The supernatural has never seemed so…natural. In this outstanding independent film from director (and bit player/musician) Tim Rutili, a lonely fortune-teller and magical worker named Zel (played by the radiant Angela Bettis) lives in an old country house inhabited by a wide range of unusual ghosts that only she can see. There’s a party-and-sex obsessed priest (Reid Coker), a flighty flapper girl (Sierra M. Mitchell), a bride (Emily Candini), a band of blind musicians (in reality the band Califone, who provide the excellent and deeply mystical soundtrack to the film), and a strange, child-like woman named Nyla (Molly Wade) who cannot speak.

Zel inherited the house and the ghosts from her grandmother, who also knew magic and divination, and the film functions in some ways as a demystification and de-glamorization of the “gypsy fortune-teller.” When we see that Zel reads the names of winning horses for a client off of a piece of paper given to her by Nyla—only to then find the paper has absorbed into her skin—we sense that the transaction was rigged, yet at the same time we know that Zel did receive a message from the spirit realm. It puts the viewer in an odd and sublime position of questioning Zel’s abilities, which all come from her contact with the ghosts, and at the same time recognizing that there is no reason this film’s explanation of events should seem implausible.

Zel is not merely a medium, she is also a deeply talented magical worker. She smartly lays down a salt line in front of her bedroom door every night to keep her ghost-friends out, as their perception of personal boundaries are very different than her own (the scene where Zel’s boyfriend attempts to get a little bit intimate with her while all the ghosts pile into the living room to watch television is sad and hilarious). In the end, the ghosts confront Zel with a family secret and a difficult decision, while at the same time she struggles with clients old and new who place increasing demands on her time and skills. The director cleverly bookends each section of the film with bits of folk magic, title cards with things like “A wish made while burning onions will come true,” which lends to the overall enchantment of the piece.

Rutili has done a marvelous job with this film, which feels by turns documentary, comedy, drama, and music video. His casting is mostly excellent, with standout performances from Bettis and from Karol Kent (who plays the nicer of Zel’s two clients). For anyone with an interest in spiritualism, magic, or good cinema in general, I cannot recommend this film highly enough. Available on Netflix.

Spiritual documentaries are tricky things. They can come across as editorializing and biased; shallow puff-pieces; or overly-detached and sterile. When fringe spirituality enters the picture, the tendency is to become sensational and turn the entire film into a circus sideshow where the audience is just waiting to see what “the crazy person” is going to do next. There are rare exceptions to this rule, of course, such as Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen, and now, American Mystic from Alex Mar.

Director Mar turns the camera on three different but spiritually similar people: Kublai, an African American man who belongs to the Spiritualist Church; Chuck, a Lakota Sioux sun dancer; and Morpheus, a pagan witch and Feri tradition priestess. Each of these people comes across as likeable, even if a bit flawed, and from our first introductions we, the audience, are eager to see them succeed in their spiritual efforts. Mar captures the challenges of these faiths, including both internal and external struggles. While there is an element of novelty to the practices of each film subject, the director never lets curiosity turn into spectacle. The Sun Dance, which can be grueling for participants, is not simply a show of blood and muscle, but rather connects Chuck to his family in a powerful way. Kublai seems to struggle with just how much he believes in his own spiritual gifts. And Morpheus senses her displacement in the modern world, while at the same time she does not shy away from the society of other people.

The emotional center of this movie is mysticism. The aching need to feel spirituality in each person’s life bleeds through the screen. These are not people who can accept dogma by rote or believe solely within their heads. They must live and experience the truth of divinity and universality, and take that spiritual truth into themselves.

The film is not perfect. The sparseness of the cinematography and the sometimes jarring transitions between subjects can be disorienting, and the score is beautiful if a bit overwrought at times. At the core of Mar’s work, however, are the people she finds so utterly fascinating. The director seems to be asking herself questions about faith by selecting scenes of doubt and trial, while at the same time affirming the deep emotional power of each person’s faith in her film. This is definitely a film worth watching, especially if you have an interest in spirituality and mysticism. Available on Netflix.

Raven Grimassi’s name crops up in discussions of southern European witchcraft frequently. He has produced a number of books on stregheria, the Italian folk-magic/religion which may or may not have been a major influence on authors like Charles Leland in the 19^th century. He also presents a lot of information on Wicca and other neo-Pagan topics to the public through his work. His latest outing, entitled Old World Witchcraft: Ancient Ways for Modern Days, gives readers Grimassi’s system for working herbal shamanic practices into the fabric of his Italian folk religion. If that were all this book did, it would be a spare but somewhat enjoyable look at one man’s practices.

Instead, Grimassi spends the first portion of his book building up a series of arguments against “scholars,” whom he generally does not name or cite claiming that they’ve had it all wrong, and that he has pieced together historical threads to form a tradition similar—though not identical—to the kind of witchcraft done through the centuries by other herbal shamans (who may or may not have called themselves witches). He then proceeds to present a novel form of practice which leans heavily on ritual tools like the mortar and pestle and on plant spirits. Again, not in and of itself a bad thought experiment, but Grimassi certainly goes out of his way to make this seem like the only logical practiced that can be gleaned from historical evidence.

He engages in a number of pseudo-historical fantasies, claiming that no complete history of witchcraft exists because scholars rely almost solely on witch trial evidence to say what witches do or did in the past. He does occasionally name these scholars—Owen Davies being the most notable—but seems to gloss over their arguments and evidence (Davies would hardly suggest that witch trial evidence is a good source of reliable facts, nor would other scholars like Norman Cohn or Keith Thomas who remain unnamed in Grimassi’s text). He also mis-cites or outright fails to cite a number of his sources. For example, he claims early in the book that God limits human lifespans after the “sons of God” mate with mortal women, citing Genesis 5 to support his point. In fact, the passage he is citing appears in the next chapter of Genesis (which he later cites correctly, so this is likely just a failure to proofread on his part). He also quotes from scholar Ronald Hutton at one point, then completely fails to cite Hutton in the bibliography. His endnotes are a joke, often rambling or unrelated to the text at hand, and when he cannot find enough evidence to support his viewpoint, he jams his opinion into an appendix with only the loosest connection to the rest of the book (I’m thinking here of his odd “Appendix A: The Invisible God of Witchcraft” which could have easily been left out of this book without detracting from his points).

Perhaps the most aggravating element of this book for a practical magician are his bizarre claims about tools and ingredients. He says that graveyard dust should not actually be dirt taken from a grave (a practice which can be found in several cultures, such as African American conjure work) but rather it should be the powdered ashes of leaves taken from a tree in a graveyard, which seems to have no basis in historical practice whatsoever. He also tells witches that they should learn to work with poisonous plants not by growing monkshood or belladonna, but by using his sigils to get in touch with the plant’s spirit. I’d be very interested to hear from practical herbal shamans like Sarah Lawless or Harry at The Alchemist’s Garden just what they think of that notion.

All in all, this is a book which suffers from broken clock syndrome (as in, “a broken clock is right twice a day”). He occasionally hits on interesting ideas or brings up worthwhile concepts, but mostly he seems to be posing an elaborate fantasy as a pseudo-historical reality, with very little scholarly backbone to support his claims. When someone prods the gear works, the whole contraption just seems to fall apart. [Full Disclosure Note:  I received this book for free as a prize in a contest. I have not been paid or otherwise coerced by the publisher to write this review. No good or bad review was expected by the publisher, and an honest review has been given by the reviewer.]

A surge of interest has bubbled up around the folk magical system known as hoodoo in recent years. Many have been pursuing online courses, reading everything they can get their hands on, and buying up mojo bags and condition oils at a breakneck pace. During this new heyday of hoodoo, I have seen a number of ‘flavors’ of that practice cropping up, from the Geechee root work of the Georgia/Carolina coasts which emphasizes herbal remedies to the Southern conjure with its toes in the enchanted rivers of Appalachian and Germanic folk magic, to the syncretic California conjure which has been so influenced by mail-order merchants and folk remedies from Chinatown. Then, there is New Orleans hoodoo, which is, to use a regionally appropriate metaphor, a gumbo of many different traditions all mixed together. Each version retains a bit of its own flavor, but also melds with the other tastes in the pot to make a big eclectic tradition.

Author Denise Alvarado terms this mixed tradition “Voodoo-Hoodoo,” a term which irks some as the continuing inaccurate jumble of two terms which should remain distinct (Voodoo being a religion and hoodoo being a folk magical practice). However, if one takes the time to read Alvarado’s passionate book on the topic, the Voodoo-Hoodoo Spellbook, one can see that she is merely sticking to the terminology most people are familiar with and that the dog of diction has no teeth to bite when it comes to New Orleans-style magic. Instead, Alvarado presents a tradition which blends elements of Haitian Vodoun, folk Catholicism, Southern root work and hoodoo, and a touch of New Age spirituality to create a vibrant, current practice. She uses a number of good resources, often primary ones, to support her understanding of a practice she has lived with her whole life (according to her). She also frequently slips away from the facts and into personal experience, but does so in a non-authoritarian way. Her history of Mardi Gras and the magical folklore associated with them is captivating, as is her heartfelt look at the Seven African Powers.

When she does slip off of the scholarly or personal track the book can get a bit messy. Her correspondence tables are not a strength, and her inclusion of New Age style tumbled gemstones in her work almost undermines her traditionalism (as it seems fairly obvious that slaves doing similar work in the 19^th century would not have had polished rose quartz to work with). Her flexible and fluid attitude towards Christianity probably raises eyebrows, too, though here it should be pointed out that she neither says one must work with Christianity nor one must work with African Traditional spirituality. Instead, she allows the individual worker to determine his or her own course of action. Her own course, she seems to say, is presented in these pages, but it’s not the only course.

What most people will open this book for, though, is not history or a state-of-the-union on hoodoo terminology. People are looking for spells, and this book definitely has those. There are spells for love, luck, money, protection, and half-a-dozen other needs. Hundreds of spells and workings are contained in this book, as well as recipes for conjure oils and powders, instructions for candle working, and a discussion of poppets and dolls in magical work. Some of them seem totally reasonable within the context of her presented practice, and some seem a little forced. One thing this book absolutely has going for it is its distinctly New Orleans flavor. The Hurricane Prayer on p. 71, which reads in part, “Our Father in Heaven, through the powerful intercession of Our Lady of Prompt Succor and Saint Jude, spare us from all harm during this hurricane season,” has an urgency that only the Gulf Coast could provide to such a working.

The bibliography and references in the book offer a lot of material to chew on as well, and so this book fits nicely on the shelf next to other “hoodoo 101” texts, while offering a few doors to open for a reader looking to go deeper. This definitely should not be taken as a complete course in hoodoo presented in a shiny red cover, but it can be a good starter for a person looking to get his or her feet wet (or powdery) when learning root work. It is practical, genial, open, and even somewhat scholarly at times (though not frequently the latter). It has good, workable spells and prayers. And Alvarado comes across as sincere and forthright, with no axe to grind, and a love for the work she shares here. [Full Disclosure Note:  I received this book for free as a prize in a contest. I have not been paid or otherwise coerced by the publisher to write this review. No good or bad review was expected by the publisher, and an honest review has been given by the reviewer.]

If you have spent much time studying occult literature, you know that Great Britain is rife with magical lore: fairies, Arthurian legends, druidry, cunning folk, etc. There have been many who have attempted to collect that literature and lore over the years, but few or none that spring to mind as compendiums of British magical lore. In The Book of English Magic, Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate make the not-too-audacious claim that Britain’s magical history is one of the richest—perhaps the richest—in the world. They approach their subject by examining a mix of history, folklore, and modern practices to attempt to piece together a portrait of Britain as an enchanted isle. While I think that they succeed in presenting a magical portrait of a magical land, I also think that the authors are by turns too broad and too narrow.

The book is divided into a number of sections, mostly grouped around a specific branch of magical study: alchemy, dowsing, druidry, etc. Each chapter provides historical references to primary material—when available—as well as a little editorial writing on the people, places, and practices associated with the branch being discussed. In some cases they excel—their chapters on alchemy and dowsing being some of the best introductory material I’ve seen on the subject—and in some cases they seem to lose their steam a bit. The section on druidry is definitely overlong considering the sparse source material they have available compared to other sections, but as the subject is one of Carr-Gomm’s primary fields of interest—he is also the author of Druid Mysteries, the Druid Plant Oracle, and the Druid Animal Oracle—this does make some sense. While some chapters seem tight and focused, others seem only loosely woven together. They hardly plumb the depths of what is called Traditional Witchcraft, providing very little in terms of source material or practical work. Cunning folk are given surprisingly short shrift considering how close to contemporary some of that material is, much of it printed in the twentieth century.

Another element that sets this book apart is the inclusion of practical exercises at the end of each section. This gives the text a slightly ‘workbook’ feel at times, which deflates the momentum of the book in some places, but really does seem to serve the overall work. The real challenge here is that the broad range of systems they are trying to cover sometimes do not have much in common and so the exercises lack cohesiveness, but in truth that is not the fault of the authors so much as the nature of the beast they are trying to tame. With all of that being said, if one were looking for a good coffee-table introduction to the myriad magical traditions available to the student of British history, this would be an excellent starting point, though a deeper exploration is certainly waiting in the wings for the reader after finishing this book.

[Full Disclosure Note:  I received this book for free as review copy. I have not been paid or otherwise coerced by the publisher to write this review. No good or bad review was expected by the publisher, and an honest review has been given by the reviewer.]

An English Arcanum

In “Saddle the Hare” Andy sings of shapeshifting into a wild hare and the connection with nature shapeshifting bestows.  ”The Language of Birds”, a beautiful lush song, brings me back to reading Singing With Blackbirds where the author spoke of wild and mad initiations of the old Celtic shamans and the bird masks and feathered cloaks they wore.

“Bend me and break me and make me anew
Roll me in moss and in mud and in dew
Cloak me in feathers of black and of white
Make me a thing of the day and the night”

One of my favourite songs on this album is “Playing at Gypsies” for its heart-pulling songwriting and beautiful accompanying music — a lovely song of a love and a life left behind. “Pilgrim’s Progress” is a folkloric song of crossroads, hard-won paths, the road we all tread upon, and the strangers one meets along the way. “Blackbird” tells the tale of a man who traded crumbs of his lunch with a blackbird in exchange for a song and gets a snippet of wisdom instead. “Icarus” is a gorgeous song that will speak to the heart of everyone who’s ever loved and lost, tried and failed, acted in spite of fear, and followed their heart above all else.

I was also very delighted that Rima Staines was called upon again to do the album artwork and what gorgeous artwork it is! The cover features a hidden green man presenting a box of curios which represent the songs on the album and the CD artwork is of the traditional three hares – with saddles to match the title of the first song, of course. To learn more about Rima and to see the full set of illustrations she did for An English Arcanum visit her blog: The Hermitage.

Mysterious and beautiful with rich song writing and lush musical compositions, An English Arcanum is a favourite of my music collection that get played often around the house. Whether you are a lover of folksy Pagan music or folk music in general, you will want to add this album to your own collection.

• Telling the Bees official website
• Review of Telling the Bees first album “Untie the Wind”

Once Upon A Time

When/Where to Watch: Sundays on ABC

Season Premier: October 23rd @ 8pm

Website: abc.com

From the writers of Lost, with Jennifer Morrison from House and Ginnifer Goodwin from Big Love, comes a tale of two worlds: our world and a world where fairy tales are real. A good King and Queen (played by Goodwin) have a terrible curse put on them and in an effort to hold on to any last chance at hope they send their baby daughter Emma away to our world hoping she’ll come back when she’s grown to save them. The daughter grows up into a tough bail bonds collector (played by Morrison) who’s had a hard life. When the son she gave up ten years ago finds her and asks for her help, they end up in the small Main town of Storybrook where all is not what it seems.

“It’s a place where magic has been forgotten, but is still powerfully close… where fairytale characters are alive, even though they don’t remember who they once were. The epic battle for the future of all worlds is beginning, but for good to win, Emma will have to accept her destiny and fight like hell. “

I personally have high hopes for this fantasy drama – spells and magic and fairy tales – oh my! I love the casting of the two lead actresses playing mother and daughter and Robert Carlyle looks perfectly creepy as whatever creature it is he’s playing. I’ve also had an obsession with fairy tales since early childhood so a tv show about fairy tales being real makes my girlish heart squee from excitement.

Grimm

When/Where to Watch: Fridays on NBC

Season Premiere: October 21st @ 9pm

Website: nbc.com

“Remember the fairy tales your parents used to tell you before bedtime? Well, those weren’t stories, they were warnings.“

From the producers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel comes the supernatural horror tv series Grimm. Set in Portland, Oregon, Grimm focuses on the story of Detective Nick Burkhardt one of the last “Grimms” – as in the brothers Grimm who wrote all your favourite bedtime fairy tales. The Grimm family has a secret; they can see what others cannot. As his mother dies Nick starts to gain her abilities to see monsters and otherworldly creatures in the faces of seemingly ordinary people and it becomes his duty to hunt them.

Appearing to be one part Supernatural, one part CSI, and one part of the creepier fairy tales you’ve read, Grimm should be the darker and bloodier of the magical shows coming this fall. I’m hoping for the old fairy tales to be told in their darkest glory like long ago when they were for adults and not children. Grimm should serve to distract and delight all the Supernatural fans who’ve been disgusted by the last manically written season. As a Pacific Northwesterner myself I’m excited for a new show based here and filmed here as the mountains, waters, and forests of giant trees lend themselves well to a fairy tale environment. I hope you don’t let me down Grimm!

The Secret Circle

When/Where to Watch: Thursdays on The CW

Season Premiere: September 15th @ 9pm

Website: cwtv.com

This teen witch horror focuses on the story of 16-year-old Cassie who finds out she’s a witch in a town full of secret witches after her mother dies in a mysterious fire. Being true to their stereotype, The CW has produced another supernatural tv series for teenagers, this time with witches. You won’t find any Wiccans or Druids in this show; The Secret Circle is pure witch fantasy where each teen witch comes from a long line of witches from six great families each with their own ancient grimoire passed down through the generations.

Cassie is the requisite blond good witch with Faye as your bad bitch witch with power hunger issues. Appearing to be a mix of The Craft with The Gathering and Charmed, I foretell that The Secret Circle will be a guilty pleasure for teens and women with a love of the supernatural and romantic drama (where there are teenagers, there’s drama). This series is also filmed in the Pacific Northwest making me think all the Twilight fans are hungry for more snow-capped mountains mixed with magic. I don’t have the highest hopes for this one, but maybe all those pretty young actors will surprise me.

In the past year or so, Weiser Publishing has begun releasing a series of what it terms “field guides” to various topics: the paranormal, cryptozoology, etc. The idea seems to be that creating small, portable compendiums of knowledge which go beyond a dictionary format but which do not quite reach encyclopedic levels of information might provide on-the-go information to those interested in the selection of topics available. The Weiser Field Guide to Witches tackles cackling hags, beautiful enchantresses, and the range of magical folk falling between those two extremes (or falling around them, beside them, across the street from them…). The publisher chose a living encyclopedia of witchcraft, Judika Illes, to provide content for their work, and anyone familiar with Illes’ other texts (The Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, Pure Magic, Magic When You Need It, and more than half-a-dozen others) knows that she brings a tremendous amount of research to the table.

Weiser’s guide in some ways works as a condensed or “light” version of an earlier work by Illes, The Element Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft (now sadly out of print). The joy of this little tome is its lighthearted-yet-sincere love of all things witchy. The chapters are broken into topics like “Types of Witches,”  “A Cavalcade of Witches,” “Entertaining Witches,” and “Hunting Witches.” There are entries on Hermione Granger, Naamah, Ursula (from The Little Mermaid), Nicnevin, Glinda the Good Witch, Moses, Merlin, Countess Bathory, and even Roald Dahl’s Grand High Witch (from his children’s book The Witches). She looks not only at typically witchy animals like black cats and owls, but also hyenas and magpies. She is as comfortable summarizing the life of occultist Austin Oman Spare as she is exploring the magical mutants in the X-Men universe. Much of this material can be found in her larger corpus of writing, but as a sort of crib sheet to witches in folklore, mythology, and pop culture, this book serves its purpose.

The downfall of this book is, of course, its brevity. It leaves little room for suggestions on field trials or activities, which could have been a fun practical element of the book. The text also must pass cursorily over many subjects, giving most topics about a page to spill their secrets before bouncing to the next heading. Illes thrives when she has thousands of pages to fill, and the Weiser guide feels a bit caged because of the format and length. Yet I would definitely recommend it to anyone with an interest in witchcraft as an element of folklore or pop culture, because it provides just the right jumping off point for deeper exploration in literally hundreds of directions. The book does not so much replace the need for many books as open the door to whole libraries of information as yet unexplored. Its length and format hamper it at times, but it does what any good book probably should: it leaves you wanting more.

[Full Disclosure Note:  I received this book for free as a prize in a contest. I have not been paid or otherwise coerced by the publisher to write this review. No good or bad review was expected by the publisher, and an honest review has been given by the reviewer.]

Charles De Lint’s work frequently gets compared to other literary fantasy writers: Neil Gaiman, Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, etc. In Promises to Keep, De Lint’s 2007 entry into his Newford story canon, the atmosphere of the book certainly evokes the best literary fantasy, but the writing lacks the polish of the better-known authors. The story revolves around Jilly Coppercorn, a girl overcoming a life of drug abuse and teen prostitution and struggling to become an artist and contributing member of society. When Jilly runs into an old friend from her former life who appears to have cleaned up, too, she follows her to a mysterious nightclub, only to find that her old friend actually wants to show her a strange world just beyond the club where everything a person wants is at his or her fingertips. Jilly enjoys this comfortable space for about two chapters before realizing that it may not be exactly what she thought it was, and she must then decide between struggling in the ‘real’ world or being lulled into complacency by the ‘other’ world.

Readers familiar with the Newford series (which includes The Onion Girl and Widdershins as well as this book) likely know Jilly very well already and understand that De Lint’s world is separated from otherworldly events only by the thinnest tissues of perception. He creates a realm of spirits and magic which exists alongside street basketball courts and warehouse loft spaces. He has city canals which burble dark secrets in the dead of night. He toys with the ideas of shadow souls, benevolent-but-easily-perturbed deities, and a fairy-like shaman woman. He plays by the rules of the fairy tale, mostly, but also does not shy away from gritty portrayals of city life, drug addiction, and sexuality.

De Lint crafts his world and characters deftly enough, though his language and syntax in this novel often seem to trip over clichés and stiffness. For example, the third line into the book has Jilly uttering a movie-of-the-week clunker: “I thought I’d managed to put that name behind me now, along with the memories of foster homes and living on the street” (p. 9). Other characters engage in acts of needless exposition or stilted dialogue, disrupting the otherwise lovely flow of De Lint’s narrative.

Promises to Keep does not provide easy answers to Jilly or the reader. The sincerity with which Jilly faces her difficult decisions and her regret when she makes the wrong ones provides an emotionally real and human touchstone. De Lint builds his world around the fallibility of his protagonist, and around her deep-down goodness. His atmosphere, his clever story, and his clear love for Jilly as a character all cover the weaker elements in his writing, and the result is a satisfying and engaging—if occasionally pedantic—contribution to the literary fantasy genre.

bondmaid: a female bond servant~~Merriam Webster

The Otherworld can offer much to those it favors, but deals with the Fey can come with an unexpected price. Centuries ago, the Feierabend family unwittingly made a deal with the Otherworld. In exchange for prosperity, luck, and health, a daughter from each generation of their line would be offered to the fey as a bondsmaid for seven years time.  Although the tale of this deal was told to the Brothers Grimm, for some reason, amidst their renditions of stories of incest, murder, and abuse, they decided to bury and hide the tale of the bondsmaid.

Skip ahead to the 1970′s where best friends Will and Ben become involved with the Feierabend sisters Livvy and Maddie. When one sister succumbs to the 7 year bargain, her  lover becomes determined to  alter the deal, whether or not the family likes it, but he soon discovers that deals with the Otherworld are not so easily broken nor changed.

I’ll admit that it took me a while to get into this book, however once I did, I  enjoyed the ride. Goldstein’s characters take on a very realistic feel in both thoughts and actions, although at times, the most interesting characters seem to be those who do not take the forefront.  The true strength of the tale however, seems to lie in Goldstein’s ability to weave together the waking world with that of fairy, into a realistic struggle between mortal and Other. If you are a fan of the Brothers Grimm, and fairy tales with a darker bent, you will be sure to enjoy The Uncertain Places.