Wednesday, January 20, 1971 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Paae Five I r u! 6 I IVe Yl= itchcraft's By MARCELLO TRUZZI The year 1970 with its uni- versity and government cut- backs may have been a bad one for the legitimate sciences, but their lesser "cousins" in t h e world of the occult found it a vintage season with a booming market for their wares. This was well evidenced not only by the enormous publicity giv- en witches and Satanists during 1970 and their increasing pop- ularity around college camp- uses, but by the crop of books that appeared last year offering to initiate the curious into the world of witchcraft. For the would-be witch or warlock, a host of entertaining and sometimes enlightening vol- umes appeared dealing with the old bl practice of modern sorcery. Whereas the current O c c u l t Revival primarily spawned the reprinting of old chestnuts dur- ing 1969 (as publishers discov- ered the new interest and tried to mine the public domain) 1970 brought several totally new works on both Wicca and dia- bolism. On the "How to Do It Yourself" side, three books de- serve special mention. P a ul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft: A Practical Guide for Witches, Warlocks and Covens (Putnams, $6.95) is certainly the best in a number of respects. Though Mr. Huson does not (so far as I know) represent himself as a witch (he merely claims one of his Scottish ancestors, A li c e Huson, was hanged as a witch), his book comes closest to au- thenticity among those which have 'so far claimed to detail ack ma 'Making i't at McClure'~s Harold S. Wilson, McCLURE'S MAGAZINE AND THE MUCK.- RAKERS, Princeton University Press, $10.00. By ROBERT WHITE Late 19th Century Americans of the supposedly cultured classes tended to take their so- cial cues from such genteel lit- erary organs as Harpers, Atlan- tic, or The Century. For a mod- est price, readers of these maga- zines could rest assured that while informing their senses, they would not offend their sensibilities. This is all changed, however, with the advent of McClure's- a. magazine whose brief , career was to seemingly shake the very foundations of the genteel tradition in America by loudly proclaiming itself for such coun- ter-culture causes as feminism. public education, and racial equality. The secret of McClure's success, as related by Harold Wilson in this engaging account, lay in the power of editor Mc- Clui'e's keen financial vision. While gearing his stories to the pocketbooks of the newly emer- gent middle classes, McClure undercut his competition w ith the proclamation, "You can't get behind ten cents." As if in' response to his oath, then, cir- culation at McClure's rose from 60,000 in the fall of 1894 to ex- ceed 350,000 by 1900. And by 1905, with figures topping the 450,000 mark, McClure's was clearly the most widely read of all American magazines. There was, however, another side to McClure. And it is, in fact, this other side which right- fully occupies the larger part of Wilson's chronicle. Although ih is difficult for most of us to conceive of Galesburg, Illinois as the birthplace of 20th Cen- tury reform, it is precisely this contention which Wilson game- fully champions. To see the crux of his argument perhaps it is best to turn to the author's own introduction. When McClure's Magazine was founded in 1893, it was staffed to -a great extent by graduates of Knox College lo- cated in Galesburg, Illinois. The two dozen Knox alumni who edited, sold, and financed McClure's carried to the New York publishing world many of the reform traditions of the Great Revival. All of this was consistent with the aims of Rev. George Washington 10% off EVERYTHING NOW at NOW Student Book Service Gale, who founded Knox on the Illinois prairie in 1837. Thus evangelical Christianity --although greatly modified-- with its injunctions to trans- form an evil world, helped to provide the purpose, tech- nique, and content of many of the progressive reforms cham- pioned by the muckraking movement in a later era. The rest of Wilson's 300 and some odd pages are designed to support this supposition by means of a more or less bio- graphical account of the man, McClure, and his magazine. That Knox was a hotbed of the Great Revival's abolitionist ac- argument. It is most apparent in a letter which Wilson include, written by Ray Stannard Baker to his father. .. . This crusade against special privilege in high places is a real war, a real revolu- tion. We may not have to go as far as you did, when you fought out the slavery ques- tion, with powder & blood. At the present, when any of us is wounded we bleed nothing but ink. But ink may serve the purpose. If is doesn't, I pity the country. Ink did, then, apparently "serve the purpose" and, in turn, this willing substitution oi the secrets of the Craft. Clear- ly, Huson's book represents witchcraft to be a black (i.e., diabolical) art, therefore a form of Satanism rather than the Old Religion as claimed by most of its contemporary practition- ers. Nonetheless, the volume contains much practice that is in harmony with that of cur- rent witches. In addition to a storehouse of formulae and ri- tuals, the book even contains a chapter entitled "The Coven and How to Form One," a glos- sary of witchcraft terms, and a reasonably good bibliography for the uninitiated. Basically, the book is a hodge-podge of information Huson was able to cull from a variety of written sources. All indications are that Huson himself was never initiat- ed into an orthodox or tradi- tional coven. This is a book by an "outsider" for other "out- siders." Nonetheless, it contains much information that is valid according to the secret tradi- tions. As with all such books, the problem for the reader is the discovery of which elements truly represent the beliefs of "legitimate" witches. Less complete, but probably better buys for the money (at least until Huson's book comes out in a paperback edition) are Kathryn Paulsen's The Com- plete Book of Magic and Witch- craft (Signet, 95c) and Sybil Leek's Cast Your Own Spell (Pinnacle Books, 95c). Of these two compendia of do-it-your- self guidance, Paulsen's book is a traditional anthology of ma- terials from ancient grimoires whereas Leek's book is far more readable and personal. My own preference is for Paulsen's vol- ume in that she not only gives more information, but attempts to give necessary sources and re- ferences. Leek's book is pro- bably better for the beginner, however, in that it reads more like a pleasant chat with a long practicing and remarkably well- publicized contemporary witch. But there is little overlap be- tween the two books, and t h e would-be practitioner would be well advised to purchase both of these inexpensive and comple- mentary volumes. gic casts cisco, he brings us straight- moder forward and detailed accounts. book y This is the first real report on review contemporary Satanists a n d Golder their practices since the works Astrun of the late William Seabrook in O rdo the 1940's. Lyons does not catch were the full spectrum of the chang- source ing and spreading world of to- school day's Satanists. His work is book largely centered around t h e history groups in California, and he but a does not survey groups such as search those in New Orleans or t h e tion o n occultism. No other yet available so objectively s the development of the n Dawn, including t h e m Argentinum and the Templi Orientis which the central background s for most contemporary s of ritual magic. The gives not only detailed y of the major movements also gives carefully re- ed biographical informa- in most of the great names new spell Man in the World," the late Aleister Crowley. P.R. Stephen- sen's The Legend of Aleister Crowley (Llewellyn Publications. $2.00) is a reprinting with the addition of an Introduction by Israel Regardie, Crowley's one- timedsecretary) originally ;ub- lished in 1930 as a defense of Crowley against the many char'- ges leveled at him by the popular press. More significant is Israel Regardie's The Eye in the Tri- angle: An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley (Llewellyn Pub- lications, $10.00). a major vol- ume detailing Crowley's life and teachings during the years of Regardie's association with him between 1928 and 1931. Though Regardie's interpretations of Crowley and his understandings of the rituals and history of the Golden Dawn are questioned by many (including Francis King), the volume is a long awaited addition to the growing bibliog- raphy dealing with what Rich- ard Mathison called "Crowley- anity." Finally, for the more skeptical and less historically oriented, 1970 saw the publication of Mil- bourne Christopher's ESP, Seers & Phychics (Thomas Y. Cro- * well, $6.95). This is an excellent and highly knowledgeable ex- pose of everything from haunted houses, astrology, spirit me- diums, ESP experimentation, fire walking, and poltergeists, to the recent prophecies of Jeane Dixon. As the highly experienc- ed head of the Occult Investi- gation Committee of the Society of American Magicians, Christo- pher shares with us his consid- erable knowledge on a wide va- riety of occult practices. The success of his debunkings varies considerably. Thus, he does very well on topics like ESP experi- mentation and the current crop of prophets, but he does rather poorly on his examination of contemporary astrology wherein he largely erects straw men. Like so many critiques of as- trology, Christopher attacks the newspaper horoscope or "sun sign" astrology which very few serious astrologers consider any- thing more than a commercial entertainment for the masses and which has little to do with what they conceive to be "legiti- mate" astrology. Nonetheless, Christopher's book contains a great deal of valuable knowl- edge essential to anyone who wishes to seriously undertake the study of modern )ccultisms. k s b 0 0 k s b 0 0 k s b tivity is not difficult to prove. To wit: "Such abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, John P. Hale, Cassius M. Clay, Theodore Park- er, and Wendell Phillips re- ceived an enthusiastic welcome when they visited and lectured at Knox." Similarly, it is not difficult to prove that many of the Knox alumni who were ex- posed to these tenets followed McClure to New York where his magazine served as the mouth- piece for the Progressives. What is a bit mole difficult to accept, however, is a direct correlation betwewen the two. There is a basic difference between the abolitionists and the Progres- sives which Wilson acknowl- edges, but unfortunately plays down to the detriment of his "ink" for "powder & blood" per- manently separated the men who wrote at McClure's from their predecessors who spoke at Knox in the pre-Civil War years. Though it seems unfair to malign the convictions of either group, still, the form of protest had drastically changed. The latter variety, designed for mass-circulation audiences, too often became confused with a profit motive. And accordingly, by the early 1900's Americans could feel as comfortably at home with a copy of McClure's on their coffee table as N e might today with the latest is- sue of Ramparts or Playboy. When reform did come, it no- ticeably affected the senses but jarred the sensibilities only in passing. On the more journalistic side, 1970 saw the publication of three general surveys of today's sorcery. The best of these by far is Arthur Lyon's The Second Coming: SE.tanism in America (Dodd, Mead, and Co., $6.05). Mr. Lyons does not make the usual mistake of most journal- ists writing in this area by con- fusing witchcraft with devil- worship. Though Satanists of- ten call themselves witches, witches only rarely are Satan- ists. The main value of t'h i s volume is that, unlike so many such books today, it is n o t merely a compilation of o 1 d newspaper and magazine stories. Lyons went directly into t h e field as a participant observer and comes back with new a n d first-hand information. Thus, whether he is dealing with acid-culture Satanists of Los Angeles or the far more respect- able (and a n t i - narcotics) Church of Satan in San Fran- PEACE relatively new and rapidly grow- ing Grotto in Detroit. Also, some of the historical information presented in this volume is open to debate. Nevertheless, this book is a must for anyone who wishes to comprehend today's new Satanists. In marked contrast to Lyon's book are Susy Smith's Today's Witches (Prentice-Hall, $5.95) and Emile C. Schurmacher's Witchcraft in America Today (Paperback Library, 75c). Both of these volumes are seemingly quick productions based on se- condary sources, many of them quite inaccurate. Of the two, Schurmacher's is far the bet- ter and cheaper. At least Schur- macher seems to have checked some of the source materials he used against one another. For the more serious student or would-be scholar in the gar- dens of contemporary magic, 1970 saw the publication of the excellent and truly remarkable history by Francis King, Ritual Magic in England (1887 to the present day) (Neville Spear- man, 42 shillings). This volume represents a major work on associated with modern occult- ism including S. L. MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, F. Israel Regardie, Dion Fortune, Rudolf Steiner, and Gerald Gardner. No one seriously inter- ested in the history of contem- porary magic can afford to be without this book. For those interested in tie real hey-day of magic, last year also saw the publication of two major biographical works on the Great Beast 666, the "Wickedest Today's Writers .. . Dr. Truzzi is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and the author of Caldron Cookery: An Authentic Guide for Coven Connoisseurs. Robert White is a regular re- viewer who is doing independ- ent research on the impact of mass culture in the late 19th Century. 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