curious but skeptical journalist explores world of witches, vampires and hoodoo

Interesting walk through various occult circles in modern America ( )

Once, during my senior year of college, when I was immersed in the study of early American Puritanism, I came as close as one can to experiencing the inner lives of our ancestors, people who really believed not only that our lives had some higher meaning, but also that that meaning could be known, that it was made manifest in signs and omens. Stomping along, lost in thought, I wondered what it might have been like to hear in the crackling leaves behind you the creeping of Satan, or to expect the devil to leap out at you from behind the crook of a tree. And, for a brief moment, I experienced the world with horror, and with wonder.

And then I snapped out of it, because I am a modern, educated rationalist. (I may be revealing my prejudices here.) Christine Wicker is, too, but she's made a career writing about people's beliefs. Wicker wrote about the cradle of American spiritualism in Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to Its Dead. She turns her attention to Americans' magical beliefs in Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America (HarperCollins, 2005). Wicker is writing about the magical because she's "convinced that when a good number of people start to do something that makes no sense to the society at large, when they cling to it for a long time and increasing numbers of people take it up, they're on to something." She's not altogether successful in her aims.

Wicker begins by dumping readers into a magical gathering held, aptly enough, in Salem, Massachusetts. (Never mind that the witch trials took place in what is, today, nearby Danvers.) Wicker introduces readers to vampires, witches, and werewolves. All manner of peculiar things happen, although, of course, none of it is obviously supernatural. Wicker is setting the stage for her exploration of what she claims is a surge in modern Americans' belief in magic. Whether or not there is really a definitive change in the national attitude towards magic is less certain. Wicker notes, briefly, American religious history, including the fact that, for most of the past several centuries, the majority of Americans and their ancestors have been "unchurched." In other words, contrary to the common wisdom, most Americans have never formally belonged to a particular religious tradition, in the sense that they attended church every Sunday, and so on. Likewise, America has a history of the occult dating to its earliest settlement that has also informed Americans' supernatural beliefs. The trend that Wicker notes, then, is perhaps less dramatic than she asserts.

Wicker's survey of the breadth of American magical belief is necessarily impressionistic. Although she covers a wide swath of the magical "community" (I use quotes only because the term may imply a cohesion that is, in reality, absent), she cannot get to it all. Wicker remains at a "helicopter level" in the first section of the book, which is more general. Still, the reader is never certain just how many Americans might be involved. Magical belief is, by nature, informal, and data not readily available. ("Magic," too, is a slippery term, bleeding, as it does, into "mainstream" religion.) Still, Wicker manages to touch on Wiccans, practitioners of hoodoo, and "Otherkin" (people who believe they are lycanthropes, elves, and so on). Extensive portraits of several individuals provide readers deeper insights into certain strains of magical belief.

To some degree, every book is about its author, and such is the case with Not in Kansas Anymore. Wicker is forthright about her Baptist upbringing, before the denomination gave itself over to the evangelicalism that peaked shortly after the millennium. She describes a poignant scene in which, as a teenager, she convinces her father to attend a Pentecostal service. The look of disapproval on his face, as he sits patiently observing the pastor's histrionics, will be immediately recognizable to most readers, and sets the stage for Wicker's transition to skepticism. She is avowedly atheist, but retains her interest in the supernatural, aptly, as a journalist. Still, to her credit, Wicker is sympathetic to her subjects; she does not put them down or demean them. It is clear, though, that Wicker retains at the core of her being her stubborn Baptist morality, which sometimes interferes with her explorations of the more libertine aspects of the magical community.

Ultimately, Wicker finds meaning in her study of magic. She participates in hoodoo, is blessed by a voodoo priest, and, near the close of the book, takes the Eucharist at Westminster Cathedral. Wicker, rationalist that she is, realizes that magic, or religion, or whatever one might call it, affords meaning to its adherents: "You can call it religion, you can call it spirituality, you can call it magic. Maybe what you call it doesn't matter. What matters is that you don't settle for being cut off, that you take the power, that you demand the completeness of human experience...What we must not do...is allow ourselves to be cut off from our own experience of life as it presents itself to us." Amen to that. Not in Kansas Anymore is an intermittently successful look at Americans' "fringe" magical beliefs and Wicker's own relationship with them. General in scope, it's accessible to the average reader, and serves as a primer for certain movements, for instance, hoodoo and Wicca. Recommended for readers interested, but who do not have a background in, American religious and occult belief. ( )

Really enjoying this so far. A non-believer (in anything really) explores, journalistically, the various communities of magical people in America, traces their histories (for instance the hoodoo that began during African Americans enslavement, and the community of magical people in Salem brought there by the combination of magical vibes and tourists-with-cash opportunities), and discusses their wide-ranging beliefs. VERY well-written. ( )

Christine Wicker is a religious reporter, pretty agnostic and somewhat fearful and spends a year or so finding the influence of magical thinking from the southern and northwestern USA ending with taking communion at Westminster Cathedral in London (didn't see that one coming). There was lots of "synchronicity" (a magical word) with my other reading from transcendentalism (of Little Women) to Zora Neal Hurston, who was very big into hoodoo and from whose grave she and one of her mentors got some magical dirt; to Jung. There were vegetarian vampires and werewolves who didn't like meat and a woman who named her beloved daughter Carrion because it sounded pretty. But aside from the bizarreness, this was not a humorous romp through the land of weirdness, Wicker had quite a take on how magic relates to the human condition

Two major concepts behind magic were that people who pursue magic, pagans, those involved in hoodoo, are averse to seeing dualism in life: good vs bad. They believe all aspects work together. Bad and good are two halves of the same coin and both equally valuable. (Which concept fits in fine with my current read Bullfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable those gods are not the rosy cheeked god of Christians but easily angered, powerful sometimes loving, sometimes helpful beings). She mentions how happy and excited we feel when we anticipate an important event and how let down we sometimes are by the even itself and indicates that the whole process is the experience - the anticipation, the event itself, and the let down. It's all one. She also mentions that Alister Crowley and Gerald Gardner were the promoters of the modern, woman affirming take on spirituality while they themselves were rather sadistic and misogynist.

Another concept that stuck with me was that her magical mentors emphasized the necessity of observation. In order to see signs and portents one needs to pay close attention to ones surroundings, and of course, the closer attention one pays, the more signs one sees. I'll bet right now if you have a question about your life if you hold that question in your mind then let it go and look around you as you go throughout your day, you'll see answers. The reason you'll see answers is, as Bruce Hood states in SuperSense, the human mind evolved to form associations and and connections in what it perceives. So, the question is "Should I take that job in a new hospital?" I could look in my backyard and see all the birds flocking together at the feeders and birdbaths and think, "Look how happy they are together. I think that means I would be happy associating with my new co-workers." Or I could notice that one large grackle grabbed a sparrow out of the air and spent 20 minutes eating it. I could think either, "Maybe the bureaucracy at that hospital is too hard on the workers." Or I could think, "There's probably someone out to get me at my present job, I should take the new one." Or, if I were Alister Crowley like I could think, "There could be some people I would really like to sink my teeth into at that new job." All the answers would come from the same backyard and the same birds, and the interpretation would be all up to me. Wicker says this is the idea behind Transcendentalism and magic, that no matter what the experts think, my interpretation of life is unique and important to me. Obviously both good (innovations, progress) and bad (The Secret) come from that way of thinking. ( )