{"id":8621,"date":"2017-06-10T16:26:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8621"},"modified":"2020-02-18T15:28:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T22:28:21","slug":"before-the-pomegranate-there-was-iron-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8621","title":{"rendered":"Before The Pomegranate There Was Iron Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Iron Mountain, my first venture into Pagan studies. Title calligraphy by Pat Musick. Coffee stains by me.<\/p><\/div>\n

Having more or less majored in poetry in college, I was always involved in the world of “little magazines” (the more literary term) or simply “zines”((I also helped to put out an underground newspaper in high school, which actually turned a small profit. Our overhead was low: one staff member stole all the necessary paper from the school office, while the “printing” was done on a spirit duplicator in the office of one student’s father, a physics professor at Colorado State University.))<\/a>Although a lot of zines were typed and photocopied, for awhile I owned my own Multilith offset duplicator, a hand-cranked mimeograph,((After the revolution, brothers, we will just print with used motor oil.)) and a small letterpress.<\/p>\n

A couple of the zines I was involved with were Wicca-related, but I don’t even have copies. When I decided to go to graduate school, I thought I might start my own journal<\/em> of “magical religion.” Innocently, I thought that once I arrived at the University of Colorado, I could get funding for it. I was wrong about that. Since it was not a faculty project nor a class project, there seemed to be no money for it.<\/p>\n

Its name was Iron Mountain: A Journal of Magical Religion<\/em>. Iron Mountain was where M. and I were living (on its lower slopes) in Manitou Springs, Colorado, and I liked that its name had a vaguely Daoist resonance as well.((The real<\/em> Daoist, Gia-fu Feng, author and translator, had his communal house, Stillpoint, elsewhere in town, over in Ruxton Canyon.))<\/p>\n

I typeset it on my brand-new Kaypro II personal computer <\/a>(this was the early 1980s), took a floppy disk to the local weekly newspaper to get the “cold type” galleys\u2014long strips of paper\u2014and then cut them and hot-waxed them to pasteboard page layouts that went to the printer.<\/p>\n

I printed about two hundred of each issue, but by the time a librarian at a Georgia university approached me, all that was left was the scribbled-on and coffee-stained office copies, one of each issue.<\/p>\n

These went to Georgia where they were scanned and put online as part of Valdosta State University’s New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library.<\/p>\n

You may download each issue for free.<\/a> You will find the table of contents of each issue online.<\/p>\n

Partly through Iron Mountain<\/a><\/em>, I got in on the ground floor of Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions<\/em><\/a>, which was published from 1985\u20131999. That was an education in itself.<\/p>\n

Around the time that Gnosis<\/em> ran out of steam, Fritz Muntean, attending graduate school at the University of British Columbia, created his own larger and better-produced zine than Iron Mountain<\/em>, which he and co-editor Diana Tracy called The Pomegranate: A New Journal of Neopagan Thought<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I was flattered when he told me that Iron Mountain <\/em>had been part of his inspiration.<\/p>\n

Fritz invited me to help, and The Pomegranate <\/em>got a new subtitle, The Journal of Pagan Studies<\/em>, around 2000. At the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in 2001 we went shopping for a real publisher to make it a real scholarly journal, and eventually connected with Janet Joyce, who was working to open her own firm in the UK, Equinox Publishing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And of course it’s now The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies<\/a>. <\/em>Long may it wave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having more or less majored in poetry in college, I was always involved in the world of “little magazines” (the more literary term) or simply “zines”((I also helped to put out an underground newspaper in high school, which actually turned a small profit. Our overhead was low: one staff member stole all the necessary paper […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-8621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2f3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12244,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12244","url_meta":{"origin":8621,"position":0},"title":"Are Pagan Zines \u2014 Like Vinyl Records \u2014\u00a0Coming Back?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 1, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently have purchased copies of two Pagan zines, and I am thinking about a couple more. (What is a zine? Read here.) That is the most in years. Is this a trend? Is a small-press renaissance underway? A rebellion against the corporate social media of InstaFaceTwit etc. and their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/stapler.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1324,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1324","url_meta":{"origin":8621,"position":1},"title":"Seven Years of Blogging","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Today marks the seventh anniversary of Letter from Hardscrabble Creek, originally the name I gave to a column that appeared in various long-gone Pagan zines.It all started with this.","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1042,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1042","url_meta":{"origin":8621,"position":2},"title":"Gallimaufry with Ink and Paper","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Zines live on. That was me once, even down to the hand-cranked mimeo machine many years ago. A poet friend told me -- in all seriousness -- that \"after the revolution\" I would still be able to do mimeograph reproduction with used, dirty motor oil. Of course there would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"magick\"","block_context":{"text":"magick","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=magick"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5999,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5999","url_meta":{"origin":8621,"position":3},"title":"Iron Mountain Ritual Site To Be Restored","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When M. and I read this item in the Colorado Springs Gazette, our hearts soared. When we were newlyweds and bought our first house (a barely winterized 1920s cottage, 740 sq. ft.), it was just outside the lower left boundary of this photo of Iron Mountain in Manitou Springs, Colorado.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Iron Mtn., Manitou Springs","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/McGees-house.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10979,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10979","url_meta":{"origin":8621,"position":4},"title":"It’s October, and You Know What That Means: Media!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"At The New Yorker, they have discovered that astrology is back. In never leaves, actually \u2014 ask the people at Llewellyn \u2014but new media interest is cyclical as the Moon. Maybe it is just astrology's \"growth\" on social media that gets noticed. In July, I was ushered into a glass-enclosed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"astrology\"","block_context":{"text":"astrology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=astrology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/halloween-new-yorker.com_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":476,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=476","url_meta":{"origin":8621,"position":5},"title":"Pagan archivesI recently sent my\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan archivesI recently sent my eighth carton of Pagan magazines, dating from the 1970s to last year, to the University of California, Santa Barbara.That particular UC campus is known for its religious-studies department. J. Gordon Melton, a well-known scholar of new religious movements, is also affiliated with the university, although\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\/8621","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=8621"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11305,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8621\/revisions\/11305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}