Witches of America
By: Alex Mar
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9780374291372
Copyright date: 2015
Subjects: Neopaganism; Wicca
Description: "Witches are gathering." When most people hear the word "witches," they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the nearly one million Americans who practice Paganism today, witchcraft is a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. So Alex Mar discovers when she sets out to film a documentary and finds herself drawn deep into the world of present-day magic. Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area; from a gathering of more than a thousand witches in the Illinois woods to the New Orleans branch of one of the world's most influential magical societies. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters. This sprawling magical community compels Mar to confront what she believes is possible--or hopes might be. With keen intelligence and wit, Mar illuminates the world of witchcraft while grappling in fresh and unexpected ways with the question underlying every faith: Why do we choose to believe in anything at all?--Adapted from book jacket.
Table of contents: title: Stone City; title: Little witch; title: Naked in the new forest; title: Keep your weapons peace-bonded!; title: The Feri current; title: Diana of the prairies; title: The mass; title: The vetting process; title: Cycle one; title: Morpheus and the Morrigan; title: Making priests; title: The binding; title: Proof; or, the creeping of your skin; title: Coru Cathubodua; title: Three nights at the castle; title: The small question of Satan; title: Sympathy for the necromancer; title: And the crows will eat my eyes; title: Enter the swamp.