What says ‘Pagan Studies’ to you?

Now that my editor has the latest revision of Her Hidden Children on his desk, he is finally ready to talk about cover designs. But what kind of cover is right for a Pagan Studies book?

Designers seem to go one of these ways:

1. A standing stone, as in Michael York’s Pagan Theology.

2. A crowd of Pagans, as in the one edition of Drawing Down the Moon that showed a festival at the Stonehenge replica in Washington state, or as in Researching Paganisms, on the right of your screen.

3. A flowing-haired young female Witch with sword or athame, as on Susan Greenwood’s Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld, not to mention quite a few others.

4. A close-up photo: Greenwood’s Nature of Magic got a much better photographic treatment.

5. A row of cryptic symbols that are not explained, as on Graham Harvey’s and my The Paganism Reader, which apparently signifies spiritual diversity.

6. A Pagan-looking illustration, as in Wendy Griffin’s anthology Daughters of the Goddess.

7. A tree, something like the oak on the Pagan Studies consultation site.

8. About twenty years ago, I self-published a collection called Nine Apples: A Neopagan Anthology (sorry, no Web link). Its cover was a photographic still life: a stoneware chalice, a gleaming athame, and nine apples, one sliced to show the “star”. I still like it, but perhaps it is a little too static.

9. A shot of the Moon amid ragged clouds–but my editor does not wish to make an association to the Llewellyn Publications logo!

At least it’s fun to brainstorm this one.