{"id":511,"date":"2005-09-11T21:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-11T21:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=511"},"modified":"2005-09-11T21:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-11T21:05:00","slug":"511","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=511","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dodman’s Craft<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before there was an Internet–back around 1980–Mike Nichols of Kansas City published a lively Pagan ‘zine. He has been writing and teaching classes on the Craft for decades.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, as Wren Walker of The Witches’ Voice<\/a> says in her foreword, if you do a Web search on “Samhain” or “Midsummer,” your results page will feature “Mike Nichols.” A lot.<\/p>\n

Or you could just pick up his new work, The Witches’ Sabbats<\/em>, and get it all in one place in the convenient, battery-free, cross-platform book interface, published by Acorn Guild Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The writing is witty–Despite the bad publicity generated by Thomas Tryon’s novel<\/a>, Harvest Home is the pleasantest of holidays<\/em>–and in some places, such as his astrological reading of the story of Llew and Blodeuwedd, has echoes of Robert Graves’<\/a> search for deeper meanings in myth and folklore.<\/p>\n

And it’s indexed.<\/p>\n

Contemporary Paganism is often referred to as “nature religion,” but in practice that most often is a religion of what I call “cosmic nature,” in other words, an attempt to attune oneself with cosmic or planetary cycles, most often through seasonal ritual. The Witches’ Sabbats<\/em> is a state-of-the-art handbook for practitioners. It even includes a chapter on building or interpreting outdoor alignments with standing stones or poles.<\/p>\n

Tags Nature Religion<\/a> Paganism<\/a> Witchcraft<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dodman’s Craft Before there was an Internet–back around 1980–Mike Nichols of Kansas City published a lively Pagan ‘zine. He has been writing and teaching classes on the Craft for decades. Nowadays, as Wren Walker of The Witches’ Voice says in her foreword, if you do a Web search on “Samhain” or “Midsummer,” your results […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-511","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":520,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=520","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":0},"title":"Mike Nichols interviewMike Nichols, whose\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Mike Nichols interviewMike Nichols, whose book on the Wiccan sabbats I mentioned earlier, is the subject of a new interview in The Wiccan Pagan Times.You will find a permanent linke to TWPT on the sidebar, to the right side of your screen.Tags: Wicca Mike Nichols","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8123,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8123","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":1},"title":"“Witches of America”: Sitting at the Cool Kids’ Table","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I finally read Alex Mar's Witches of America, and it is better than I thought, based on some of the reviews that I had seen, like this piece of negativity, for example: \"[a] sordidly pornographic and self-aggrandising narrative\" or this one: \"extremely judgmental,\" or the Complete Hurt Feelings Wrap-up here.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0374291373","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":457,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=457","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":2},"title":"She Went among the Witches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 23, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Waterbrook, Random House's evangelical-publishing operation, has announced Wicca's Charm: Understanding the Spiritual Hunger Behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality, a new journalistic survey of Wicca in America.From the Web site:Hundreds of thousands of people practice Wicca and other forms of modern Pagan spirituality in America today, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Wicca\"","block_context":{"text":"Wicca","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=wicca"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0877881987","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12603","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":3},"title":"Interview with Helen Berger, Leading Scholar of Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 19, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"At his blog, now called On New and Alternative Religions, Ethan Doyle While interviews Helen Berger, one of the leading American scholars of contemporary Paganism. Since completing her PhD research on the early modern witch trials in the 1980s, Berger has devoted her career to the sociological analysis of modern-day\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/helen-berger.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":867,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=867","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":4},"title":"Teen Witches and Sociologists","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for Self, a sociological study of young Pagan Witches, will be shipping in a few days from Rutgers University Press.I have heard co-authors Helen Berger and Doug Ezzy give presentations from their research, which is excellent.From the Rutgers University Press catalog:As Helen A.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":173,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=173","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":5},"title":"50th Anniversary of Witchcraft Today\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"50th Anniversary of Witchcraft Today This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today, a fascinating book, although flawed by the author's pretense that he is a sort of anthropologist reporting on \"them,\" the witches, rather than in fact what he was--co-founder of the modern\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\/511","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=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}