“Season of the Witch(crap), Part 1” here. Continuing . . . • One more “high” priestess joke, and you’re out of here. From the Colorado Springs Independent, the weekly that gets all the cannabis advertising because the chain-owned daily paper won’t touch it: “Meet Colorado’s High Priestess of Cannabis.” Yes, it’s that favorite form of …
I am reading one of the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child “Agent Prendergast” mysteries right now ,Crimson Shore. Pendergast is a New Orleans-raised rich eccentric (New York mansion, manservant) with a twenty-something assistant/ward, Constance, possessed of “an old-fashioned beauty.” He has FBI credentials, but apparently answers to no one in the J. Edgar Hoover Building …
Continue reading Sherlock Meets Poe? Sherlock Meets Lovecraft?
The history of Salem, Mass., is more about the sea than the witches — at least through the 18th and early 19th centuries, the peak of the Age of Sail. In the beginning, all the coastal communities were fishing ports, but while some like Gloucester stayed that way, Salem went mercantile, first in the coastal …
In J. W. Ocker’s book A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, Jay Finney, chief marketing officer of the big Peabody Essex Museum, tells Ocker that “cultural tourists” who visit the museum are a different crowd than those who come to Salem for witchy stuff. And he sees …
A lobster roll at the Lobster Shanty, where you can order J. W. Ocker’s favorite Hot and Dirty Pickle Martini. And where among all the vintage beer signs, busts of Elvis, and other typical bar memorabilia, there is a ouija board on the wall.
In some places, people leave Christmas decorations up year-around. In Salem, it’s a different holiday.
I am starting an Instagram feed for this blog, mainly for photos and short observations while traveling, like the trip to Salem that starts tomorrow. Follow it at letterfromhardscrabblecreek. Obviously, longer posts (with footnotes!) will appear here only and will be mirrored on the Facebook page, unless Facebook becomes totally unbearable. So if you use …
Yesterday’s post on movies related to Salem witchcraft mentioned The VVitch and the character of Black Phillip, the billy goat. (His real name is Charlie and he “still gives his director nightmares.”) There is a billy goat in my magical menagerie too — not quite the same, but close enough that when I saw this …
This is the memorial created in 1992 for the victims of the Salem trials in Salem, Mass. Each “bench” contains the name of an accused person: “Margaret Scott. Hanged. September 22, 1692.” Walk there, and you know that it has become a shrine. Then you realize that you are walking on their words, their pleas …
Continue reading They Were Not Witches — They Are Our Martyrs
All the calls for the 2017 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion are now online. The meeting itself will be held 18–21 November in Boston. The Pagan studies theme is “Witch Hunts: Rhetorical, Historical and Contemporary.” The term “witch hunt” is used as a rhetorical strategy in contemporary political discourses, and yet there …
Continue reading CFP: 2017 AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies Group