{"id":247,"date":"2004-08-19T21:37:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-19T21:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=247"},"modified":"2010-08-25T14:24:16","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T20:24:16","slug":"247","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=247","title":{"rendered":"Another Pagan Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been re-reading Donna Tartt’s<\/a> The Secret History<\/em>, the leading entry in the literary genre of “when Classics majors go bad.”<\/p>\n

It was first published in 1992, and I did my part for her royalty payments by sending at least three hardcover copies as Christmas presents in 1993. Sales were good, Tartt’s reputation soared, and some readers apparently worshipped at her feet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now I think it ought to be declared one of those unintentional Pagan classics like the film The Wicker Man<\/em><\/a>. (The Fortean Times<\/em> interview with director Robin Hardy is here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Wicker Man’s<\/em> appeal<\/a> lay in its portrayal of a fictional yet contemporary Pagan society, rather than its plot. The Secret History<\/em> is a different sort of drug: it whispers of power and liberation in a seductive Romantic way, filtered through the mind of a 4th-century C.E. Hellenistic intellectual, the kind who would have referred to Christians as “atheists.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been re-reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, the leading entry in the literary genre of “when Classics majors go bad.” It was first published in 1992, and I did my part for her royalty payments by sending at least three hardcover copies as Christmas presents in 1993. Sales were good, Tartt’s reputation soared, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":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":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,12],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-paganism","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-247","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4494,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4494","url_meta":{"origin":247,"position":0},"title":"“The Wicker Tree” and “The Wicker Man”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Don't count on me for breaking pop-culture news. That Pagan classic film The Wicker Man was released in 1973, but I did not see it until the mid-1980s. I always say that I missed the 1980s in pop-culture terms. Part of that was due to graduate school and a general\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2421,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2421","url_meta":{"origin":247,"position":1},"title":"The Wicker Conspiracy","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone's favorite Pagan-themed movie of the 1970s turns up on a list of \"15 conspiracy movies that don't fall apart at the end.\" (Via Ann Althouse.)","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1911,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1911","url_meta":{"origin":247,"position":2},"title":"The Horror! The Horror!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Witching Hour, Peg surveys some lists of best Halloween films. For pagan-themed horror films, or those including witches, at any rate, you can't beat The Wicker Man, The Craft, Practical Magic (Griffin Dunne, 1998), The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973), Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), The Devil Rides Out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=602","url_meta":{"origin":247,"position":3},"title":"The Shock of It All – 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier post here I did finish Christine Wicker's Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America. To be honest, the subtitle should read, \"How magic is transforming Christine Wicker.\" The book maps closely to Susan Roberts' 1974 book Witches U.S.A.. The author, a middle-aged female\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9589,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9589","url_meta":{"origin":247,"position":4},"title":"Quick Review: THE IMMORTALS by Jordanna Max Brodsky","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The old gods live among us, moving unseen, taking new forms, their powers diminished as people no longer honor them. That was the premise of Neil Gaiman's magical road-trip novel, American Gods, and it is also the backstory to The Immortals (2016), for here the Olympic deities have abandoned Greece\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Artemis\"","block_context":{"text":"Artemis","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=artemis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/immortals.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10725,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10725","url_meta":{"origin":247,"position":5},"title":"Caroline Tully on Pagan Art and Fashion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Caroline Tully is an Australian scholar of Classics, archaeology, and esotericism with a background in fine arts: I am an Honorary Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Monash University, Graduate and Postgraduate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","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=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1782,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions\/1782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}