About a week ago, the editors handed me a pile of a 5½" by 8" staple-bound journal called The Pomegranate (The Pom, for short) and asked me to review it. I held issues #1 through #10 (only lacking #5) of a "new journal of Neopagan thought," according to the cover. Since that was a week before the deadline, and I knew my own reading speed, I knew that I would be able to read only a portion of them, so I have restricted myself to a careful reading of the four 1999 issues, with only a glance at the earlier ones for now.
The covers of each issue have an attractive, standardized design: the title is in a graceful and serious typeface; the table of contents proceeds down the left-hand side while the right is taken up with a drawing of Proserpine, or Persephone, being offered a pomegranate with the seeds prominently displayed. The front interior cover has the journal's vital statistics and statement of purpose, while the rear interior carries a brief summary of the types of material the editors would like to publish.
The statement of purpose, presumably by The Pom's editors, Fritz Muntean and Diana Tracy, expands on the cover's motto. "Its purpose is to provide a scholarly venue for the forthright and critical examination of Neopagan beliefs and practices. We intend this Journal to be a forum for the exchange and discussion of the philosophy, ethics, and spiritual potential inherent within modern Paganism's many paths. The consideration of new ideas, as well as the exploration of the roots of our current practices such as classical Paganism, western esoteric traditions and influences from other disciplines, will be included."
I'm not a scholar; I completed an undistinguished college career with a B.A. and never looked back. I'm widely read in fields like archaeology, but not deeply so, and not at a technical or scholarly level. I can never remember what "hermeneutics" or "heuristics" mean, and I have a problem with "problematic" and its many derivatives. So how did I do with the contents of The Pom?
To begin with, I began to understand "problematic," though not to love it. Most of the articles in The Pom use scholarly jargon, but only in a few instances did I find the jargon more hindrance than help. For instance, Ann-Marie Gallagher's "Weaving a Tangled Web? History, `Race' and Ethnicity in Pagan Identity" in the November issue used "problematic," "unproblematic," "problematically," "unproblematically," even "unproblematicized," along with constructions like "the rhetoric of Celticism." Despite these occasional verbal thickets, I found most of the pieces quite readable, if usually solemn.
One of the most enjoyable pieces, in the May issue, was far from solemn, though quite serious: "Meeting Amatera-Su (and Oya, Too): the Warrior Path for the Non-practitioner," by Mira Zussman, recounts the author's gradual training in a role-playing game called "The Samurai Game," along with her fervent absorption of Japanese culture, changes in self-image, and reactions to the concepts of war and death. She tells her tale in a lively and ironic manner, contrasting with the other essays I read. This could be because it fell into a category The Pom calls "Workings," and was the only one of its type published in 1999.
Other highlights? Jeffrey Kaplan's "Savitri Devi and the National Socialist Religion of Nature" (February), is an attempt to warn us of the potential dark side of nature worship by recounting the career and beliefs of a prominent Nazi author. Jone Salomonsen's "Methods of Compassion or Pretension? Anthropological Fieldwork in Modern Magical Communities" (May) takes on the problem of truly capturing the meaning of magical groups like Reclaiming if one uses only textual research or observation from an outsider's stance, the usual anthropological methods. Salomonsen's solution is not to be an outsider but instead to be simultaneously a sincere participant and an objective investigator. In the August issue, Donald H. Frew presents "Harran: Last Refuge of Classical Paganism," in which he speculates that Harran in modern Turkey may have harbored a Pagan society as late as the 11th Century, and calls for the site to be properly excavated.
In addition, there are several controversies that continue from earlier issues into the 1999 ones, one on the value and meaning of Marija Gimbutas' work and theories, and another on new evaluations of the seriousness and purposes of the Medieval and Renaissance witch persecutions. I find it quite interesting to follow the arguments, varying interpretations and sometimes personal jabs that make up these scholarly exchanges.
I even enjoy footnotes, bibliographies and list of references. Not only do they give me valuable suggestions for further reading, but they show influences, alliances, and lines of thought. Sometimes they lead to amusing juxtapositions. For instance, Ann-Marie Gallagher, whose article was quite interesting despite my difficulties noted above, has scathing things to say about John and Caitlin Matthews as Celtic scholars, showing that they lump all "Celtic" people and culture into one great pile of "Celticness" without distinguishing Welsh from Irish, and so forth. Her bibliography lists the popular books she investigated, a sort of Roll Call of Shameful Work. Immediately following her piece comes "Initiation and the Druid Secret Language: The Three Calls to Cormac as a Druidic Initiation," by Brendan Myers. Myers includes some of the same Matthews books in his references, but for him these are primary sources upon which he depends. The Matthews books go from goats to godsends in just a few pages.
A few pieces are too long by far, like Gus diZerega's "Love, Suffering and Evil: a Neopagan View," which is condensed from a chapter of a book he has written. Its 16 pages of fine-grained consideration of suffering and ethics overwhelmed me, though I enjoyed the comparison of life with a backpacking trek into the Grand Canyon. Others seem a little old-hat, like Maureen O'Hara's ten-year-old essay, "Of Myths and Monkeys: A Critical Look at Critical Mass," on the discredited Hundred Monkey story. The copyediting sometimes needs work: a reference to "wonton destruction" instead of "wanton destruction" is unfortunately included in a "callout" and made enormous, and two footnotes are switched in Brendan Myers' piece, leaving me wondering why I would look for "Pythagorean cults" in Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom. But these are minor displeasures.
On the whole, The Pomegranate is a valuable addition to the field of Pagan publications. I look forward both to reading the back issues I couldn't fit into the time I had, and to future issues.
Subscriptions to The Pomegranate are $16 for one year (four issues) or $30 for two years (eight issues). Write The Pomegranate, 501 NE Thompson Mill Rd, Corbett, OR 97019. The November 1999 issue includes an offer of one free back issue with each two-year subscription. Visit their website at www.interchg.ubc.ca/fmuntean/ for contents of back issues and Writers' Guidelines.
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