Who Needs Neopagan Rites by Isaac Bonewits?

"That which is
remembered lives."

I’ll start by saying that Neopagan Rites: A Guide to Creating Public Rituals that Work is an excellent book. It doesn’t surprise me that so many of my pagan friends have copies, shared around to the point where people have lost track of whose book is whose. Written by the late Isaac Bonewits¹ it is enlightening and well researched, benefiting from Bonewits longstanding importance in the community and years of writing liturgy. Exploring all the considerations necessary for creating Neopagan Liturgy, it manages to be an enjoyable read even in the slower sections, crackling with wit.
  
 "…you may be forced to have paper cups and plates on hand, but for Goddess’ sake, have them at least look dignified.  Using Styrofoam is probably a sin."
  
 This book doesn’t need my help to be read², so instead of praising it, I’m going to give a bit of advice for potential readers.

This book is not for everyone. Somewhat light on examples, it assumes a certain familiarity with Neopagan ritual, especially group ritual, and a knowledge of some of the history of Neopaganism and magic. I would not advise this book if

• You are only just starting out on a Neopagan path³ 
• You live in an area without an active pagan group 
• You aren’t ready to take part in the Neopagan Clergy 
• You have never participated in a public/large group Neopagan Rite 
• You are easily offended by occasional jibes at Christianity⁴

"The Gods are watching us, so let's give them a good show!"

I would advise this book if

• You are or plan to start leading group pagan rites, especially public ones 
• You have practice with Neopagan rites and think you know what you’re doing⁵ 
• Your local Neopagan group needs to spice up its liturgy/shake up traditionalism 
• You have a solid grasp of Neopagan theology/thealogy⁶ and history 
• You want a valuable addition to any Neopagan library, personal or group 

Or, and this is the biggest reason: You don’t have any experience. You’ve only got a handful of other Neopagans in your area. You’ve got no leaders, no practice, no real unity, but you want them. An important aspect (often overlooked) that Bonewits stresses is for a ritual to include a reminder of continuity with rituals of the past and the future. This book provides that. It carries the feeling of growth, of little rituals building to big ones, faith groups that should flounder managing to soar. If you’re going to start from scratch, this may be the best place to start. If you’ve got nothing to go on, just pluck and sincerity, this will at least provide you with some sort of ground to stand on.⁷

"Remember that if you do a fall equinox rite at sunset, you will probably not be able
to get the sun to delay setting while latecomers straggle in."

Syzygy, Beauty, by T Fleischmann - Review

My friend recently finished Dark Lord of Derkholm.¹ When she gave it back to me, I darted upstairs to fetch Year of the Griffin² for her, and she told me “I don’t think I’ll be able to get to it until the end of the Summer, is that okay?” I pshaw’d³ and told her not to worry, “I almost never reread books.”

 T Fleischmann’s essay Syzygy, Beauty, the second nonfiction book from Sarabande that I’ve reviewed, is a rare exception. In the picture above is one of my favourite quotes, and when I was first making it, it was only going to read "I have been so many places I must be sunlight. Listen, I have been diffused by clouds, by everyone who has touched me."⁴  But when I went back to check I hadn’t messed it up, I read the last bit, and understood the subtlety of being "destined for the earth."⁵ The whole book is like that, every time I thumb through it I learn something new.

"Your boyfriend is an atmosphere, there before
me and remaining to sustain you now."

Half art-critique and half meditative memoir over a series of relationships, Syzygy, Beauty explores art, gender, love, travel, loneliness, and a wide variety of other subjects. Fleischmann’s relationship with the omnipresent but never truly defined "You" feels both intense and ephemeral, the "You" always at arm’s length even in intimate moments, occulted⁶ by their lack of name and their other boyfriend(s) who often seem to eclipse the narrator. Intriguingly, when asked,⁷ Fleischmann said that "You" was not a single person, but an amalgamation of a variety of similar relationships. "If I ever said something bad about 'You', I could always say 'Oh no, that wasn’t you, it was the other one'"

 This hits at the core of why I love this book, and what it represents, the untruthing of the nonfiction genre. It’s easy to assume that nonfiction must succumb to what Esther Wolfe once called "The fetishization of reality" but Syzygy, Beauty deconstructs the ideas of reality and truth. While it may not tell the True-True or the Whole-True,⁸ it still tells truth, possibly more truth than it could tell if bound by reality. Fleischmann, in this book, is blurring the lines of reality and fact, the result being somewhere in-between.

"Keep kissing me, you'll see,
new houses aren't haunted yet."

This works remarkably well with many themes of the novel, whose narrator always seems to be in a state of transience. Between lovers, between city and nature, between boy and girl, the narrator always seems most ⁹ However, while the essay complicates ideas of gender and beauty and place, it never offers real closure. Most pages will open and close with a sentence about, say, Grayson Perry or Louise Bourgeois, juxtaposed with a body of narrative in-between.¹⁰ The reader is presented with ideas and left to make their own meanings, which might be the most nonfictional thing in the world.
happy in the middle, where what all of those things mean can be complicated. “When you held my arms to the bed, I felt like a femme fatale who could swing a hammer…”

A fantastic and emotional read, I've been slow to review it only beacuse I've been throwing it at everyone I know.  I think a lot of people could benefit from this book, especially people encountering this brave new world, that has such non-binary gender ideas in it.

"Even God can't really say what something is without burning stars."

Let me Clear my Throat by Elena Pasarello - Review

A marvelous read all the way through, Elena Passarello’s first book, Let Me Clear My Throat is a charming and enlightening read all the way through.  The book comprises a series of short essays on the human voice, its limits, failings, and potential to soar. Each essay is well placed and contains a variety of thoroughly well researched essays on the subject of voice and what it means

"The voice of war  can turn gossip into
nicknames, dialogue into mythology."

The book is divided into three sections, Screaming Memes, Tips on Popular Singing, and The Thrown.   Screaming Memes goes into subjects such as the Wilhelm Scream, the Rebel Yell, and the "BYAH" that ended Howard Dean’s presidential race.  I’ll admit this first section was my favorite, particularly the last chapter, Harpy, which details Passarello’s loss of voice that drove her to victory at the Stella Screaming Competition, viewable here.  The essay is the first personal essay in the book, and feels very intimate.  We really understand where Passarello is coming from, and after all this radiant description of the human voice that she cares so much about, the idea of someone losing theirs seems repugnant.

Tips on Popular Singing’s “Space Oddity” delivers possibly the best possible commentary on the launch of the Golden Record on the Voyager Probe:

"Once the Voyager Probe was loaded with telemetry modulation units and spectrometers, we then made the decision to attach human voices to the contraption's flanks. And we added not just the voices of our leaders, but singing voices, including [Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode."] This is what beats out speeches and formulae and IBM The Ring Cycle.  According to NASA and Carl Sagan (and me) this is what the universe wants to hear.

Which is another way of saying that we have more faith in popular music than anything else on the planet."

Her insights into various popular singers, from the rise and fall of the Castrati to Judy Garland to the crows outside her window paint a vibrant portrait of music over the years, and had me scrambling to update my iTunes with an impressive variety of music.

The Thrown is a bit harder to summarize.  I suppose you could say it’s simply meditations on the human voice, what it means to us and why it matters so much to Passarello. This section is more freeform, and more fascinating for it.  It’s conclusion, an account of a Ventriloquist Dummy’s search for a voice all its own, is surreal and insightful all at once. 

Passarello impresses me by pulling off that trick that made me fall in love with Up Jumps the Devil, the trick of compressing sound into words.  From a scream that “Cuts a big yellow gash in the air” to an ‘Eew’ that skips out perfectly like a smooth stone across the audience, the visual, textural feeling of sound comes through magnificently.  I definitely advise reading this book with a computer handy, so you can listen to each song Passarello mentions, so that you can have the experience of nodding, as you read her words, and say “Yes.  Yes, those words are exactly the right ones for what I’m hearing.”