{"id":603,"date":"2006-01-27T23:43:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-27T23:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=603"},"modified":"2010-11-14T22:12:40","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T05:12:40","slug":"603","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=603","title":{"rendered":"Fairies, the Dead, and Book-Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring semester has started, and teaching does cut into blogging time. And my reading list (for myself) is huge: all the books that I ordered at AAR-SBL (and elsewhere) started arriving in December.<\/p>\n

I just finished At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things<\/em><\/a>. Author Diane Purkiss<\/a> is an Oxford historian, primarily of early modern England, and this book is a romp. She does not set out to “explain” fairies, but rather to trace the different ways that they have been depicted–from being rather interchangeable with the Dead to being literary creations, evocations of rural charm, inspiration of Irish nationalism, and advertising gimmicks.<\/p>\n

Factoid: Proctor & Gamble won’t admit it, but apparently in the early 1930s the company dropped its successful Fairy Soap and Fairy Liquid, previously sold with images of helpful fairies assisting the housemaids, because the term “fairy” was increasingly synonymous with “homosexual.”<\/p>\n

While dealing with Fairy-like characters in The X-Files<\/em>, Purkiss oddly misses Jacques Vallee’s<\/a> Passport to Magonia<\/em><\/a> which argued back in 1969 that Fairies and UFO aliens were the same class of interdimensional beings in different guises.<\/p>\n

\"TheThese are stacked on the dog kennel-nightstand:<\/p>\n

Dereck Daschke and Mike Ashcraft, eds., New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader<\/em><\/a>. Rastafarians! UFO cults! Wiccans! All of us in the study of new religious movements are in it for the spectacle.<\/p>\n

Sabina Magliocco<\/a>, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America<\/em>. I mentioned it earlier<\/a>, but I had to send the review copy to someone else and only recently acquired my own.<\/p>\n

Robert Cochrane, The Robert Cochrane Letters: An Insight into Modern Traditional Witchcraft<\/em>. Never mind the oxymoron in the subtitle; it’s the subtle and shifty Cochrane<\/a> in his own words.<\/p>\n

Nikki Bado-Fralick<\/a>, Coming to the Edge of the Circle: A Wiccan Initiation Ritual<\/em><\/a>. Taking on Arnold van Gennep’s<\/a> hallowed theory on initiation–and Nikki is the new Pomegranate<\/em><\/a> reviews editor, too.<\/p>\n

George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal<\/em><\/a>. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Ufologists saw a progression happening, from “saucer” sightings to “alien” sightings to . . . certainly . . . the “third kind”–direct contact. But why is resolution always just beyond our grasp?<\/p>\n

David H. Brown, Santer\u00eda Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion<\/em><\/a>. It’s not just for Cubans anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring semester has started, and teaching does cut into blogging time. And my reading list (for myself) is huge: all the books that I ordered at AAR-SBL (and elsewhere) started arriving in December. I just finished At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. Author Diane Purkiss […]<\/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":[82,22,6],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fairies","tag-weirdness","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-603","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6874,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6874","url_meta":{"origin":603,"position":0},"title":"A New Investigation of Fairy Encounters","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This request for help with a compilation of contemporary Fairy encounters and lore comes from Simon Young of the re-launched Fairy Investigation Society. The FIS was founded in 1927, died in the early 1990s, and in late 2014 it came back to life. The survey (\u2018the fairy census\u2019) is split\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7093,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7093","url_meta":{"origin":603,"position":1},"title":"Fairies Infest British Woodland, Control Measures Planned","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"From the BBC: Hundreds of fairy doors have been attached to the bases of trees in Wayford Woods, Crewkerne. It is claimed the doors have been installed by local people so children can \"leave messages for the fairies\". Can something be too twee? Yes, it can. And remember, fairies are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/81365000\/jpg\/_81365588_81365585.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11959,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11959","url_meta":{"origin":603,"position":2},"title":"Forget Ecotourism\u2014Try Fairytourism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 18, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Ecotourism often involves naturalist-guided tours of relatively wild areas, but also visits to small-scale agricultural producers, also called \"agritourism.\" Sometimes this operates in a B&B fashion. See, for example, the state of Vermont's guide. But never mind milking cows and picking berries. Suppose you could offer encounters with the Other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"agriculture\"","block_context":{"text":"agriculture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=agriculture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.agriland.ie\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Image-source-screenshot-3-e1603973166180-1024x598.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":495,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=495","url_meta":{"origin":603,"position":3},"title":"The Fairy Faith in Nova Scotia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries is one of the background books to the Pagan revival, sort of like Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill. Graham Harvey and I included some of the Kipling in The Paganism Reader; perhaps we should have included Evans-Wentz too, although I admit to always\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5396,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5396","url_meta":{"origin":603,"position":4},"title":"Fairy Houses, Bee Houses, and Garden Products to Avoid","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Some fairies are said to live in boulders, others perhaps in purpose-built housing. In this blog post, a professional gardener in southern Colorado moves from greenhouses to fairy houses (with her dad as maintenance man) to bee houses. And please scroll to the bottom \u2014 it's a long post \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"bees\"","block_context":{"text":"bees","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=bees"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11767,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11767","url_meta":{"origin":603,"position":5},"title":"A Quick Video Introduction to Fairy Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 1, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"? Early in the twentieth century, the famous physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871\u20131937), \"the father of nuclear physics,\"\u00a0 is supposed to have remarked snarkily that all science was either physics or \"stamp-collecting.\" ((Variations on the saying include \"That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","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=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1983,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/1983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}