{"id":9799,"date":"2018-09-19T22:11:52","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T04:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9799"},"modified":"2019-01-17T16:58:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T23:58:59","slug":"feeding-my-little-archive-to-bigger-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9799","title":{"rendered":"Feeding My Little Archive to Bigger Ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brilliant idea of the day: clean my desk. No, I don’t mean just shove things to the edges and sweep up the crumbs, I mean uncover some<\/em> mahogany<\/em>!<\/p>\n

I spent the last two weeks of August crashing<\/em> to meet a deadline for a special issue of the Journal of Religion and Violence<\/a> <\/em>devoted to violence and new religious movements. Wicca is, of course, a new religious movement, but it is an outlier in many ways, as I discuss (no charismatic leader, no millennarian p<\/a>rophecy, etc.)<\/p>\n

Two years ago, in a post titled “Kicked Back in Time<\/a>,” I wrote about receiving cartons of material relating to the murder trial of a Texas Wiccan leader: witnesses’ depositions, correspondence, legal paperwork, psychic impressions of what really<\/em> happened and where, dozens of yellowed newspaper clippings, not to mention a tape cassette of one witness’s statements after he had been hypnotized by the sheriff of Deaf Smith County<\/a>.((The incident occurred in a neighboring county. The sheriff had a reputation as a hypnotist, apparently, and the 17-year-old witness’s parents requested the session.))<\/p>\n

Then Massimo Introvigne<\/a>((Founder of CESNUR<\/a> [Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni])) announced that he was guest-editing this issue of the journal, and I submitted a proposal, which was accepted \u2014 and then I procrastinated until, oh no, it’s due at the end of the month. And I wrote it. Chores went un-done, the dog got minimal walks, but I generated my 8,000 words. And damn, that felt good.<\/p>\n

The journal is published three times a year, online only, and apparently costs $45\/year with access to the archives. I do not know when this special issue will appear.<\/p>\n

So let’s not lose the momentum. Let’s get back to Project X.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Problem: There is a low, two-drawer file cabinet next to my desk whose top is stacked with books I need. And there was a substantial pile of files, printouts, partial rough drafts of book sections, and who-knows-what on the desk itself. Plus more in a desk drawer.<\/p>\n

In the filing cabinet were . . . files, organized by subject (“New Wiccan Church,” “polytheism,” “sacred prostitution,” “Victor Anderson”) that had built up over the last thirty years. Some was material used when writing Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America <\/a><\/em>or various articles; some I never got around to using \u2014 and I probably never will.<\/p>\n

Solution: it goes into one or more cartons and goes to the New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library<\/a> at Valdosta State University in Georgia. (The source materials for the murder-trial article belong in Texas, however.)<\/p>\n

Many of the Pagan magazines I used for book research already went to the American Religions Collection<\/a> at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It even has its own name!<\/a> (Scroll down at the link.) Got to spread the wealth.<\/p>\n

Now if I can get all the material from the desk top and drawer sorted into a fresh set of file folders, I might actually be ready to make use of it. (Never fear, there is plenty of digital material too!)<\/p>\n

For today, the writing life is the filing life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brilliant idea of the day: clean my desk. No, I don’t mean just shove things to the edges and sweep up the crumbs, I mean uncover some mahogany! I spent the last two weeks of August crashing to meet a deadline for a special issue of the Journal of Religion and Violence devoted to violence […]<\/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":[275,4,6,12],"class_list":["post-9799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-new-religious-movements","tag-scholarship","tag-wicca","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2y3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10167,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10167","url_meta":{"origin":9799,"position":0},"title":"“A Texas Witch on Trial” Now Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In August 2016, I mused about having a Contemporary Pagan Studies on \"Paganism and Violence\" at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, inspired by a recent gift of multiple cartons of archival material related to the murder trial of a prominent Wiccan figure in 1980. The universe was listening,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Former home of Loy and Louise Stone near Hereford, Texas","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4356,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4356","url_meta":{"origin":9799,"position":1},"title":"The Witches and the Stripper","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Someone at the Daily Mail no doubt had a good time writing the headline \"The drunken stripper from the Golden Banana, a coven of Salem witches and the 'groping' man horrifically impaled when she crashed into a flatbed truck.\" Yes, it is link bait, and I bit. Wouldn't you? But\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":7257,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7257","url_meta":{"origin":9799,"position":2},"title":"A Wicca Center in Thailand","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a long tradition of metaphysical bookstores and occult-supply shops serving as the public face of Pagan groups. \"Owner Wine Kongsorn said he opened the caf\u00e9 in a bid to unite the community of Wiccans in Bangkok.\" And exactly how is \"Wiccan\" defined in Bangkok? The source is the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Thailand\"","block_context":{"text":"Thailand","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=thailand"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2015\/06\/02\/01\/293E4BE300000578-3105486-Ace_and_Cups_is_the_world_s_premiere_witchcraft_cafe_offering_oc-m-1_1433204398307.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13099","url_meta":{"origin":9799,"position":3},"title":"UK Pagans “More Established”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The Guardian newspaper (UK) cherry-picks a few things from the 2021 England and Wales census, including a rise in the number of self-identified Pagans. 2) Pagans and wiccans are becoming more established More established [than self-identified shamans] are pagans [sic] , who number 74,000 people (up from 57,000 in 2011)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"census\"","block_context":{"text":"census","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=census"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/stonehenge-2018-1024x614.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/stonehenge-2018-1024x614.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/stonehenge-2018-1024x614.webp?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":187,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=187","url_meta":{"origin":9799,"position":4},"title":"More Wiccan History","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Founding Fathers of Wicca,\" a graduate-school paper by Susan Young, currently at the University of Alberta, explores Aleister Crowley's liturgical and other influence on Gardnerian Wicca. It was published in Axis Mundi: A Student Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, whose article index is here. The paper is\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":10607,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10607","url_meta":{"origin":9799,"position":5},"title":"‘The Goddess Doesn’t Want Any More Prophets’ and Other Observations by ‘Robert’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"First of all, \"Robert\" is Frederic Lamond, one of Gerald Gardner's early coveners\u2014his mundane name is not exactly oathbound material these days, now that he has written books and has his own Wikipedia page. But this screenshot is from the documentary Robert: Portrait of a Witch, made by Malcolmn Brenner\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Gerald Gardner\"","block_context":{"text":"Gerald Gardner","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=gerald-gardner"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9799","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=9799"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10180,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9799\/revisions\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}