{"id":6302,"date":"2014-02-26T12:47:36","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T19:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6302"},"modified":"2014-02-26T12:47:36","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T19:47:36","slug":"new-yorks-occult-revival-everything-old-is-new-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6302","title":{"rendered":"New York’s ‘Occult Revival’: Everything Old Is New Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

From The Revealer<\/em> (see blogroll under Religion and Journalism): “Chapel Perilous: Notes From The New York Occult Revival<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a magical revival happening in New York City<\/a> for two to three years,\u201d Damon Stang, the \u201cshop witch\u201d for Catland Books in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, told the New York Times<\/em> last year. \u201cI think it\u2019s a nostalgia that people have for a sense of enchantment with the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is some material evidence that a new interest in magic and esoteric subjects is growing. Catland itself, an active center for pagan rites and magical ceremonies, opened last February. The Times<\/em> article, which appeared ten months after opening, is an indication of that interest, although it was albeit a local-color piece called \u201cFriday Night Rites\u201d\u00a0 in which the shop was erroneously located in \u00a0Williamsburg. More substantially, NYU hosted its first annual Occult Humanities Conference in October \u2014 a gathering of researchers, practitioners and artists from all over the world who engaged in work with the occult and esoteric. The Observatory, Park\u2019s home base, has been offering well-attended lectures on magical topics since 2009, including a few by Mitch Horowitz. . . . .<\/p>\n

In the academic study of religion, \u201cthe occult\u201d is neither settled as a term nor a community. At its most basic level, it indicates a kind of hiddenness \u2014 a concealed truth. In popular usage, this usually means pagan nature worship, witchcraft, spirit communication, magic and other fringe religious ideas. The scholar Catherine Albanese, in her magisterial A Republic of Mind and Spirit<\/em>, investigated many American practitioners of these forms as \u201cmetaphysicals,\u201d a particular variety of religious actor for whom the power of the mind and the existence of a concealed \u201cenergy\u201d within the body and the world, are essential. It\u2019s a useful term, but hardly ever applied outside of the academy. The people I met at the conference preferred the words \u201coccult\u201d and \u201cesoteric\u201d to describe their interests, often using them interchangeably. How can a revival be studied when it is unclear what, exactly, is being revived?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Worth reading, among other things, for the reminder about Robert Anton Wilson’s idea of the “chapel perilous.” I could tell stories . . .\u00a0 and I am certain that you could too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Revealer (see blogroll under Religion and Journalism): “Chapel Perilous: Notes From The New York Occult Revival.” There\u2019s been a magical revival happening in New York City for two to three years,\u201d Damon Stang, the \u201cshop witch\u201d for Catland Books in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, told the New York Times last year. \u201cI […]<\/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":[10,89,39],"class_list":["post-6302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-esotericism","tag-occultism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1DE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6443,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6443","url_meta":{"origin":6302,"position":0},"title":"New York Occult Revival (2)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In February I linked to a description of a \"magickal revival\" in New York City. People say these things are cyclical. Now Joe \"Vampires\" Laycock weighs in: \"Why Hipsters May Be Perfect Source for Brooklyn Occult Revival,\" a sort of Durkheimian look at the same idea. More than their magical\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":1121,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1121","url_meta":{"origin":6302,"position":1},"title":"Handbook of Contemporary Paganism in Print","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"My contributor copy of the new Handbook of Contemporary Paganism from Brill arrived. (You can tell from the price that it is intended primarily for the institutional market.) Here is the table of contents:\"The Modern Magical Revival,\" Nevill Drury\"The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Gerald Gardner and the Early Witchcraft\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":596,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=596","url_meta":{"origin":6302,"position":2},"title":"The Shock of It All","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I have started reading Christine Wicker's Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America. (Jason Pitzl-Waters has also mentioned it.) Alas, I'm too jaded to be shocked! shocked! by her revelation that magic--or at least magical thinking--is everywhere. When I see a chapter heading like\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":7237,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7237","url_meta":{"origin":6302,"position":3},"title":"Call for Papers: The Occult Imagination in Britain","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford, both of the University of Glasgow, seek contributors for an edited collection, The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947. We seek proposals for an essay collection entitled The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947, to be proposed to Ashgate\u2019s new Among the Victorians and the Modernists series.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":447,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=447","url_meta":{"origin":6302,"position":4},"title":"Here's that meme againA New\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 29, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's that meme againA New York Times story on the Rites of Spring Pagan festival (login required) quotes two contemporary scholars of Paganism, Helen Berger and Sabina Magliocco on, among other things, the numbers of American Pagans.Ms. Magliocco favors the higher number [700,000] based on data like surveys, sales of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=447#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6035,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6035","url_meta":{"origin":6302,"position":5},"title":"Pentagram Pizza: It’s Revived Again","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 At Pagan Square, Rebecca Buchanan rounds up children's books featuring Norse gods and heroes. \u00b6 Bright Spiral is an online comic about occult initiation. Trippy and complex. \u00b6 \"Chilled-out multitasking hipster psychics don\u2019t seem so eccentric anymore\" and \"We are in the middle of an occult revival.\" Again. \u00b6\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"pentagrampizza","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pentagrampizza.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302","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=6302"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6304,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302\/revisions\/6304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}