher, Equinox, which has helped it to grow in the subsequent years.

Lots of good content here: scroll through the issues here.

Anderson/Feri Tradition Material Cataloged at Valdosta State University

Victor Anderson, apparently wearing a lei (Wikimedia Commons).

Victor Anderson (1917–2001) and Cora Anderson (1915–2008) founded the Feri tradition of Witchcraft (which had multiple spellings). Since their passing, their papers and home library has been divided among several recipients: the Oakland, Calif., public library, the New Alexandrian Library, and some private purchasers.

A large number of their books, 171 to be exact, have been added to the growing Pagan archives at Valdosta State University in Georgia. Special-collections librarian Guy Frost has now cataloged them as the “Victor and Cora Anderson Library, 1921–1998.

The books chosen, Frost explains, were ones that were not already in the university’s “parent collection, New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library. A bibliography of the full library as well as the disposition of the items is planned. All titles in this collection have been cataloged separately.” He has also written a lengthy historical note on the Andersons and Feri.

The library also has a large collection of materials relating to Max Freedom Long, whose work was a big influence on the Feri/Faerie/Fairy tradition.

Coming next will be a large collection from Aquarian Tabernacle Church founder Pete Davis.

Turning Dead Puritans into the Mighty Dead: Redefining Salem

Inscription: John Proctor. Hanged. August 10, 1692. At the 1692-1992 memorial site in Salem — which is not the execution site and not the victims’ burial place.

The last time that I walked through the Salem witch trials memorial adjacent to the Charter Street cemetery, I saw that someone had left a rolled-up paper at John Proctor’s memorial bench.[1]No one ever seems to sit on the benches, perhaps because they usually hold offerings of one sort or another. Was it a petition? An announcement of an upcoming workshop on Tarot reading? Maybe Proctor, a prosperous farmer before he and his wife were accused, would have been interested in a farm-auction flier.

Obviously, I did not pull out the paper and read it. Doing that might have been good journalism but poor manners.  Even though the memorial is not a cemetery, I feel that cemetery etiquette applies. But if it was a missive addressed to Proctor, that could mean that someone now considers him to be among the Mighty Dead.

There lies the paradox. I cannot explain it rationally, and neither could Stacy Schiff in her fine new book The Witches, where she writes,

In a turn of events that would have mystified [accused witch] Ann Foster, it is easy to buy a broomstick in Salem, home to a large Wiccan community. Hotels are booking now for next Halloween.

We have been talking for decades — since Margaret Murray’s time — about reclaiming the word witch from its satanic and evil-doing associations.[2]I am fully aware that some people, however, want to keep them. We could do that without dragging in John and Elizabeth  Proctor, Sarah Cloyce, Ann Foster, and the other 150 or so people who were charged in 1692, of whom 19 were executed.

But we have dragged them in. We are (apparently) treating them as honored ancestors, the Mighty Dead, sometimes defined as “those practitioners of our religion who are on the Other Side now, but who still take great interest in the activities of Witches on this side of the Veil.”

Wiccan writer Christopher Penczack equates the Mighty Dead with the Secret Chiefs or Hidden Company that various occult groups invoke. Yet at least in their 17th-century lives, those Puritan colonists would have been horrified to think of themselves as “practitioners of our religion,” wouldn’t they?

Still someone is tending the memorial stones, there are Samhain processions to the execution site, people leave offerings at the execution site, and so on.

We like to say, “What is remembered, lives,” but are we really remembering the Rev. Samuel Parris, Tituba, Judge Hathorne, Rebeca Nurse, and all of them as they were?

Or are we just performing civil religion with robes and incense, “[expressing] the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals, symbols (such as the national flag), and ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields, or national cemeteries)”?[3]“Civil Religion,” Wikipedia. Is leaving flowers and pretty stones and coins and costume jewelry at the Salem witch-trial memorial merely expressing our admiration for the First Amendment?

Somehow I think that it is more than that. Parallel and occultly linked to the transformation of maritime Salem and manufacturing Salem into “Witch City” has been the transformation of the accused Christians of 1692 into “witches”  whose deaths — eventually — produced  a Witch-friendly little city today. It’s not conventionally rational, but it is what it is. And we are thanking them for that transformation.

POSTSCRIPT: I do not plan any more posts about Salem right now. Although no documents or artifacts from the witch trials are on public exhibit in Salem itself, thanks to the policies of the Peabody Essex Museum, which has many of them, there is a digital archive online at the University of Virginia.

Notes

Notes
1 No one ever seems to sit on the benches, perhaps because they usually hold offerings of one sort or another.
2 I am fully aware that some people, however, want to keep them.
3 “Civil Religion,” Wikipedia.

Wicca, Recategorized by Librarians, Now by Booksellers as Well

In 2007, the  news was that books on Wicca were re-categorized by the Library of Congress from BF (psychology, abnormal) to  BP 600, a sort of catch-all for “other beliefs and movements.” A new Dewey Decimal number was assigned as well, for libraries using that system.

Now the change is on the retail side. As Elysia Gallo blogs at Llewellyn, some Pagan books are being re-categorized for retailers as well.

So here’s the news – Wicca, in the eyes of the book selling industry, is now a religion. It crossed over from OCC026000 Body, Mind & Spirit / Wicca and Witchcraft, to two separate BISAC codes. One remains in the occult section – OCC026000 is now simply Body, Mind & Spirit / Witchcraft. But Wicca itself is now REL118000, or Religion / Wicca.

Let’s not even stop to think about what a headache it will be for me to decide whether any given book should go into the occult “Witchcraft” end of things or the religious “Wicca” end of things. Sometimes this distinction is made crystal clear by its author or its content, but much more often it’s a very blurry line. No, instead let’s allow that to just sink in for a moment. Imagine going in to your local bookstore chain (because this will probably not change how metaphysical stores or libraries operate) and, instead of heading to the New Age section (or whatever your local store calls it), you head to the Religion section. There, next to shelves of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim books, you will find your Wicca books. Strange feeling, isn’t it?

But the change may confuse some book-buyers, she continues.

 

Returning the (Overdue) “Book of Power”

One of the jobs that usually falls on the writing program is teaching undergraduates not to be afraid of the university library. By contrast, in 2004, the University of Kansas, with gentle librarian humor, went the Lord of the Rings parody route, with this short video directed by then-film student Christopher D. Martin.

When Librarians Strike Back

A fairly brilliant fund-raising idea in Alamogordo, New Mexico: funding a new library with photos of a local book-burning.

The book burning pitted two opposing points of view. It was “not a book-burning, but a holy bonfire,” according to the church’s founding pastor, Jack Brock…..On one side [of the street] were Brock and members of his congregation. They burned a few books in the Harry Potter series and other titles, and “pornographic magazines,” Brock said in a telephone interview Saturday.

They stated the belief that the books had satanic origins and could influence children to take up witchcraft.

Oh, that “satanic” Potter kid. Let’s make him the poster child for libraries and bookstores everywhere.

Wait, he already is! Right: Hogwarts-themed bookstore parade entry, Fourth of July 2007, Mendocino, California.

(Pointy-hat tip to Broomstick Chronicles.)

UPDATE: Bad link fixed (Thanks, Erik).

For Librarians & Their Fans

The Zen Librarian said, “Reference service is like a man hanging from a rope by his teeth over a cliff, with his hands bound to his sides and feet resting on no ledge, and another person asks him for books about Enrico Fermi for a child’s school assignment.” More here. Then there is something more hardcore.

What, you want more librarian blogs?

(I will have you know that I was a demon shelver when I had my undergrad work-study job.)