Tag Archives: publishing

Lo, It Is Written . . .

I came home from the post office this afternoon to find M. typing on her PowerBook at the dining room table.

“Cleanse your mind of impure thoughts,” I said. “Assume an attitude of reverence, for the new Holy Book has come.

And then I sat the carton on the sofa and lifted it out: The Chicago Manual of Style, Sixteenth Edition.

Only editors’ hearts beat more quickly when they read text like, “We now recommend, for example, a single approach to ellipses—a three- or four-dot method (chapter 13, where we also explain the European preference for bracketed ellipses.)”

Or “More attention has been given to the role of software for manuscript editors—for example, with the addition of a manuscript cleanup checklist intended to benefit authors and editors alike.”

There are indeed times when it is good to have Authority.

And for those needing only modest amounts of Authority, I recommend the Online Citation Quick Guide, covering both humanities style (footnotes) and author-date style.

The Most ‘Snarkalicious’ Antiphon

I was going to post Mistress Elvira’s video response to the Christine O’Donnell “I’m not a witch. I’m you” video, but Apuleius at Egregores has a much better round-up, so go watch it there. (Other video responses were corralled at The Wild Hunt a few days back.)

Synchronistically, I was just checking something about the original Apuleius for a book proposal that I am writing. Yes, with the American Academy of Religion annual meeting only a week away, I suddenly feel impelled to show up with something.

Nikki Bado, my co-editor in the Equinox Pagan Studies book series, and I will be meeting with at least one author and one co-editor of an edited collection (not an “anthology,” properly, since it is all or mostly new material).

Elders Down the Memory Hole

All summer I have been editing and laying out a biography of the American Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). I just sent the galleys to the writer, a professor in Arizona, and am working on my own corrections as well.

There have been the usual hassles—missing “essential” photos, notes that did not match the text, etc.—but we are working through all of that.

I mentioned the project on Facebook once, and got a response from a former student who was raised in the Assemblies of God, one of the larger Pentecostal denominations (the largest, says Wikipedia).

She had heard about Aimee when she was younger, but thought of her as a “scary” person.

Having lived with Aimee’s biography for six months, there is much that I could say about her, but “scary” is not a word that I would use. (I sent the student a PDF of the chapter about Aimee’s revival tour through Denver in the early 1920s.)

Do Pentecostal Christians send their elders down the memory hole as effectively as Pagans do?

Or does that process happen in all religions that do not have formal processes of canonizing saints or the equivalent—something that fixes them in memory?

I am still waiting for a serious academic biography of Gerald Gardner, who is after all the founder of a world religion, now that Wicca is in India, Brazil, Germany, and other places.

No doubt many young Wiccans have  either (a) not heard of him or (b) think that he was some “scary” old guy.

Philip Heselton (interviewed here), the author of two earlier books about Gardner, is supposed to have a new biography coming out from Thoth, although as of today I cannot find it on their fancy-but-unsearchable website.

I judged the earlier books as being strong on research and legwork, but weak on analysis and contextualizing. Credulous, even.  There is probably still room for a biography written by someone with a background in discussing new religious movements.

Meanwhile, Oberon Zell is at work on some new encylopediac work about “wizards of the world.” He has been trying to convince me to a write an entry about Gleb Botkin. Now there is someone who should be kept from sliding down the memory hole of Pagan history as well.

Fate Magazine Headed for the Other Side

I am preparing myself for life without Fate magazine.

Since 1948, the  digest-sized monthly—later a bi-monthly—has been a reliable (at least in the publishing sense) source for ghost stories, UFO reports, speculative archaeology, Fortean news, and other manifestations of the weird and unexpected.

All viewpoints were welcomed, so articles often completely contradicted each other.

Often the most interesting stories came as reports from the readers of paranormal experiences, encounters of the recently dead, and so forth. There was a certain sameness to these, but perhaps that meant they were true—or else it meant that everyone followed the same cultural template. Or both.

Llewellyn Publications bought Fate in 1988, perhaps hoping to make it what Gnostica, their earlier house organ, had been in the late 1970s—a mix of articles with ads for Llewellyn books.

Some of the long-time readers complained then that Fate was becoming too Wiccan. That is one thing you would learn from all those reader reports: quite a few Americans follow a home-grown metaphysical religion that happily calls itself Christian while including ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and all the rest.

When Llewellyn pulled the plug, ownership passed to a former employee, Phyllis Galde, who kept Fate going, although eventually reducing publishing frequency to bi-monthly.

This spring, it occurred to me that the “bi-monthy” had turned into semi-annually. It seemed like a long time since an issue had arrived in my mail box.

More time went by, and then I got an email saying that the Sept.-Oct. 2009, Nov.-Dec. 2009, and Jan.-Feb. 2010 issues were available—as PDF files. Eventually they put something on the web site too.

So I had the choice of reading them on the screen or printing them at my own expense if I wanted to read them in bed before turning out the light in hopes of a dream of Bigfoot. 😉

The magazine death pool is so close you can smell the fetid waters.

Fate’s blog keeps putting up new entries, but discussion of the magazine’s own fate is oddly missing.

The economics must be rough. Perhaps this is a case of flat advertising revenues versus rising printing and mailing costs.

PDF files are not the answer, and a Web version of the magazine would have to be re-thought from the ground up.

Then there is the whole question of shorter attention spans and lower reading comprehension on the Web (which is why so many blog comments are so stupid, particularly on the political blogs—people just read one phrase and start ranting before digesting the whole little essay).

But if Fate goes under, popular metaphysical religion will have lost an enduring voice.

Margot Adler’s Vampire Reading List

Pagan journalist Margot Adler offers an NPR piece on “do-good vampires” along with a book list.

She tells me that she has now read eighty-nine contemporary vampire books, as of this week. I am waiting for the definitive review essay.

Thinking Magically about Corporations—and Plants

Writer Dale Pendell muses about the idea of a corporation as a magical creation.

Pendell is the author of the three best-ever books on psychoactive and entheogenic plants: Pharmako/Gnostis, Pharmako/Dynamis, and Pharmako/Poeia. New editions are forthcoming from North Atlantic Books.

Here is his Web site.

Wicca as the (Untrustworthy) Other, Again

For environmental news of the West, I have subscribed since the 1980s to High Country News, a biweekly magazine.

For the first time since a rancher named Tom Bell started the magazine in Lander, Wyoming in 1970, HCN has jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Wiccan snark.

In a blog post called “Witches and Rifles,” editor Jonathan Thompson last month took on the well-covered issues of the Air Force Academy’s earth-religions worship circle and managed to blend it with the other well-covered issue of the Bible verse coded into rifle sight systems made by military contractor Trijicon:

COLORADO

Should the Urantians face persecution for their religious beliefs, they could always consider buying real estate in another part of the West, namely Colorado Springs. There, the U.S. Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worshipping area for “Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers,” according to the Associated Press. The academy has long been criticized for erasing the line dividing church and state in a heavily evangelical Christian-leaning manner.

It was recently revealed that the military had been using rifle scopes that were engraved with biblical references by the manufacturer. No news yet on whether any future firearms will be engraved with secret Wiccan code.

Jonathan Thompson’s attitudes are typical of what you find in most elite media outlets as well as academia, however. It is not Wicca that is suspicious—all religious affiliation is suspicious to people like him.

Having worked in both journalism and academia, here is my quick guide towards religion as typically understood by inhabitants of both those worlds (such as Jonathan Thompson):

  • Jews are generally all right, particularly if they write for Tikkun magazine, but Israelis are scary.
  • Christians are at best hypocrites. At worst, you can expect them to fortify themselves in rural compounds and commit incest—-and those are the Presbyterians.
  • The Catholic Church, however, is easy to cover (except for the parts that are in Latin) for anyone experienced in big-city “machine” politics, such as Democrats in Chicago.
  • Buddhists are all right if they are poets. Ethnic Buddhists (for example, Vietnamese) are invisible.
  • Hindus, Sikhs, ethnic Taoists, etc., are generally invisible.
  • Muslims must be treated carefully because they might explode.
  • And Pagans? They are easy to ridicule because, after all, people like Jonathan Thompson, editor of High Country News, don’t know any.

Somehow I think that Tom Bell, the old rancher, might actually have been more accepting. But I never had the privilege of meeting him.

Too Much Pagan Writing is Too Bland

I wish Pagan writers would stop giving advice and writing bland how-to articles.

A lot of what makes Pagan magazine publishing is its bias towards advice-giving. That and poor graphic design, in some cases.

Look at Circle magazine, for example. Circle reminds me too much of the bland publications of cookie-cutter financial advice that mutual-fund companies, credit unions, etc. send out.

I feel as though I have read almost everything in it before. “How to use your cauldron.” “The Celtic legend of Whatever.”

I tend to skim the “Passages” section and the “Lady Liberty League Report,” and then it goes on the shelf.

Its graphic design, unfortunately, reflects its early 1980s incarnation as a tabloid newspaper.  Boring. When they shrank the size to 8 x 10, it did not get the makeover it desperately needed.

Of course, there is a rule in commercial magazine publishing that after two years every topic is new again.

But what is missing is personality. The Cauldron, which is still more in the “zine” class (originally it was typed and reproduced by mimeograph on the cheapest paper) shows the personality of its editor, Mike Howard.

American Pagan writers seem too afraid of being “personal.” Instead, they churn out bland how-to stuff.

When I edited some books for Llewellyn in the 1990s, “too personal” was the kiss of death—the term they used when they wanted to reject a piece of writing. They probably would have called the The Confessions of Aleister Crowley “too personal.”

The new Witches & Pagans at least has columnists. I turn to Kenaz Finan or Judy Harrow or R.J. Stewart before tackling the main features. I want stories and the “too personal” more than I want the how-to stuff. Sometimes I even get it.

But their Web site needs updating. Thanks to the Web, publishing a magazine is now twice as much work as before.

I thought Thorn was cool, so I subscribed and promoted it, only to see it go “online only,” which most likely is the kiss of (slow) death.

The nascent Pagan Newswire Collective that Jason Pitzl-Waters is organizing has a worthwhile purpose: to make it easier for Pagans to define Paganism in the media marketplace. (Jason’s own blogging is newsy, which makes it a daily read.)

Where the PNC will find outlets I am not yet sure. All journalism is in turmoil right now, and journalism about religion even more so—even though so many news stories have unexplored or unexplained religious dimensions.

Meanwhile, I go on looking for good writing that happens to be Pagan, rather than “Pagan writing.”

Some Newish Online Pagan-Related Magazines

• The new Pagan Edge offers “lifestyles and passions of the modern Pagan.” The special subscription price is good until January 10th.

• Penton has been published in South Africa for a while. They are up to issue 45 and have a nice, straightforward navigation system.

• Sannion links to a possibly forthcoming online magazine about ancient Egypt.

• Through January 19th, Patheos’ “Public Square” is devoted to “Religion and the Body.”

Fate Magazine Reanimated

When pre-writing the blog post on dining above the dead (something best done while walking the dogs), I was thinking about how it was perfect for Fate magazine.

Digression 1: Dog-walking is not all that meditative, because Something Always Happens, like this morning when they charged off through nine-inch-deep snow to try to catch some wild turkeys.

Digression 2: If the reporter were on the ball, she would re-write her story for Fate or another magazine. Get paid twice for the same work—that is the secret of freelancing.

So it occurred to me, crossing the gully between the county road and my house on Tuesday night pre-bed dog walk, that I had not seen a copy of Fate since last spring. Had it been sucked into the magazine death pool?

I checked the Web site, however, and it promised a new issue soon.

Editor-in-chief Phyllis Galde tells me, “The July/Aug is at the printer, and we will turn around immediately and get the Sept./Oct. one printed.”

She promises an “awesome” new Web site but complained that the Web designer and the printing plant crew were all sick with the flu.

So Fate is reanimated, I hope. I miss it. Where else can you get a good ghost story?

The graphic has nothing to do with the magazine. Just some Halloween cheer. You can get it on a T-shirt.