The CPS Steering Committee seeks to understand more about the communication of esoteric and magical information. Scholarship has suggested the trade and spread of magical books was as important in the building of American and British Paganism as personal transmission and learning had been thought to be. What can we learn from microhistories of practitioners, embedded in the book trade while being authors themselves? Before the Internet, occult and new age spiritualities were often dependent upon such channels, but the contours of such operations have yet to be fully investigated. At the same time, these operations are not confined to the past. Works of popular books and television programs have provided gateway routes for discovery and inspiration of magical and Pagan discourse for generations. In areas often seen as culturally and economically devastated, can current developments in speculative fiction re-enchant and re-present regional older folk magic practices for new generations?
This presentation seeks to extrapolate data and trends relating to the esoteric book trade in Britain during the latter half of the Twentieth Century via a close examination of the notebooks of Doreen Valiente. The data presented can shed light on esoteric bookselling in general as well as on the early development of Wicca more specifically, considering Valiente's important contributions to the religion during its first decades. The notebooks reveal what books Valiente sought and purchased, the bookshops she frequented in Brighton, London and Glastonbury, and even – on occasion – the topics of the conversations and gossip she exchanged with or about the proprietors. An analysis of this data – as well as supporting materials in the form of letters to/from relevant booksellers – can serve to illustrate the role of the esoteric bookshop in the production and distribution of 'Rejected Knowledge' within the occult – and more specifically, Wiccan – milieus during the period.
Appalachia has struggled under a spell of disenchantment cast by books such as J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. New works of speculative fiction resist this critique by social elites, re-enchanting Appalachian landscapes and people through Pagan themes of nature spirituality, fey beings, and magic. We will look at two novels and a serialized horror podcast to examine the important role of speculative fiction in re-enchanting both landscape and regional identity in a Pagan mode.
| Jenny Butler | butler.jennifer@gmail.com | View |