Up and down in Pagan publishing

Lawyer and Wiccan author Phyllis Curott has stirred up a lot of dust in the past couple of months with dark hints of a conspiracy to suppress Pagan books.

Some see too many “Wicca 101” books or not enough editorial integrity.

Elsewhere, Kensington/Citadel laid off the editor in charge of its Pagan titles, ostensibly because the market had cooled, I am told.

And a literary agent whom I know slightly, who represents several Pagan writers, opined, “The market for pagan books has not only cooled, it’s gone into the deep freeze. There was a glut of these books because the mainstream of society was hearing about Wicca and Paganism (mostly through media like the movie The Craft and tv shows) and wanted to buy books to learn more about what this religion was all about. After 9/11, we saw the vast majority of these people lose interest in new spirituality and return to the safety and security of the traditional religion that they’d grown up with.”

I agree with her that the publishing market is cyclical. And 9/11 changed things. In 2000, I walked around the huge book exhibit at the AAR-SBL annual meeting with Graham Harvey, who commented on the growing number of academic titles on Paganism.

The following November, every publisher had dragged out whatever they had that somehow related to Islam and displayed those books most prominently.

Paganism seemed forgotten. Yet it was at that same meeting that Fritz Muntean, the founding editor of The Pomegranate, and I connected with our new publisher, to name just one development.

As far as Wicca and other forms of Paganism are concerned, it’s good to make haste slowly.

The tide of scholarly books is slowly rising: 2006 and 2007 will see significant publications. And in terms of significant books of the past, Margot Adler is reworking Drawing Down the Moon, her groundbreaking survey of the American Pagan scene that was first published in 1979 and revised in the 1980s. I look forward to seeing it.

Tags: Paganism, Pagan publishing

Where to donate for earthquake relief

“California Yankee” has a list of organizations helping victims of the Kashmir earthquake. Most accept online donations.

Tag: Kashmir Earthquake

Survey for Canadian Pagans

Unlike the United States, Canada does collect religious information in its census, and Canadian Paganisms are growing quickly, says Síân Reid, a social scientist at Carleton University in Ottawa.

She invites Canadian Pagans to take her online survey.

It is my intention to continue to collect information about neopagans every ten years, in order to track changes in the composition of the movement. This research benefits neopagans by making available systematically collected information about the movement that can be used to respond to anti-pagan discourse, as well as to inform further studies of the movement.

Dr. Reid has published in The Pomegranate and is a legitimate researcher.

And dig the maple leaf version of the traditional Wiccan emblem.

Tags: Paganism, Canada

St. Jude’s rejects Pagans’ donation

A twist in the story about Pagans on the eastern Colorado prairie who wanted to hold a benefit party to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital

The hospital doesn’t want the money. It’s “too politicized.” They sent a cease-and-desist letter instead.

“”I don’t think any other religious organization would be treated like this,” said the organizer.

I agree: who looks bad, the Pagans who overcame some local opposition or the hospital, which just ends up looking bigoted?

The money raised is going to a charity for elderly residents of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota instead.

Tags:
St. Jude’s , Paganism

“Pseudo-factual claptrap . . . half-baked historical revisionism”

The Da Vinci Code movie is viewed with alarm.

It’s nice to be a Pagan on the sidelines. Heck, we’re still in the parking lot eating chile off the tailgate. Then we’ll enter the stadium with our lap robes and hip flasks and watch the game. I’ve got fifty bucks on Dan Brown.

Tag: Da Vinci Code

This post is filler

I don’t normally let a week go by without blogging, but thing happened, like being asked by a magazine-editor friend to write a 2,000-word “think piece” on the dilemmas of a being an “evacuee”–from a forest fire in my case, but with obvious relevance to Katrina and Rita.

That took up last Sunday afternoon, which meant I was behind on reading student work . . . and it snowballed.

I also received the “author’s marketing questionnaire” for Her Hidden Children, which is a good sign, and I’m scrambling for more photos. If you have any photos of key figures in American Paganism in the 1950s-1970s (or even earlier–Gleb Botkin, anyone), let me know. This weekend, meanwhile, I have to work on the questionnaire.

This Saturday I will take some nature-writing students on a mini-writing marathon in the SE Colorado canyon country. We won’t be visiting any of the “Colorado ogham” sites, but we will be near enough that I plan to bring Bill McGlone’s photo book of SE Colorado rock art, which includes some examples. (Quick overview of Ogham writing.)

Witchcraft and the welfare state

Dutch society has entered a period of self-examination after the murder of film director Theo Van Gogh. Many said that Dutch ideals of religious tolerance had been exploited by Muslim extremists.

On the other hand, the government will fund Witchcraft lessons.

Tags: Witchcraft Netherlands

Celto-Pagan Music

I am not exactly the go-to guy on Pagan music. Jason Pitzl-Waters, who is an actual DJ, has much broader knowledge, and once he has finished re-doing it, you should drop by his music site, check the links, and download his “Darker Shade of Pagan” mp3 files.

Being more a historian, I have been thinking about the Pagan singer-songwriter Gwydion Pendderwen (1946-1982). (The “dd” is pronounced like a dipthong “th,” by the way. That was an SCA name that became Pagan name, and Gwydion is one of a relatively short list of people I know who became their Pagan names in almost all areas of life.)

Gwydion and I were friends for the last five years of his life; this thumbnail photo was taken near Victor, Colo., when he was conducting one of his “faerie shaman” rituals. The Faerie Shaman was the name of his second album, and he is shown here in his performance garb.

Now Serpentine Music is planning a reissue of his recorded music, and owner Anne Hill asked me to write a contribution to the liner notes, which sent me spinning back to the mid-1970s when his Songs for the Old Religion was the first professionally produced and nationally distributed Pagan album–and what a thrill it was to put it on the turntable.

There is so much more now. As I mentioned earlier, some music-lovers have gotten tired of the harps-and-folk guitars approach to Pagan music, and that’s OK. I like trance music too.

But out on the misty edge of British Columbia, that Celtic/World Beat harp-driven sound still feels right. There the group Jaiya has issued two CDs with Pagan calendrical themes: Firedance: Songs for Winter Solstice and Beltane: Songs for the Green Time.

Both blend new and traditional tunes. Both, to borrow Robert Graves’ summation of the Theme, deal with the single subject of true poetry, Life and Death.

Tags: Pagan music, Gwydion Pendderwen, Jaiya

“Prairie Muffins” disdain birth control, “have aprons and know how to use them,” and “do not idolize Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) or Louisa May Alcott (Little Women); while they may enjoy aspects of home life presented in their books, PMs understand that the latent humanism and feminism in these stories and in the lives of these women is not worthy of emulation.”

It’s all in the Prairie Muffin Manifesto.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was a dangerous secular humanist. Who would have thought it?

(Via God and Consequences.)

Tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa May Alcott