{"id":42,"date":"2003-09-22T02:19:00","date_gmt":"2003-09-22T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=42"},"modified":"2011-08-17T13:59:31","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T19:59:31","slug":"the-bast-mysteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=42","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Bast’ Mysteries"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently bought Bell, Book, and Murder<\/em>, the 3-in-1 edition of Rosemary Edghill’s<\/a> “Bast” mysteries: three short mystery novels set in 1990s Manhattan whose protagonist is Karen Hightower (Craft name “Bast”), a thirty-something graphic designer. Her design business is called High Tor Graphics, both a pun on her name and a tribute to a famous SF novel. <\/p>\n

While the mysteries are not always tightly plotted and leave lots of “Now why did he do that?” questions in the reader’s mind, Edghill has a firm grasp on the Pagan scene, with its coded language and social nuances. <\/p>\n

I read the first two in the series soon after they came out, but I never got around to the last one, Bowl of Night<\/em> (1996). Although I’m a long way from New York City, I thought that I recognized a few people that I knew and some places too, thinly disguised. Was that Judy Harrow? John Yohalem? Bast’s coven, Changing–does that sound a bit like “Proteus”<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Reading all three in quick succession, though, made me think they they charted Edghill’s gradual disenchantment with the Pagan scene. By the end of the trilogy, Bast drifting away from the rest of Changing coven and trying out in her mind the possibilities for finding a new high priest (she’s Gardnerian) and forming her own. But I would bet that if there were a fourth book, it would show Bast as a solitary, more emotionally disconnected from the world of gossipy metaphysical bookstores, festivals, and other Pagan dress-up events.<\/p>\n

In the first book, Bast says, “The day I discovered that all Witches don’t believe in magic was a great shock to me.” Now I do not know Rosemary Edghill at all. I have never read her fantasy novels nor her romance novels. But I wonder if someone who writes fantasy was hoping to find a certain magic in Wicca, but she did not find it–and so she moved on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently bought Bell, Book, and Murder, the 3-in-1 edition of Rosemary Edghill’s “Bast” mysteries: three short mystery novels set in 1990s Manhattan whose protagonist is Karen Hightower (Craft name “Bast”), a thirty-something graphic designer. Her design business is called High Tor Graphics, both a pun on her name and a tribute to a famous […]<\/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":[6,12],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-wicca","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-G","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":43,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=43","url_meta":{"origin":42,"position":0},"title":"More on ‘Bast’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 24, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"A reliable source tells me that as of two years ago, Edghill was heading an 'ultra-conservative' Gardnerian coven. Maybe that outcome fits better than my hypothesis of disillusionment with the contemporary Wiccan scene. Or maybe it's the same thing.","rel":"","context":"In \"Wicca\"","block_context":{"text":"Wicca","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=wicca"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6963,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6963","url_meta":{"origin":42,"position":1},"title":"How to Ruin the Mysteries, or Religion is not Moral","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In retrospect, I was lucky that the high priest of my first coven (mid-1970s) was something of a scoundrel. He was always tapping people for money and favors (\"Could you fix my truck's clutch? Oh, you're a welder? I have some projects . . .\") \u2014 all for the good\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"politics\"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=politics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":651,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=651","url_meta":{"origin":42,"position":2},"title":"A Unitarian Easter sermon\"Praire Mary\"\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A Unitarian Easter sermon\"Praire Mary\" Scriver, one of my favorite bloggers, re-creates the thread (or whole tangled mess of threads) of one of her Easter sermons from her days as a UU minister.And she concludes,When I explored this stuff, members of my congregations often said afterward, \"I didn't understand one\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12332,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12332","url_meta":{"origin":42,"position":3},"title":"Old Issues of “The Ley Hunter” Available as Digital PDFs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The Ley Hunter was a British zine devoted to \"earth mysteries\" (which could include such things as Fairy encounters as well as ley lines, etc.) published from 1965\u20131998. As Isaac Koi describes it, Its website described it as \"the longest running journal to cover the 'earth mysteries' complex of study\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"cover image, The Ley Hunter no. 66, 1975","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/ley-hunter-cover-214x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":751,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=751","url_meta":{"origin":42,"position":4},"title":"Who’s a Celt now ? – 5","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4While they wanted to present Wicca as the indigenous religion of Britain, the founders of contemporary Witchcraft were not so much caught up in the \"Celtic\" mythos. Some, in fact, favored the Saxon. By the 1970s, however, \"cardiac Celts\" were everywhere. Writers such\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":161,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=161","url_meta":{"origin":42,"position":5},"title":"Book progress & link dump\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Book progress & link dump I am a little drained today, having finished revisions on my book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Contemporary Paganism in America. On Tuesday I will e-mail files to my editor at AltaMira Press, followed by the printouts. Naturally it is not as\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","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=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3078,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/3078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}