Newest Pomegranate Online with Some Free Content

Issue 13.2 of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies has been posted online, while the print version is in production and should be on its way to subscribers oon.

Two essays are available for free download: Ronald Hutton on “Revisionism and Counter-Revisionism in Pagan History” and Tamara Ingels on Contemporary City Shaman Jóska Soós Included in the New Antwerp MAS Museum.

Book reviews may also be downloaded, but not all hyperlinks are working yet.

UPDATE: You should be able download PDF files of the book reviews if you click on the word “PDF.”

2 thoughts on “Newest Pomegranate Online with Some Free Content

  1. T.L.

    I very much enjoyed Hutton’s article. He writes in a way that is very easy to understand, what he says makes a lot of sense, and it makes me want to learn more. There are just two things that I have wondered about since reading it—I am not being oppositional at all—but just some questions I have.

    Professor Hutton says indications are that modern Paganism sprung from the urban areas and the elite, and not from the farmers or peasants. But urban areas produce virtually all of the historical data that scholars evaluate, in the form of poetry, plays, letters, biographies, academic studies, newspaper articles, government documents, etc. The farmers and peasants did not produce an equivalent amount or type of written data that might reveal who they were—I assume because they were too busy working hard in the fields and no one really cared about what they had to say, and/or they were not educated enough to put their own experiences into the written word. When information does come indirectly from the lower classes (like Isobel Gowdie’s testimony, or Leland’s or MacRitchie’s subjects) it is deemed unreliable. It is deemed unreliable because there is a middleman, who is the scholar or interviewer, choosing the questions and filtering the information. Are there any reliable documents that come directly from the lower classes to reveal their beliefs—that is deemed reliable? Is there an inherent bias by educators against the lower classes? Does it question their honesty or their ability to express themselves—or is it simply the middleman problem?

    Second, there are good witches in fairy-tales (and I am sure everyone is aware of this—not just me). The fairy godmother in Cinderella changes the shapes of objects (and at least in the Disney movie carries a magic wand and speaks with the animals); and there is also a good witch in the Wizard of Oz—but that is a recent story. I assume there are other good witches in other fairy-tales (but I do not know them).

    For personal reasons I have an interest in (and curiosity about) Traditional or Hereditary Witchcraft, even though I have absolutely no interest in proving unbroken lineages that go back to Antiquity, super-secret initiations, or power struggles between rival factions.

    It seems like someone (perhaps a graduate student) could use the power of the Internet to gather information from “America” or “the world” about family traditions. (I do not have the training to do this myself.) A graduate student might make a web site that contains an instrument, (which I guess would be a questionnaire), asking where, when, what (folk magic or belief system), double belief, how credible is your source, etc., etc., etc. etc. Responders would remain anonymous (so they would respond). Statistics could correct for dishonesty. Maybe a pattern might emerge, going back perhaps four or five generations, that would explain something about the phenomenon of Hereditary Witchcraft (in America) that seems to exist with some people. Finally, as part of this, perhaps there could be some sort of Internet “meeting place” where these people could get together and talk to one another—(but this would probably be impossible—because of the super-secrecy).

    To the moderator: I can’t get my website URL to work. When I enter it, my comment does not pop up. If it is okay to publish it, would you try to put it in for me? Otherwise, just leave it blank.

    https://sites.google.com/site/paganmythontheamericanfrontier/

  2. Pingback: Historians vs. History

Comments are closed.