Christmas Reading: Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture

Source. 

An early present for you readers - no sales, no fashion; a book.

We've just had the solstice, and Christmas is (somehow) tomorrow. For me anyway, winter feels like a time when everything sleeps; trees are bare, everything closes up for the season, and I hibernate. But like a cell's interphase, it's also a period of preparation, and development for the future - plenty of rest is needed, and maybe also some time to catch up on reading material.

Given the obvious pagan roots of Christmas, for those also planning on devouring some words one of my favourite queer feminist texts springs to mind; Arthur Evans' seminal 1978 text Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. Looking at the intersection of queer culture, witchcraft, feminism, and oppression through the centuries, Evans' work - though flawed, and now somewhat dated in its language - has had a massive impact on academic discourse regarding these areas, and yet is almost impossible to find. Luckily for you, some kind soul uploaded the entire text online for free, and it can be found in PDF form here.

Particularly with regards to the recent occult revival, I feel like this is an important book for anyone to read - pagan, queer, feminist, or historian alike. It's contains the history of the oppressed, so often ignored or smothered, and analyses the very prejudices and assumptions of its own contemporaries in anthropology and history. It's also extremely readable, and avoids the jargon and impenetrability of academia - and, most importantly, produces the kind of excitement you only get from learning to see the world with new eyes.

This year's holly piece.  

Merry Christmas, readers! Hope you're all nurturing your brains.






Fiona C

Red and Black Week 2013, Day 2: The Little Things (with extra book review)

 

It's day two of Sophistique Noir's Red and Black week! I'm hoping to get a post up every day on a variety of topics from fashion to photography, but whether I manage that or not remains to be seen. Nonetheless, today I shall be posting about smaller ways to get into the spirit of R&B week.

As previously mentioned, Red and Black Week rather snuck up on me - I'd contemplated all kinds of plans on looking into getting more red into my wardrobe, to looking into cultivating appropriately coloured flowers, to go on massive eulogies on the symbolism of both colours. Then exams happened and I entered into the frantic scramble that is the part time job market, and suddenly it was the start of the week and I didn't have a thing prepared!

My bedroom back at home is mainly purple in colour (and not in a particularly classy way, but now I'm out the house there's no point redecorating) - regretfully this doesn't work well with R&B week, but I do love the colours for decorating and have reorganized my bedside table to better get me in the mood of the week (the owl remains because it's adorable). 

I'm also re-reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh right now, the cover of which actually ties in very well. For those who haven't read it or seen the film, Trainspotting is a bleak but also darkly humorous collection of short stories detailing the lives of a group of Edinburgh drug addicts, and the struggles in their lives between addiction and redemption, often held back by their own situation. While drug users are often vilified in the public consciousness as criminals or wasters, Welsh exposes the truth of Britain's 'classless society' and how difficult it is for the characters to avoid and escape their brutal lives; indeed, this novel still resonates very strongly with me and modern Glasgow, despite being written twenty years ago - I actually took my username from one of the famous monologues in novel.

Now, back to cheerier subjects, I hope to see you all again for the next day of Red and Black Week! I've loved seeing everyone's posts and interacting with bloggers I wouldn't have otherwise, and I'll definitely be posting again. 

Until then, TTFN,

Fee