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 Radio1 - The Body
Provided By: Achriel
Composer: Abney Park
Title: Love
Radio2 - The Mind
Radio3 - The Soul
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You couldn't set out to be a good witch or a bad witch. It never worked for long. All you could try to be was a witch, as hard as you could.
-- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
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· Using Witchvox – a walkthrough
(Sep 02, 2009)
· Nutritionist Stephen Heuer Arrested in FDA Raid
(Jan 19, 2009)
· Spelling it like it isn't
(Aug 09, 2008)
· Funding the pagans
(Mar 08, 2008)
· Giuliani gets Robertson Endorsement
(Nov 12, 2007)
· The Dangers Of Feminism
(Aug 30, 2007)
· The secrets behind crazy airfare prices
(Aug 27, 2007)
· Petition To Rename Stretch Of 401 'Highway Of Heroes'
(Aug 24, 2007)
· Mummified Toronto child a newborn boy
(Jul 27, 2007)
· Quick Summer Meals without all the heat!
(Jul 18, 2007)
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 Topic: Books, Tomes & Grimoires
The new items published under this topic are as follows.
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Beltane, by Erin O’Riordan
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Posted by: Makarios on Monday, February 08, 2010 - 08:00 AM
41 Reads
Reviewed by Bronwen Forbes
The general rule, used by book reviewers, literary agents and editors (and I’ve done all but be a literary agent) is that if the first chapter is good, the rest of the book will be, too. Conversely, if the first chapter stinks, it’s a fair bet there’s no point in reading further.
O’Riordan’s novel Beltane is an exception to this rule. The first chapter or so is rife with poor grammar, awkward sentences and more passive-voice. However, I was stuck in a personal situation with a lot of time and not a lot of reading material available, so I plowed through.
I’m glad I did. The story (and the writing) improves over the course of the book, and I found myself actually caring about the characters and what happened to them. The novel centers around twin sisters Allie and Zen, who have been raised Pagan. The book opens with Allie’s wedding, and hints that all may not be well between the bride and groom. Zen falls for Orlando, a married man. How this all plays out is revealed the next year at Beltane, when everyone lives happily ever after.
Read the complete article: Pagan
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Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, by Dubravka Ugresic
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 04:00 PM
72 Reads
Reviewed by Elizabeth Bachner
“At first you don’t see them,” reads the introduction to Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, Dubravka Ugresic’s contribution to Canongate’s Myths series, “….At first they’re invisible. And then all at once you begin to spot them. They shuffle around the world like armies of elderly angels. One of them peers into your face. She glares at you, her eyes wide, her gaze a pale blue, and voices her request with a proud and condescending tone. She is asking for your help, she needs to cross the street but she cannot do it alone… You feel a pang of sympathy for the old lady, you are moved, you do a good deed, swept by the thrill of gallantry. It is precisely at this moment that you should dig in your heels, resist the siren call, make an effort to lower the temperature of your heart. Remember, their tears do not mean the same thing as yours do. Because if you relent, give in, exchange a few more words, you will be in their thrall. You will slide into a world that you had no intention of entering, because your time has not yet come, your hour, for God’s sake, has not come.”
Read the complete article: Bookslut
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Meeting Fairies: A True Story, by Robert Ogilvie Crombie
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 02:00 PM
69 Reads
Reviewed by Mister Tarot
Robert Ogilvie Crombie (known as Roc to his friends) strolled through the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh in 1966 and made an astonishing discovery. ‘I saw a figure dancing around a tree about twenty yards from me - a beautiful little figure about three feet tall...it was a faun, the Greek mythological being, half human, half animal. He had a pointed chin and ears and two little horns on his forehead. His shaggy legs ended in cloven hooves and his skin was honey-coloured.’
The faun’s name was Kurmos, and according to Roc, he had an ‘infinite, mature wisdom - combined with the naiveté of a child.’ During their conversation, Kurmos stated that many of the nature spirits had lost interest in humans because they had been made to feel they were, ‘neither believed in nor wanted.’ One month later, in a nearby street, Roc felt the presence of Pan, the god of the fields and countryside, who was ‘radiating a tremendous power’ and who smelt of ‘pine woods, damp leaves, of newly turned earth and of woodland flowers.’ Roc’s meetings with Pan became more frequent and each visit led to a deeper understanding of the Horned God’s personality.
Read the complete article:
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Enemy of God, by Bernard Cornwell
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 12:00 PM
81 Reads
Reviewed by Gary Carden
<snip> Several years ago, when I was reading everything I could find about mythical figures such as King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Tristan, Iseult and Galahad, I blundered on the works of a Romanian philosopher named Mircea Eliade. Eliade was also obsessed with mythology and one of his most famous essays, “The Eternal Return,” entertained the idea that all of the stories of legendary heroes and tragic lovers are still with us. However, the story’s basic elements (culture, physical characteristics, sex etc.) are constant changing. For example, the story of Tristan and Iseult could have been repeated last week in a Greek fishing village with Iseult is a waitress, Tristan might be an African fisherman and King Mark may operate a local grocery. Eliade thought that all of the great myths served as “ eternal templates” that were repeated endlessly throughout all time.
Bernard Cornwell has an interesting variation on Eliade’s theory. Instead of creating colorful alternative versions in different times and places, Cornwell radically alters the original story. In Enemy of God, not only is Arthur not a king, he has no desire to become one. Sir Lancelot, instead of being a courageous warrior and Queen Guinevere’s devoted lover, is a cowardly, vain and devious snake who plots Arthur’s death. Cornwell’s Guinevere is arrogant, ruthless and selfish - almost the opposite of the traditional virtuous wife who regrets her adultery, but is incapable of giving up Lancelot.
Read the complete article: Holler Notes
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The Tree of Enchantment, by Orion Foxwood
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 08:00 AM
79 Reads
Reviewed by Philip A. Bernhardt-House
Orion Foxwood’s The Tree of Enchantment presents a novel cosmology of modern fairy seership work, which is deeply rooted throughout in a series of practices and exercises to facilitate contact with otherworld beings and to continually allow a practitioner to align with their three states of being—referred to as the “threefold life”—that is inspired by certain aspects of premodern and folk traditions. It is a work that is poetic and beautiful in its imagery and its vision of divine symmetry and parallelism, and presents a coherent and internally consistent narrative of how these various aspects of the otherworld interact with and are related to one another, and to the seeker, at every stage of the process.
If that brief summary appeals to you, and describes exactly what you’re interested in reading about or studying or seeking, then this really is the book for you, and you should most certainly have a look at it.
Unfortunately, the above is not what Foxwood himself describes is the basis for this work. There are repeated claims that the practices and doctrines detailed in this book are from traditional beliefs, particularly of the Insular Celtic peoples, but this is rarely (if ever) substantiated with references to actual lore (folkloric or literary). There are a few occasions on which Foxwood states that academic study is part of this endeavor (e.g. pp. xiii, 8), but the only academic sources in his footnotes or bibliography are survey essays, several of which are outdated by a century or more. Several are referenced as easily available online, but they do not represent the best or most thorough views of these subjects possible, either in their theoretical subtlety or in their expansive knowledge of actual source materials.
Read the complete article: Pagan
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Occult America, by Mitch Horowitz
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Posted by: Makarios on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 10:00 AM
90 Reads
Reviewed by Alexander Zaitchik
If witch-burning Puritans are the original jocks of American history, then the mystics surrounding Johannes Kelpius are the first goths. While the rest of the British colonies were still dutifully worshipping their angry Christian god, Kelpius and his followers—who fled Austria to settle in Philadelphia during the late seventeenth-century—busied themselves with astrology, alchemy, Kabbalah, and other “dark arts” with tangled roots in the Italian Renaissance, the Rosicrucian Enlightenment, and various (often fabricated) antiquities. We meet Kelpius early in Mitch Horowitz’s Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, an uneven but always interesting account of 400 years of New World Strange. Among the several misconceptions Horowitz seeks to dispel, the most foundational is the idea that Colonial America provided shelter only for persecuted Christian sects. Almost from the beginning, North America was also home to a fair number of those who, like Kelpius, had more arcane spiritual interests.
Read the complete article: AlterNet
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The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 10:00 AM
147 Reads
Book traces the long strange trip of drug-induced spirituality
Reviewed by Steve Rabey
If the word "psychedelic" conjures up images of San Francisco or Woodstock, there's much more to learn from journalist Don Lattin's mind-blowing guided tour of the colorful people who gave birth to America's psychedelic era in an unlikely place: Harvard University.
In his new book, "The Harvard Psychedelic Club," which has received enthusiastic reviews and generated interest in Hollywood, Lattin expertly shows how Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil crossed paths at Harvard in the fall of 1960 before going their own separate ways.
Lattin, a veteran religion reporter who walked on the wild side more than a few times himself, traces how the four men forever changed the way people — both straight and stoned — think about spirituality.
Read the complete article: NewsOK
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Free-Range Kids, by Leonore Skenazy
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, January 31, 2010 - 02:00 PM
202 Reads
Reviewed by Bryan Caplan
While writing Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, I've been reading a lot of popular parenting books. I'm pleased to report that I finally found one that I love: Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids. Most of the competition tries to be wise, down-to-earth, and funny, but only Skenazy pulls it off. And while Free-Range Kids is not intended as a work of social science, you can learn a lot about the social world by reading it.
The quickest way to understand the book is to turn to the penultimate page, and read the pre-fab "Free-Range Kid Membership Card." You're supposed to give to your kid so authorities stop hassling him for walking the earth:
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I'm not lost, I am a FREE-RANGE KID!
I have been taught how to cross the street safely. I know never to GO OFF with strangers, but I can talk to them. I like being outside and exploring the world. If you are a grown-up, you probably did the same things when you were a kid, so do not be alarmed. The adults in my life know where I am, but if you want to talk to them, feel free to give them a call.
The number is: _________
Read the complete article: Library of Economics and Liberty
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God’s Wife, God’s Servant, by Mariam F. Ayad
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, January 31, 2010 - 08:00 AM
213 Reads
Reviewed by Shefytbast
I pulled this from the library shelves because I was interested in the subject of women in priestly or priestlike roles in ancient Egypt. After a general historical overview of the title “God’s Wife of Amun,” the book focuses on five women from the Third Intermediate and Late Periods who held that position: Shepenwepet I, Amenirdis I, Shepenwepet II, Nitocris, and Ankhnesneferibre. For the most part, it concentrates on analyzing the iconography of depictions of the God’s Wives, and how they were shown in activities and contexts that had previously been the exclusive domain of the King — for instance, taking part in the sed festival, offering ma’at to the Gods, or being suckled by a Goddess. In exploring the evolution of the position and its associations with divine and royal authority, the book also refutes the view that the God’s Wife’s primary role was to sexually please the Gods.
Read the complete article: Gold of the Valley Lapis of the River
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Mythmakers and Lawbreakers, ed. by Margaret Killjoy
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Posted by: Makarios on Saturday, January 30, 2010 - 04:00 PM
223 Reads
Reviewed by Natalie Ballard
When the term “anarchy” is heard, most people think of the “circle-A” graffiti on crumbling buildings and the T-shirts of punk rock kids, or else imagine a state of complete lawlessness and the breakdown of society. Popular culture does nothing to dispel these collective thoughts. In theory and philosophy, anarchy refers to the absence of a state or rulers and a society in which there is no vertical hierarchy of class, but instead a horizontal equality of societal participants. Margaret Killjoy, the editor of Steampunk Magazine and an avowed anarchist, collected fourteen interviews with varying writers in the compact book Mythmakers and Lawbreakers; the common thread between the featured writers is that each is a professed anarchist, writes positively about anarchist societies, or maintains anarchist sympathies.
Reading each of the interviews, I quickly learned that there are as many varying definitions of anarchy as there are practitioners and theorizers. There is a vague commonality of a desire to see an end to free-market capitalism and democracy (the writers interviewed are mostly American and British) and the desire for complete equality and a gift- or barter-based economy, but otherwise each author has his or her own personal philosophy as it ties in to the theory of anarchy. This is not a criticism, and it does not seem as if anarchists are so loosely connected as to not have any sense of community at all. Rather, it appears as if there are just factions within the anarchist community, perhaps comparable to American democracy's political parties. Each interview in its turn is wholly fascinating to read, as the subjects are certainly outside of the mainstream, literature-wise. The most recognizable names are feminist sci-fi author Ursula K. LeGuin, graphic novel writer Alan Moore, fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, and eco-feminist/neo-pagan author Starhawk.
Read the complete article: Feminist Review
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The Vikings: A History, by Robert Ferguson
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 08:00 AM
194 Reads
Reviewed by Drew DeSilver
<snip> Writing a coherent narrative of the seafaring raiders from Norway, Denmark and Sweden is no easy task. Almost all the contemporary accounts of the Vikings were written by their enemies or victims; the sagas that give us much of what passes for our understanding of Viking culture were written hundreds of years after the fact. Ship-burials, settlement ruins, treasure hoards and runestones can be and have been interpreted in many different ways. (Scholars tried for hundreds of years to decipher the runes on a particular stone in Denmark, until in the mid-19th century the "runes" were discovered to be marks left by a glacier.)
Take the case of Rollo, founder of what became the duchy of Normandy and as well-attested a figure as any the Viking Age produced. After noting that his "biographers, chroniclers and poets" also called him "Rollon, Robert, Rodulf, Ruinus, Rosso, Rotlo and Hrolf, Ganger Rolf or Rolf the Walker," Ferguson comments that Rollo's prominence, combined with "an almost complete lack of biographical information, " transformed him from an ordinary mortal into a "dense hybrid ... of m(a)n, myth and legend."
Ferguson, author of biographies of author Knut Hansen and playwright Henrik Ibsen, frames his account as an ongoing scrimmage between Christian Europeans and the non-Christian Scandinavians. He suggests that the Viking raids, which seemed to come out of nowhere toward the end of the eighth century, were at least in part a reaction to the missionary efforts of Charlemagne's empire. Even the bards (or skalds) got into the fight: "Heathen poets impugned the manhood of the Christians, and Christian poets mocked the Heathens for their superstition and stupidity."
Read the complete article: Seattle Times
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13 Things That Don't Make Sense, by Michael Brooks
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 04:00 PM
207 Reads
Reviewed by John Rimmer
Some of the topics discussed in this book are notorious for having been the subject of bitter controversy and sensational journalism. Many people tend to assume that most of these issues have been settled, at least to the satisfaction of scientists, but Michael Brooks shows us that this is not so.
For example, the claim by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989 that they had achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature was firmly rejected by most other scientists who repeated the experiment and reported that they failed to confirm that excess heat was produced, hence no nuclear fusion.
However, after Pons and Fleischmann, and other scientists who had become involved, had been traduced by sceptics, it was eventually established that some kind of nuclear reactions were almost certainly involved in the experiments. This chapter on cold fusion is a good example of how controversies in mainstream science can be just as ferocious as those in 'fringe' subjects, such as ufology.
Read the complete article: Magonia
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Dark Lore. Volume IV, edited by Greg Taylor
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 02:00 PM
204 Reads
Reviewed by Peter Rogerson
There are some good things in this issue which should be of interest to Magonia readers. For new material, the prize goes to 'The Newhallive Terror' by Theo Paijmans, which looks at some previously forgotten Spring Heel Jack type stories from the USA. SHJ might almost be our mascot, for it was interest in that character that caused John Rimmer to get in touch with me 40 years ago; and our much missed colleague Roger Sandell wrote his first piece on the subject for Flying Saucer Review back in the early 1970s.
The historical roots of modern mysteries are covered by several writers. Neil Arnold who traces the history of the protean chupacabra or goat-sucker of Latin America, through European and even Arabian root stories of vampires and blood suckers, which have taken multitudinous forms, Arnold makes it clear that this is not, to any great extent, a some paws and pelt (or scales) creature which can be caught in a trap, but a creature of the dark imagination, changing its form as it migrates from culture to culture. Nigel Watson in a piece on the MIB traces their origins in spy stories circulating around the time of the airship epidemics of the early 20th century.
Read the complete article: Magonia
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The Burning Land, by Bernard Cornwell
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Posted by: Makarios on Saturday, January 23, 2010 - 04:00 PM
235 Reads
Reviewed by Tom Shippey
Bernard Cornwell is the most prolific and successful historical novelist in the world today. He is best-known for the "Sharpe" series, 20 titles set in the Napoleonic wars, but he has written others, including the "Warlord" trilogy about King Arthur, the "Grail Quest" trilogy set in the Hundred Years' War, and the four "Starbuck Chronicles" about the American Civil War, a sequence not yet finished.
"The Burning Land" is the fifth in his "Saxon Tales" series, which deals with the wars between Vikings and Anglo-Saxons in late ninth-century England. The Anglo-Saxon period lasted 600 years and was full of major events, but it has been mostly forgotten. Novels about it almost always focus on two moments: the end of the era, when King Harold died at Hastings in 1066, and a crisis 200 years earlier—the one that Mr. Cornwell has chosen for his books—which was nearly the end of the era and of England as well. This is why most Anglo-Saxon novels have the word "last" in the title; Mr. Cornwell stuck to form by calling the first entry in his "Saxon Tales" series "The Last Kingdom."
Read the complete article: Wall Street Journal
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