Researching the motif of the “flying ointment” in the early modern period for my paper for the Sophia Centre conference on consciousness, I had to turn to the Malleus Maleficarum, that lovely book on witch-hunting (and on the general female predisposition to evil) written by two fifteenth-century Dominican monks.

Studying the section on “Why Superstition is chiefly found in Women,” I suddenly realized that my recent attention to Classical Rhetoric was paying off. What I might earlier have dismissed as mere wordiness was actually the use of one of those good old techniques of developing argument from the use language itself, such as dissoi logoi or Aristotle’s “common topic of degree.”

Knowing what the monks (trained, no doubt, on Aristotle and Quintillian) were doing, I found myself more willing to sit back and enjoy their verbal display–honed over hours of preaching out loud, no doubt–despite my disgust with their larger world view.

Basement ritual

. . . and other memories. Yeah, this sounds familiar–and for a bookstore too. Thanks to Life on the Mississippi for the link.

Estonian shamanism site

With thanks to the dashing Odious and Peculiar, a link to a site on Estonian shamanism created by Aado Lintrop. Most of the links are in English, some in Estonian.

But Lintrop links to the dreaded Michael Harner’s site. Quick, call the Culture Police! (No, not them; I mean the ones that you might find down the corridor in the anthropology department.) Arrest him for felonious cultural appropriation and misdemeanor neoshamanism!

Nature religions in Australia

Nature religions are growing fast, according to this article from the Christian Research Association.

Consider the alternative.

Editing Canadians

As The Pomegranate changes from being a Canadian journal with a Canadian editor to being published in Britain with an American editor, issues of spelling, punctuation, and usage arise. Contributors come from those three nations and others as well, including some for whom English is not their native tongue.

Having taught composition, rhetoric, and advanced nonfiction writing at the community college and university level, as well as having worked on newspapers and magazines, I think that I have a good grasp of formal American usage.

Canadian writer Stephen Henighan comments that his fellow Canadians veer inconsistently between American and British spellings and wonders if their inconsistency is not partly ideological: “A conscious move away from British spelling toward American forms might be interpreted as an ideological statement in favour of integration into U.S. culture?and to some extent the promotion of U.S. spelling in Alberta and British Columbia may be seen in this way. ”

The Pomgranate’s British copyeditor, an advanced member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders in the UK, admits to having given “considerable thought” to the matter and quotes another SfEP member as saying, “There is a whole chapter about spelling in the Editors’ Association of Canada’s style guide, Editing Canadian English. The tone is rather despairing. Basically, there is no such thing as standard Canadian spelling–it is a hybrid. Choice of spelling style can be determined by the intended market, the client, the subject matter or type of publication.”

The copyeditor reminds me that the contributor guidelines specify either British or American spelling and punctuation, consistent within each article if not for the journal as a whole. What this comes down to is that I can leave Canadians their “labour” and “honour” and otherwise Americanize [not -ise] their writing. Probably no one will notice or object. Hegemony marches on.

Editing Canadians

As The Pomegranate changes from being a Canadian journal with a Canadian editor to being published in Britain with an American editor, issues of spelling, punctuation, and usage arise. Contributors come from those three nations and others as well, including some for whom English is not their native tongue.

Having taught composition, rhetoric, and advanced nonfiction writing at the community college and university level, as well as having worked on newspapers and magazines, I think that I have a good grasp of formal American usage.

Canadian writer Stephen Henighan comments that his fellow Canadians veer inconsistently between American and British spellings and wonders if their inconsistency is not partly ideological: “A conscious move away from British spelling toward American forms might be interpreted as an ideological statement in favour of integration into U.S. culture?and to some extent the promotion of U.S. spelling in Alberta and British Columbia may be seen in this way. ”

The Pomgranate’s British copyeditor, an advanced member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders in the UK, admits to having given “considerable thought” to the matter and quotes another SfEP member as saying, “There is a whole chapter about spelling in the Editors’ Association of Canada’s style guide, Editing Canadian English. The tone is rather despairing. Basically, there is no such thing as standard Canadian spelling–it is a hybrid. Choice of spelling style can be determined by the intended market, the client, the subject matter or type of publication.”

The copyeditor reminds me that the contributor guidelines specify either British or American spelling and punctuation, consistent within each article if not for the journal as a whole. What this comes down to is that I can leave Canadians their “labour” and “honour” and otherwise Americanize [not -ise] their writing. Probably no one will notice or object. Hegemony marches on.

Editing Canadians

As The Pomegranate changes from being a Canadian journal with a Canadian editor to being published in Britain with an American editor, issues of spelling, punctuation, and usage arise. Contributors come from those three nations and others as well, including some for whom English is not their native tongue.

Having taught composition, rhetoric, and advanced nonfiction writing at the community college and university level, as well as having worked on newspapers and magazines, I think that I have a good grasp of formal American usage.

Canadian writer Stephen Henighan comments that his fellow Canadians veer inconsistently between American and British spellings and wonders if their inconsistency is not partly ideological: “A conscious move away from British spelling toward American forms might be interpreted as an ideological statement in favour of integration into U.S. culture?and to some extent the promotion of U.S. spelling in Alberta and British Columbia may be seen in this way. ”

The Pomgranate’s British copyeditor, an advanced member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders in the UK, admits to having given “considerable thought” to the matter and quotes another SfEP member as saying, “There is a whole chapter about spelling in the Editors’ Association of Canada’s style guide, Editing Canadian English. The tone is rather despairing. Basically, there is no such thing as standard Canadian spelling–it is a hybrid. Choice of spelling style can be determined by the intended market, the client, the subject matter or type of publication.”

The copyeditor reminds me that the contributor guidelines specify either British or American spelling and punctuation, consistent within each article if not for the journal as a whole. What this comes down to is that I can leave Canadians their “labour” and “honour” and otherwise Americanize [not -ise] their writing. Probably no one will notice or object. Hegemony marches on.

Editing Canadians

As The Pomegranate changes from being a Canadian journal with a Canadian editor to being published in Britain with an American editor, issues of spelling, punctuation, and usage arise. Contributors come from those three nations and others as well, including some for whom English is not their native tongue.

Having taught composition, rhetoric, and advanced nonfiction writing at the community college and university level, as well as having worked on newspapers and magazines, I think that I have a good grasp of formal American usage.

Canadian writer Stephen Henighan comments that his fellow Canadians veer inconsistently between American and British spellings and wonders if their inconsistency is not partly ideological: “A conscious move away from British spelling toward American forms might be interpreted as an ideological statement in favour of integration into U.S. culture?and to some extent the promotion of U.S. spelling in Alberta and British Columbia may be seen in this way. ”

The Pomgranate’s British copyeditor, an advanced member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders in the UK, admits to having given “considerable thought” to the matter and quotes another SfEP member as saying, “There is a whole chapter about spelling in the Editors’ Association of Canada’s style guide, Editing Canadian English. The tone is rather despairing. Basically, there is no such thing as standard Canadian spelling–it is a hybrid. Choice of spelling style can be determined by the intended market, the client, the subject matter or type of publication.”

The copyeditor reminds me that the contributor guidelines specify either British or American spelling and punctuation, consistent within each article if not for the journal as a whole. What this comes down to is that I can leave Canadians their “labour” and “honour” and otherwise Americanize [not -ise] their writing. Probably no one will notice or object. Hegemony marches on.

Witchcraft and folklore

Folklorist Sabina Magliocco, an anthropologist at California State University-Northridge and a previous contributo to The Pomegranate, has a new book out, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America.

From the publisher’s catalog:

Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North America, Sabina Magliocco reveals how the disciplines of anthropology and folklore were fundamental to the early development of Neo-Paganism and the revival of witchcraft.

Magliocco analyzes magical practices and rituals of Neo-Paganism as art forms that reanimate the cosmos and stimulate the imagination of its practitioners. She discusses rituals that are put together using materials from a variety of cultural and historical sources, and examines the cultural politics surrounding the movement–how the Neo-Pagan movement creates identity by contrasting itself against the dominant culture and how it can be understood in the context of early twenty-first-century identity politics.

Paul Bremer as Pilate, 2

Ah, the bloggers at Crooked Timber had indeed noted the parallel.