I recently began reading The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. It’s been on my shelf for years, but I’ve only just picked it up in preparation for reviewing Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon.

Edited by Dave Evans and Dave Green, Ten Years is a collection of academic essays inspired by Hutton’s groundbreaking work. Hidden Publishing provided me with a copy for review, but of course this necessitates first reading Triumph. And so here we are.

I’m finding it a fascinating read, and certainly as important as the hype that surrounds it has suggested. At the moment I’m still in the pre-Pagan stages of its history, covering the Golden Dawn and high magick, and this particular quip from Hutton seems a rather accurate summation of how magick is often approached:

Traditional scholarly magic was at basis an elaborate way of ringing for room service.

The reference is in regards to the Holy Guardian Angel, commanding spirits and demons, and much of the ritual work that was reintroduced in the occult revival at the turn of the last century.

It struck me that work with the Goetia hasn’t change substantially since that time, and, for good or ill, certainly many people seem to treat their HGA experiences this way.

How relevant is this observation today? In seeking experiences with entities outside ourselves, are we only “ringing for room service”?

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Hidden Publishing has just released a new book edited by Dr Dave Evans and Dave Green, Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon.

Can you believe it’s already been ten years since Ronald Hutton first published The Triumph of the Moon?

Ten Years is “a collection of researches inspired by, deriving from or just celebrating the immense impact of [Hutton's] seminal book”. From the website:

The topics cover many historical periods, many academic disciplines and it provides a wealth of information of use to academic scholar and interested freelance reader alike. Includes an extended essay by Ronald Hutton on the history of such scholarship, the state of it today and some of his thoughts for the future.

I haven’t been able to locate a contributor list, but it’s suggested that there are “big names” and “those newer to the field” who collectively bring “nearly two centuries of hands-on pagan research experience between them”. Which sounds kind of impressive.

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What do these three things have in common? I’m still not quite clear on that.

I received Francis Breakspear’s new book, If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Be Doing It! a few months ago, read a few pages, then got caught up in other things. I recently picked it up again, and so far it’s as direct and funny as his first book, Kaostar!,as expected.

Also as in Kaostar!, essays appear from Kate Hoolu and someone called “Dave Evans” (a pseudonym if I ever heard one).

I’ve just finished reading a two-essay interlude by Kate Hoolu, the first, titled “Stereotyping”, deals with issues of race and culture, and the second, “That behaviour is not normal! But how do you prove it?”, discusses mental health. It’s unusual to see these topics addressed in books ostensibly about practical magick, to say the least. Continue reading »

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Dave, a British academic and magician, is the co-founding editor of JSM – The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic and is author of The History of British Magic After Crowley (Hidden Publishing, 2007) and several other books.

I’m just back from the late-night regional premiere of the new Crowley-based film, Chemical Wedding, here in England. Much anticipated, this film is the brainchild (or should that be Moonchild?) of Bruce Dickinson. He is apparently a long-time Crowley fan, and will be better known as the screaming front man of perennial stadium heavy-metallers Iron Maiden . Apart from a few peripheral references in recent mainstream film (one of the Hellraisers, Razorblade Smile etc), Crowley hasn’t really been touched on for decades – you have to go back to the often appalling sixties’ Hammer Horror stuff, based on Dennis Wheatley’s books, or the 1950s classic Night of the Demon.

The prospects here looked good, with a prominent Shakespearian/Dickensian actor (Simon Callow) in the lead role instead of some unknown no-hoper. The plot encompassed some science fiction angles (the film Weird Science from the 80s immediately sprang to mind) and it is set in a modern-day Cambridge University, with a chaos-mathematics/quantum physics slant on to proceedings. Crowley is essentially called back to life via virtual reality technology, and possesses the body of an elderly and befuddled professor, who suddenly becomes the Beast renewed (in a rather natty purple velvet suit). Sounded like a great premise, and the online trailer, released ages ago, was simply fabulous.

Well, now I’ve seen the film… Continue reading »

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CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, is an independent, international network of scholars working in the field of new religious movements established in 1988.

CESNUR holds an annual conference which is largest world gathering of scholars active in studying new religions. Each conference usually features between 50 and 80 papers.

This year’s conference Continue reading »

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