{"id":13484,"date":"2023-10-28T11:39:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T17:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13484"},"modified":"2023-10-28T11:39:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T17:39:08","slug":"witch-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13484","title":{"rendered":"Witch Like Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It is late October, so naturally the best time to publicize Diana Helmuth’s The Witching Year: A Memoir of Earnest Fumbling Through Modern Witchcraft<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

It looks to me like she took A. J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible <\/em><\/a>(2008) and Wiccan-ized it.<\/p>\n

Instead of avoid cloth of mixed fibers (no polyester-cotton blend for him) or seeking an adulterer to stone, Helmuth decides to celebrate the feast of Lammas:<\/p>\n

I realized this while reading a book, flipping through some pages, and I go, oh crap. I don’t have the sacred knife. I don’t have an altar. I don’t have anything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like Jacobs, she was a “none” who wanted to venture among the savages \u2014 actual believers, as she told National Public Radio interviewer Mallory Yu:<\/a><\/p>\n

I wanted to be thought of as intelligent. So I rejected most religion and most spirituality throughout most of my life.<\/p>\n

And then during COVID, and in general, as I got older, the idea of a self-directed religion that promised me a way to have some control over the universe – I think increasingly we find ourselves facing things that really affect us deeply that we have very little control over – right? – climate change, housing prices, health insurance bills, pandemics, who’s going to become the president?<\/p>\n

And here’s this religion – this spirituality – that says, you can have an effect on these things that feel so much bigger than you. You just need a couple of candles and some willpower.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a long tradition of “among the savages” writing in America. As a young reporter in the 1980s I briefly met a tall but baby-faced guy who, having graduated from Colorado College, as I recall, went back to high school and passed himself off as a senior in order to write about high school from the inside. (At least one female writer has done that too.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Maybe the best example is a book that was a classic of the Civil Rights Era<\/a> but would probably never get published now, although it is still in print after sixty years:\u00a0 John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me <\/em><\/a>(1961). A white writer from Texas, Griffin, who lived from 1920\u20131980<\/a>, decided that the only way he could write about African-American life was to temporarily become one. His experiment was underwritten by the black-oriented magazine Sepia<\/em><\/a> in return for first publication rights. From Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In late 1959, John Howard Griffin went to a friend’s house in New Orleans, Louisiana. Once there, under the care of a dermatologist, Griffin underwent a regimen of large oral doses of the anti-vitiligo<\/a> drug methoxsalen<\/a>, and spent up to 15 hours daily under an ultraviolet lamp for about a week. He was given regular blood tests to ensure that he was not suffering liver damage. The darkening of his skin was not perfect , so he touched it up with stain. He shaved his head bald to hide his straight brown hair. Satisfied that he could pass as an African-American, Griffin began a six-week journey in the South.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But even Griffin was following the footsteps of another white journalist who made a similar journey eleven years earlier.<\/p>\n

So there is a pretty good way to get a book: pass yourself off as a member of Group X and write about it. If you do in graduate school, it is ethnography; otherwise, creative nonfiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is late October, so naturally the best time to publicize Diana Helmuth’s The Witching Year: A Memoir of Earnest Fumbling Through Modern Witchcraft. It looks to me like she took A. J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2008) and Wiccan-ized it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[63,29,12],"class_list":["post-13484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lammas","tag-witchcraft","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3vu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1927,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1927","url_meta":{"origin":13484,"position":0},"title":"A Ritual Against Hitler That Really Happened?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Via the Pagan Newswire Collective (should I just have a dateline with \"PNC\" in it?) comes this link to a witchcraft ritual reportedly performed against Adolf Hilter and the Nazi regime in Maryland in January 1941, which is almost a year before the United States officially declared war. It was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8830,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8830","url_meta":{"origin":13484,"position":1},"title":"Mystery Deity in Hitler Hex","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Today the Internet served me \"Putting a Hex on Hitler: LIFE Goes to a 'Black Magic' Party.\" For background, you have to know that the pictorial weekly news magazine Life had a regular feature called \"Life Goes to a Party\" \u2014 and many of these parties featured big-name musicians \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/incantation-in-progress.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":698,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=698","url_meta":{"origin":13484,"position":2},"title":"The corner of the year","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"When is Lammas?Predictably, Lammas\/Lughnasadh postings popped up on Pagan e-lists and blogs on the 1st of August. But that is just what the calendar says. Astronomically, according to the online astronomical calculator, it comes at 1541 hours GMT on August 7.But I think it's when the hummingbirds start to leave,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8151,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8151","url_meta":{"origin":13484,"position":3},"title":"In Praise of Harvest Time","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Some (Northern Hemisphere) Harvest\/Lammas celebrations, only not called that. This one, I think, is from Iran: This one comes from the island of Cyprus: And while we're in the mood, let's not forget Whitman McGowan's \"White Folks Was Wild Once Too,\" with video that is NSFW if you work in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dance\"","block_context":{"text":"dance","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dance"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":919,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=919","url_meta":{"origin":13484,"position":4},"title":"And the Corn Palace Too","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Victorian Slind-Flor puts the \"Loaf\" in Lammas, with photos of the Palouse region and, even closer to my heart, the sacred Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota, one of the great Roadside Attractions of the northern Plains.A quick flashback to a 1980s cross-country drive with M.: camping in the Black\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Lammas\"","block_context":{"text":"Lammas","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=lammas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7368,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7368","url_meta":{"origin":13484,"position":5},"title":"Lammas, Wild Harvest, and “the Notch”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Many of the Pagan bloggers are putting up their \"Happy Lammas\/Lughnasad\" posts. My archaeoastronomical friends who study mysterious ancient solar alignments point out that \"real\" Lammas is still six days away. But there is \"the notch.\" In 1986, when I moved to this part of Colorado, a friend told me,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"nibbled bolete","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nibbled-bolete.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13484"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13490,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13484\/revisions\/13490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}