Witches of America / Alex Mar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mar, Alex, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Neopaganism--United States.

Neopaganism.

Wicca--United States.

Wicca.

United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 276 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Summary:

"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.

Contents:

Stone City

Little witch

Naked in the new forest

Keep your weapons peace-bonded!

The Feri current

Diana of the prairies

The mass

The vetting process

Cycle one

Morpheus and the Morrigan

Making priests

The binding

Proof; or, the creeping of your skin

Coru Cathubodua

Three nights at the castle

The small question of Satan

Sympathy for the necromancer

And the crows will eat my eyes

Enter the swamp.

ISBN:

9780374291372

0374291373

OCLC:

906171736

Publisher Number:

99964414821