Discover Top Posts Tagged with #alex mar

This week on The Maris Review, Alex Mar joins Maris Kreizman to discuss her new book, Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy, out now from Penguin Press. Subscribe and download the e…

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I am also on Ko-Fi :)

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Nearly a third of the original eighty-six tales of the Grimms’ collection feature young people, many of them girls, making their way into the woods—lured out by a trickster, or the need to pass a life-or-death test. In these stories, to enter the forest is to exit everyday life, leaving its rules behind; to encounter magic, and sometimes evil; and finally, deep within the tangle of trees, to be initiated, transformed—maybe even to conquer death—in order to cross into the next phase of life. To enter the forest is to cross over into adolescence.

Alex Mar, “Out Came the Girls”

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Witches of America, Alex Mar (F, 30s, orange dress, gold sandals, New Yorker tote, 33rd St Path)

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Eglentyne Reads "Witches in America"

I have read too many scathing reviews of this book, describing it as exploitative, muddled, and insensitive. Because it ruffled the feathers of so many pagans, I absolutely had to give this book a read to see what all the fuss was about. I don't necessarily trust the opinions of most Witches, for their abundant sensitivity and quick to judge attitudes. As a Witch, I can only trust my reception of a story.

This book is nothing more than that, a memoir and personal story. Anyone who came in with the perception that they'd learn of the many permutations of magick and occultism in America were probably disappointed. This is one woman's account, and like any single perspective, it will be limited, biased, and not in line with the reader's. Accept it; it's not your story, it's her's.

Alex, a journalist on the mission of creating a documentary, finds herself enamored in the subject she is meant to remain impartial to. How can you not? Witchcraft is alluring, and the Old Gods have power. So many people live their lives yearning for a release from the doldrum, an innate knowing there must be something more to this shit we put up with. That's the motivation of so much religion. We cling to hope that there is a Truth that will bring meaning to the chaos of our existence.

Alex spends a long time being skeptical. It is her right as a rational and successful person. How many people achieve a kind of success only to find they still lack fulfillment? Who through their hard work come to find they are so out of touch with themselves? I see Alex as a typical American. For all our technology and big cities, we still live in a vast, rugged landscape. Exploration and self-sufficiency is embedded into the cultural experience, the birthright of every American. Our's is a unique and almost laughable struggle, for in this individualistic society we are clawing for place and purpose.

It is through her journalistic exploration that she gains the privilege of encounting some very exclusive circles within Neo-Pagan America. This will not be like most Pagan's exploration, the homegrown sort of experience where we read books and meet the locals. Our stories of this shared adventure are boring from the outside, even if our personal narratives hold great meaning for us.

And I think that is where the public revulsion of this book begins. Alex has a very intimate view of the inside that we country dwelling pagans will never get to experience. She should feel grateful, she should be unquestionably swept away by the beauty of what is available to her, the secrets that she could access if she would only stay the course. I'm sure a few feel this way.

She goes to Pantheacon and rubs elbows with the elder Gards who were there to play a role in the illustrious Long Island coven that seeded so many others. She befriends a Priestess that devotes herself to the Morrigan and attends to this worship with unwavering zeal that has the potential to create an army of devotees that are called to the Divine cause. She meets Goddess worshippers at Pagan Spirit Gathering who built families of second- and third-generation Pagans, the truest kind of continual lineage we can ever hope to fulfill in Her honor. She is taken on by another Priestess who is willing to bring her into the ways of the wild Feri Tradition, an ecstatic and shamanic form of a true, American kind of witchery. She meets a necromancer of the highest caliber, one so shameless as to rob graves, exhuming the heads of forgotten souls to work his bidding, his calculated approaches fascinating in the most repulsive sense of the word. Through it all, she concludes none of this is for her.

I consider that position valid. I believe it is her respect for these paths that cause her to conclude that they are not meant for her. She has the self-awareness to understand she would disrespect the people of these these heartfelt ways if her own heart couldn't be in them. She would damage the friendship with her friend Morpheus, the Priestess of Morrigan, if she were to hop on board. She severes her mentorship with Karina, the Feri Priestess, when she discovers this is not the rituals she should involve herself in when she's receiving a very different message. It is noble to step away in that scenario, for it would be a waste of time for everyone should she continue out of a sense of false obligation.

Most compelling were her forays into an OTO lodge in New Orleans, with its romantic adherents and the liberating, taboo nature of its ritual. That city is a beautiful backdrop, and this is where Alex finds a genuine calling. I understand the pull. My own tradition is built on those similar Masonic style of initiation, the ceremonial framework of ritual, the worship of our own veiled and voluptuous Queen of Heaven. I get it.

Her initiation into Minerval grade is gritty, laborious in a way only the Louisiana landscape can deliver, and capstoned in true initiatory fashion. It was a thrill to read, for I understand the disorientation, that forced submission, and the fugue state of afterwards where you can't quite wrap your head around what just happened. There are parts of my own that I can't even remember (which I hear is normal). This was where, despite the wild terrain and very foreign method, I related to the psychodrama of her ordeal. She experienced the realness she sought, and in that final conclusion I felt satisfaction for her.

Some end their dismissal of this book with its guiltless exploitation of secrets. I wonder if the people spouting that are the ones who would consider that information secret are unwittingly confessing that those are secrets to them. None of the information presented can't be found on one's own, no initiation required. The events Alex involved herself in were open and available. Her Feri foray for a weekend Samhain retreat was an outer court event. Alex changed names where she needed. She gave none of the names of power that she earned access to. She presented some real experiences, and remained respectful to all of them. Her misgivings had more to do with herself than the validity of the participants she encountered. I daresay she was jealous of the ease of their convictions.

I appreciated having a chance to peep into other traditions through the words of another. It thrills me that there are people in this diverse expanse of a continent that are having real experiences, and evolving them, pushing the limits and carrying on the work. It gives hope for me, where I find spiritual scarcity in my own neck of the woods. It can be lonely in some parts of the Bible Belt. Poverty, mental illness, disability, and religious fundamentalism can be isolating factors. The degradation of the American South has us wondering if we too are being swallowed up, if we are simply relics with no future. We'll be lost to so much kudzu.

I felt pangs of envy for all these accounts I dream of having. But for all their vibrancy, they do not eclipse my own. My narrative is my vital brand of "you can't make this shit up." I don't need it fed back to me in order to feel validated. I didn't want an account that speaks to my experience. I appreciate hers.