Julian interviewed me in June, and I wanted to be outside so that I could have a supporting cast of broad-tailed hummingbirds. They don’t show up too well though, and there was glare in a face. . . oh well.
Near Llewellyn Worldwide’s corporate HQ (Google Maps).
At an office park in Woodbury, Minnesota, some publishing employees must be feeling a certain degree of nervousness.
Today I heard a podcast host say what I have been thinking from when I bought the book last year: Aidan Wachter’s Six Ways: Approaches & Entries for Practical Magic has more content in 155 or so pages((And an index!)) than a shelf-full of Llewellyn books.
I fantasize that witches, magicians, and sorcerors of all sorts((That’s a metaphor from the printing trade, did you know?)) are sweeping their shelves of books with the familiar crescent Moon on the spine and tossing them into cartons to take to the nearest used bookstore to sell or to trade for store credit. Six Ways’ success threatens the old model of printing lots of occult books in small press runs and waiting to see if any author is the next Scott Cunningham.
And now there is another one coming. Weaving Fate: Changing the Past & Telling True Lies. The ebook is available and the paperbook is on its way.((I am waiting for the “real” book, since I want to write in it and make it mine.))
It is Chaos magic-plus-animism, as one interviewer said, and that combination appeals to a lot of readers.
Thanks to the Internet, Wachter is communicating from his rural compound outside Albuquerque with multiple podcast listeners, plus maintaining a Six Ways Facebook page and of course a website.
Teresa Palmer as Diana Bishop, historian and witch, in A Discovery of Witches, Episode 1 (2018).
The final article in the “Paganism, art, and fashion” issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies argues that books and television series based on historical witchcraft make it too safe and fail to portray “the genuine strangeness of witches and magic users in all periods and cultures.”
The authors, she argues, focus too much on female empowerment and not enough on how “early modern witches are much stranger and much more disconcerting than anything likely to be found at Hogwarts or in Narnia or Rivendell.”
Thus the “getting it wrong” of her title not an attack on contemporary Pagan-themed literature — she admits its creative energy— but the suggestion that if you think you are doing something “transgressive” now, you ought to look at some primary sources. And since she teaches at Oxford, she has some snarky things to say about how her university is portrayed in Discovery of Witches on TV.((Purkiss’ exclamation over the fictional Professor Bishop, ‘That’s not how this works!” might equally well have been applied to the long-running British Inspector Morse mystery series, set in Oxford town, which portrayed Oxford dons as bludgeoned on an almost-weekly basis. Apparently that is how positions are opened up for new hires. Perhaps Bishop arrived immediately after a murder.))
M. Z. Bradley, she points out, was more influenced by Starhawk than by anything on ancient Pagan religion. “We tend to want goddesses with moral characteristics derived from Christianity and from the Enlightenment, and matriarchal societies with characteristics derived from Christian socialism and even Marxism. All this excludes the bitter truths embodied in Pagan myths and ideology.”
It’s not that we cannot enjoy Diana Bishop, heriditary witch and professor, but that, as Purkiss is anxious to point out, the real thing was even stranger than the “anondyne” modern re-creations.
Me, I just took one semester’s worth. I was a little overawed by my roommate, who sucked down calligraphy like oxygen and went on to become a professional calligrapher and graphic designer in San Francisco. I was a toddler scribbling on the wall with a crayon compared to him.
I once stayed a couple of nights at Carl Weschcke’s house, when he lived out in Marine on St. Croix, and on the drive back and forth to the old Llewellyn Publications office in St. Paul I heard a lot of his stories — but I am sure there are more!
To the countless people he inspired, Carl Llewellyn Weschcke will forever be known as the Father of the New Age. This vivid and entertaining book tells Carl’s story, from a childhood influenced by his Spiritualist grandfather to his early days as a member and president of the Minnesota NAACP. Discover the fascinating account of how he transformed Llewellyn Publications from a small publisher of astrology pamphlets into the largest and most important publisher of body, mind, and spirit literature. Read about Carl’s relationships with the most influential thinkers and teachers of the counterculture, and his public Wiccan handfasting and enduring relationship with his wife, Sandra. Written by longtime friend Melanie Marquis?and including photos and contributions from authors, artists, family, friends, and collaborators?this is a book that looks back at the kindling of a movement while empowering fellow travelers on their journey forward.
When people talk about the history of Paganism, most of the emphasis is on the groups, leaders, and inspirational writers. Carl did some writing too, but I focus on his accomplishments as publisher and facilitator. He added Wiccan and then other Pagan titles to what had been an astrology-focused list. He threw parties. He published Gnostica, his “magalog” (magazine + catalog) with people like Isaac Bonewits (briefly editor) and Robert Anton Wilson writing for it. His Gnosticon festivals, along with the Church of Wicca’s Samhain Seminars (both of them hotel-based conventions) were among the first large Pagan gatherings where people actually met practitioners from other groups beyond their own.
According to Marquis, interviewed on the website Voyage Denver, Carl was “an absolutely fascinating man who took a small mail-order company of astrology pamphlets and built it into a multi-million dollar publishing house focused on New Age and occult literature. He was also a lifelong student of the occult sciences. and a dedicated activist and engaging speaker and outspoken leader during the civil rights era.”
The show continued after her death, but no more: WBAI has shut down. Apparently the “listener-supported” thing no longer worked for them. And their website links to articles about Margot no longer work either.
In the ’60s and ’70s, the station had been a platform for the counterculture, broadcasting everything from Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” to George Carlin’s “Filthy Words.”
More recently, it hit financial turbulence, laying off nearly two-thirds of its staff in August 2013. In November of that year, musicians including Pete Seeger staged a benefit concert for WBAI at the Cutting Room.
In March 2014, after falling $1.8 million behind on rent in the Empire State Building, the station received an emergency loan to prevent the building’s holding company from seizing its assets. It then relocated to 4 Times Square.
Pacifica said Monday it would relaunch WBAI once it’s able to create “a sustainable financial structure for the station.” Until then, it said WBAI’s signal would carry “a network source called Pacifica Across America.”
I got this email last week from a publishing firm that I had never heard of. I did my due diligence — I looked at their website and read an article about them from Publishers Weekly. Apparently their nonfiction business model is to do deep data analysis and see what is trending, then commission books about those things.
Apparently one of those trending things is Paganism. Yeah, I know, surprise surprise.
So I got this letter, and I wonder who else got it too. I’m still chuckling at the first sentence:
I hope this finds you in a joyously supernatural or naturalistic environment. My name is [redacted] and I help manage acquisitions for [name of company], a nonfiction book publisher that is the fastest growing in the world. Given your incredible passion for all that encompasses the pagan realm, with a strong background as a Pagan writer as well, I thought you would be interested in potentially authoring a new book we seek to publish.
I am still trying to sort that out. If I were in a “supernatural environment,” would I be reading email? Wouldn’t I be feasting with the Fairie Queen or something? As for “naturalistic,” that usually a term in art criticism: “closely resembling the object imitated.”((“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”)) Maybe she meant that I was sitting with my Power Book under the pine trees— a nice image, but not how I work.
Let’s leave aside my “incredible passion” (sweetie, you don’t know me that well) and the inconsistent capitalization of Pagan/pagan. Also, “fastest growing” should be hyphenated. Anyhow, I bet she sent out a batch of these, don’t you?
Thank you, [name redacted], for brightening my week. But I have too much on my plate to write another “Paganism 101” book.
Yes, that is coffee and wine together. And a candle.
This is my world this week, as I wrap up a tardy issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies — as soon as a certain person OK’s my copyediting job on her article and I can send it to the layout editor with the rest. Articles in this issue come from Russia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic,((Are we supposed to say “Czechia” now?))Britain, and the United States.
On the right, Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson’s edited collection, Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe — the article that I was editing referenced it quite a bit. And of course a back issue of The Pomegranate for those “How did I do X last time?” questions.
Male evening grosbeak (Cornell University).
But there are advantages to working at home, like being pestered by dogs, particularly Wendy the foster dog, an excitable German wirehaired pointer.((She has been living here since March, but now that her owner is out of the hospital and feeling better, he hopes to pick her up next month.))
She clatters into my study: “Come quick! come quick!” then rushes through the open door onto the veranda.”Look! Birds! Birds! We must act!”
“No, Wendy,” I say, “those are evening grosbeaks. We are not hunting them.”
“Ha!” she says, and the next morning on dog walk,she dashes into the brush and comes out with a very very dead grosbeak, which she carries proudly into the house.
Retrieving birds is what she does — can’t punish her for that! And she knows it.
From Vicki Steward’s blog Normal For Glastonbury: Life in the Oddest Town in England, 
