Sarah Pike’s new book, New Age and Neopagan Religions in America, just landed on my desk with instructions to review it for Nova Religio. Given that many contemporary Pagans are ambivalent at best about the “New Age” movement, it will be interesting to see how she sorts out and categorizes attitudes and practices. (Her first was Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves, which concentrates on the festival scene.)
Also anticipated: Nikki Bado-Fralick’s Coming to the Edge of the Circle. (Oxford U. Press’s US web site does not seem to be working today.)
Meanwhile, the AltaMira Press Pagan Studies series has signed Douglas Cowan to write on Pagan material culture, even the spoofy stuff, like “Secret Spells Barbie” (right). Doug was last seen studying ten years’ worth of Llewellyn datebooks.
Speaking of Llewellyn, they are moving into postmodern magical studies. Soon you will be able deconstruct symbol systems, foreground phallocentric magical artifacts, and examine hegemonic discourse in sigils and defixios. Penetrate the panoptic metanarrative of divination and and create a praxis of postcolonial decentered womanist occult networking!
No, the best thing up in Minnesota is company president Carl Weschcke’s new blog. He is writing sporadic entries on such topics as his own family history of occultism–interesting stuff.
Not too many years ago, some in the company despaired that Carl would even take to e-mail. He is, after all, well past 60, and Llewellyn’s work force tends to be youthful, since turnover is high. And now he’s blogging. Keep it up, Carl.